Catriona set her fingers to her lips and whistled once, with an
exceeding clear, strong, mounting note, as full as a ploughman's.
A while we stood silent; and I was about to ask her to repeat the
same, when I heard the sound of some one bursting through the
bushes below on the braeside. I pointed in that direction with a
smile, and presently Neil leaped into the garden. His eyes burned,
and he had a black knife (as they call it on the Highland side)
naked in his hand; but, seeing me beside his mistress, stood like a
man struck.
"He has come to your call," said I; "judge how near he was to
Edinburgh, or what was the nature of your father's errands. Ask
himself. If I am to lose my life, or the lives of those that hang
by me, through the means of your clan, let me go where I have to go
with my eyes open."
She addressed him tremulously in the Gaelic. Remembering Alan's
anxious civility in that particular, I could have laughed out loud
for bitterness; here, sure, in the midst of these suspicions, was
the hour she should have stuck by English.
Twice or thrice they spoke together, and I could make out that Neil
(for all his obsequiousness) was an angry man.
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