"Your honour kens the country hereawa, then?" said Spiggot with surprise.
"Of old, perhaps, I knew it as well as thee."
The gudeman of the Thane scrutinised the traveller's face keenly, but failed to recognise him, and until this moment, he thought that no man in the East Neuk was unknown to him; but here his inspection was at fault.
"And hast thou no visitors with thee now, friend host?" he asked of Spiggot.
"One only, gude sir, who came here on a brown horse about nightfall. He is an unco' foreign-looking man, but has been asking the way to the castle o' Balcomie."
"Ha! and thou didst tell of this plaguey pitfall, I warrant."
"Assuredly, your honour, in kindness I did but hint of it."
"And thereupon he stayed. Balcomie--indeed! and what manner of man is he?"
"By the corslet which he wears under his coat, and the jaunty cock of his beaver, I would say he had been a soldier."
"Good again--give him my most humble commendations, and ask him to share thy boasted posset of wine with me."
"Thou inquisitive varlet, I said no name," replied the gentleman, with a smile. "In these times men do not lightly give their names to each other, when the land is swarming with Jacobite plotters and government spies, disguised Jesuits, and Presbyterian tyrants. I may be the Devil or the Pope, for all thou knowest."
"Might ye no be the Pretender?" said Spiggot, with a sour smile.
"Nay, I have a better travelling name than that; but say to this gentleman that the Major of Marshal Orkney's Dragoons requests the pleasure of sharing a stoup of wine with him."
"Sir, it mattereth little whether you give your name or no," replied the host bitterly; "for we are a' nameless now. Twelve months ago, we were true Scottish men, but now----"
"Our king is an exile--our crown is buried for ever, and our brave soldiers are banished to far and foreign wars, while the grass is growing green in the streets of our capital--ay, green as it is at this hour in your burgh of Crail; but, hence to the stranger; yet say not," added the traveller, bitterly and proudly, "that in his warmth the Scottish cavalier has betrayed himself."
While the speaker amused himself with examining a printed proclamation concerning the "Tiend Commissioners and Transplantation off Paroch Kirkis," which was pasted over the stone mantlepiece of the bar, the landlord returned with the foreign gentleman's thanks, and an invitation to his chamber, whither the Major immediately repaired; following the host up a narrow stone spiral stair to a snugly-wainscotted room, against the well-grated windows of which a sudden shower was now beginning to patter.