Presently after came a crackling in the thicket. Putting my mouth
near down to the ground, I whistled a note or two, of Alan's air;
an answer came in the like guarded tone, and soon we had knocked
together in the dark.
"Is this you at last, Davie?" he whispered.
"Just myself," said I.
"God, man, but I've been wearying to see ye!" says he. "I've had
the longest kind of a time. A' day, I've had my dwelling into the
inside of a stack of hay, where I couldnae see the nebs of my ten
fingers; and then two hours of it waiting here for you, and you
never coming! Dod, and ye're none too soon the way it is, with me
to sail the morn! The morn? what am I saying?--the day, I mean."
"Ay, Alan, man, the day, sure enough," said I. "It's past twelve
now, surely, and ye sail the day. This'll be a long road you have
before you."
"We'll have a long crack of it first," said he.
"Well, indeed, and I have a good deal it will be telling you to
hear," said I.
And I told him what behooved, making rather a jumble of it, but
clear enough when done. He heard me out with very few questions,
laughing here and there like a man delighted: and the sound of his
laughing (above all there, in the dark, where neither one of us
could see the other) was extraordinary friendly to my heart.
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