In vain Oldbuck made light of his vision of the Green Room. In vain he reminded him that he had been showing that very volume to Sir Arthur the night before in his presence, and had even remarked upon the appropriate motto of old Aldobrand Oldenbuck.
Lovel was resolved to give his love for Miss Wardour one more chance. And indeed at that very moment, under the lady's window at Knockwinnock Castle, a strange love messenger was pleading his cause.
Miss Wardour had been trying to persuade old Edie Ochiltree to accept a garden, a cottage, and a daily dole, for his great services in saving her own and her father's life. But of this Edie would hear nothing.
"I would weary," he said, "to be forever looking up at the same beams and rafters, and out upon the same cabbage patch. I have a queer humour of my own, too, and I might be jesting and scorning where I should be silent. Sir Arthur and I might not long agree. Besides, what would the country do for its gossip--the blithe clatter at e'en about the fire? Who would bring news from one farm-town to another--gingerbread to the lassies, mend fiddles for the lads, and make grenadier caps of rushes for the bairns, if old Edie were tied by the leg at his own cottage door?"
"Well, then, Edie," said Miss Wardour, "if this be so, if you feel that the folk of the countryside cannot do without you, you must just let me know when you feel old enough to settle, and in the meantime take this."
And she handed him a sum of money. But for the second time again the beggar refused.
"Na, na," he said, "it is against our rule to take so muckle siller at once. I would be robbed and murdered for it at the next town--or at least I would go in fear of my life, which is just as bad. But you might say a good word for me to the ground-officer and the constable, and maybe bid Sandy Netherstanes the miller chain up his big dog, and I will e'en come to Knockwinnock as usual for my alms and my snuff."
Edie paused at this point, and, stepping nearer to the window on which Miss Wardour leaned, he continued, speaking almost in her ear.
"Ye are a bonny young leddy, and a good one," he said, "and maybe a well-dowered one. But do not you sneer away the laddie Lovel, as ye did a while syne on the walk beneath the Briery bank, when I both saw ye and heard ye too, though ye saw not me. Be canny with the lad, for he loves ye well. And it's owing to him, and not to anything I could have done, that you and Sir Arthur were saved yestreen!"