'Many a one has been rouped out before now,' said the other.
The reflection was ill-timed; for my poor woman covered her face with her apron, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. I had now found a person of whom I could more freely ask questions, which, indeed, all seemed eager to answer; and I quickly discovered that Cecil Graham, for so my mourner was called, was the wife of a soldier, whom the first and firmest sentiment of a Highlander had lured from his native glen to follow the banner of his chieftain; that when his regiment had been ordered abroad, she had unwillingly been left behind; that, in the decent abode which Highland frugality had procured for her, she had, by her labour, supported herself and two children; but that, on the night before her rent became due, she had been robbed of the little deposit which was meant to pay it; and that her landlord, after some months of vain delay, had availed himself of his right over the property of his debtor.
'And will he,' cried I, touched with a fellow-feeling, 'will he drive this poor young woman abroad among strangers! without a home or a friend! God forgive him.'
'I do not want for friends, and good friends, madam,' said the Highlander, in the strong accent of her country, but with far less of its peculiar pronunciation than disguised the language of her companions; 'all the streams of Benarde canna' wash my blood from the laird's himsel'.'
'What laird?' enquired I, smiling at the metaphorical language of my new acquaintance. 'Eredine himsel', lady; his grandfather and my great-grandmother were sister and brother childer:' meaning, as I afterwards found, that these ancestors were cousins.
'And will the laird do nothing for his relation?' said I.
'That's what _he_ would, madam, and that indeed would _he_,' returned Cecil, laying an odd emphasis upon the pronoun, and gesticulating with great solemnity. 'He's no' the man to take the child out of the cradle and put out the smoke.'
'Indeed lady I'm no' going to trouble the laird. You see he might think that I judged he was like bound to uphold me and mine, because Jemmy was away wi' Mr Kenneth, ye see.'
'What then will you do? Will you allow yourself to be stripped of all?'