Rinian to do ye, Tolimus?” said his sister, mistaking the quotation for a Catholic invocation. “Besides, if there be no Highlandmen, there may be as bad. I saw sax or seven as ill-looking chields gang past the Place yesterday, as ever came frae beyont Clochna-ben; ill-fa’red tools they had in their hands, whaaling knives they ca’ed them, but they looked as like dirks and whingers as ae bit airn can look like anither. There is nae honest men carry siccan tools.”
Here the knocking and shouts of Mordaunt were very audible betwixt every swell of the horrible blast which was careering without. The brother and sister looked at each other in real perplexity and fear. “If they have heard of the siller,” said Baby, her very nose changing with terror from red to blue, “we are but gane folk!”
“Who speaks now, when they should hold their tongue?” said Triptolemus. “Go to the shot-window instantly, and see how many there are of them, while I load the old Spanish-barrelled duck-gun – go as if you were stepping on new-laid eggs.”
Baby crept to the window, and reported that she saw only “one young chield, clattering and roaring as gin he were daft. How many there might be out of sight, she could not say.”
“Out of sight! – nonsense,” said Triptolemus, laying aside the ramrod with which he was loading the piece, with a trembling hand. “I will warrant them out of sight and hearing both – this is some poor fellow catched in the tempest, wants the shelter of our roof, and a little refreshment. Open the door, Baby, it’s a Christian deed.”
“But is it a Christian deed of him to come in at the window, then?” said Baby, setting up a most doleful shriek, as Mordaunt Mertoun, who had forced open one of the windows, leaped down into the apartment, dripping with water like a river god. Triptolemus, in great tribulation, presented the gun which he had not yet loaded, while the intruder exclaimed, “Hold, hold – what the devil mean you by keeping your doors bolted in weather like this, and levelling your gun at folk’s heads as you would at a sealgh’s?”
“And who are you, friend, and what want you?” said Triptolemus, lowering the but of his gun to the floor as he spoke, and so recovering his arms.
“What do I want!” said Mordaunt; “I want every thing – I want meat, drink, and fire, a bed for the night, and a sheltie for to-morrow morning to carry me to Jarlshof.”
“And ye said there were nae caterans or sorners here?” said Baby to the agriculturist, reproachfully. “Heard ye ever a breekless loon frae Lochaber tell his mind and his errand mair deftly? – Come, come, friend,” she added, addressing herself to Mordaunt, “put up your pipes and gang your gate; this is the house of his lordship’s factor, and no place of reset for thiggers or sorners.”
Mordaunt laughed in her face at the simplicity of the request. “Leave built walls,” he said, “and in such a tempest as this? What take you me for? – a gannet or a scart do you think I am, that your clapping your hands and skirling at me like a madwoman, should drive me from the shelter into the storm?”
“And so you propose, young man,” said Triptolemus, gravely, “to stay in my house, volens nolens– that is, whether we will or no?”
“Will!” said Mordaunt; “what right have you to will any thing about it? Do you not hear the thunder? Do you not hear the rain? Do you not see the lightning? And do you not know this is the only house within I wot not how many miles? Come, my good master and dame, this may be Scottish jesting, but it sounds strange in Zetland ears. You have let out the fire, too, and my teeth are dancing a jig in my head with cold; but I’ll soon put that to rights.”
He seized the fire-tongs, raked together the embers upon the hearth, broke up into life the gathering-peat, which the hostess had calculated should have preserved the seeds of fire, without giving them forth, for many hours; then casting his eye round, saw in a corner the stock of drift-wood, which Mistress Baby had served forth by ounces, and transferred two or three logs of it at once to the hearth, which, conscious of such unwonted supply, began to transmit to the chimney such a smoke as had not issued from the Place of Harfra for many a day.
While their uninvited guest was thus making himself at home, Baby kept edging and jogging the factor to turn out the intruder. But for this undertaking, Triptolemus Yellowley felt neither courage nor zeal, nor did circumstances seem at all to warrant the favourable conclusion of any fray into which he might enter with the young stranger. The sinewy limbs and graceful form of Mordaunt Mertoun were seen to great advantage in his simple sea-dress; and with his dark sparkling eye, finely formed head, animated features, close curled dark hair, and bold, free looks, the stranger formed a very strong contrast with the host on whom he had intruded himself. Triptolemus was a short, clumsy, duck-legged disciple of Ceres, whose bottle-nose, turned up and handsomely coppered at the extremity, seemed to intimate something of an occasional treaty with Bacchus. It was like to be no equal mellay betwixt persons of such unequal form and strength; and the difference betwixt twenty and fifty years was nothing in favour of the weaker party. Besides, the factor was an honest good-natured fellow at bottom, and being soon satisfied that his guest had no other views than those of obtaining refuge from the storm, it would, despite his sister’s instigations, have been his last act to deny a boon so reasonable and necessary to a youth whose exterior was so prepossessing. He stood, therefore, considering how he could most gracefully glide into the character of the hospitable landlord, out of that of the churlish defender of his domestic castle, against an unauthorized intrusion, when Baby, who had stood appalled at the extreme familiarity of the stranger’s address and demeanour, now spoke up for herself.
“My troth, lad,” said she to Mordaunt, “ye are no blate, to light on at that rate, and the best of wood, too – nane of your sharney peats, but good aik timber, nae less maun serve ye!”
“You come lightly by it, dame,” said Mordaunt, carelessly; “and you should not grudge to the fire what the sea gives you for nothing. These good ribs of oak did their last duty upon earth and ocean, when they could hold no longer together under the brave hearts that manned the bark.”
“And that’s true, too,” said the old woman, softening – “this maun be awsome weather by sea. Sit down and warm ye, since the sticks are a-low.”
“Ay, ay,” said Triptolemus, “it is a pleasure to see siccan a bonny bleeze. I havena seen the like o’t since I left Cauldacres.”
“And shallna see the like o’t again in a hurry,” said Baby, “unless the house take fire, or there suld be a coal-heugh found out.”
“And wherefore should not there be a coal-heugh found out?” said the factor, triumphantly – “I say, wherefore should not a coal-heugh be found out in Zetland as well as in Fife, now that the Chamberlain has a far-sighted and discreet man upon the spot to make the necessary perquisitions? They are baith fishing-stations, I trow?”
“I tell you what it is, Tolemus Yellowley,” answered his sister, who had practical reasons to fear her brother’s opening upon any false scent, “if you promise my Lord sae mony of these bonnie-wallies, we’ll no be weel hafted here before we are found out and set a-trotting again. If ane was to speak to ye about a gold mine, I ken weel wha would promise he suld have Portugal pieces clinking in his pouch before the year gaed by.”
“And why suld I not?” said Triptolemus – “maybe your head does not know there is a land in Orkney called Ophir, or something very like it; and wherefore might not Solomon, the wise King of the Jews, have sent thither his ships and his servants for four hundred and fifty talents? I trow he knew best where to go or send, and I hope you believe in your Bible, Baby?”
Baby was silenced by an appeal to Scripture, however mal à propos, and only answered by an inarticulate humph of incredulity or scorn, while her brother went on addressing
