Put she'll
tell you ta won half of it that pelongs to her poy Malcolm. He 's
a pig poy now, put he wasn't aalways. No. He was once a fery little
smaal chylt, in her old plind aarms. Put tey wasn't old ten. Why
must young peoples crow old, my laty? Put she'll pe clad of it
herself; for she'll can hate ta petter."
Lady Florimel, incapable either of setting forth the advantages of
growing old, or of enforcing the duty, which is the necessity, of
forgiveness, answered with some commonplace; and as, to fortify
his powers of narration, a sailor would cut himself a quid, and
a gentleman fill his glass, or light a fresh cigar, Duncan slowly
filled his bag. After a few strange notes as of a spirit wandering
in pain, he began his story. But I will tell the tale for him, lest
the printed oddities of his pronunciation should prove wearisome.
I must mention first, however, that he did not commence until he had
secured a promise from Lady Florimel that she would not communicate
his revelations to Malcolm, having, he said, very good reasons for
desiring to make them himself so soon as a fitting time should have
arrived.
Avoiding all mention of his reasons either for assuming another
name or for leaving his native glen, he told how, having wandered
forth with no companion but his bagpipes, and nothing he could call
his own beyond the garments and weapons which he wore, he traversed
the shires of Inverness and Nairn and Moray, offering at every house
on his road, to play the pipes, or clean the lamps and candlesticks,
and receiving sufficient return, mostly in the shape of food and
shelter, but partly in money, to bring him all the way from Glenco
to Portlossie: somewhere near the latter was a cave in which his
father, after his flight from Culloden, had lain in hiding for six
months, in hunger and cold, and in constant peril of discovery and
death, all in that region being rebels--for as such Duncan of
course regarded the adherents of the houses of Orange and Hanover;
and having occasion, for reasons, as I have said, unexplained, in
his turn to seek, like a hunted stag, a place far from his beloved
glen, wherein to hide his head, he had set out to find the cave,
which the memory of his father would render far more of a home to
him now than any other place left him on earth.
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