The talk going, with all their endeavours, very heavily, the eldest took pity on my awkwardness, sat down to her instrument, of which she was a passed mistress, and entertained me for a while with playing and singing, both in the Scots and in the Italian manners; this put me more at my ease, and being reminded of Alan's air that he had taught me in the hole near Carriden, I made so bold as to whistle a bar or two, and ask if she knew that. She shook her head. "I never heard a note of it," said she. "Whistle it all through. And now once again," she added, after I had done so. Then she picked it out upon the keyboard, and (to my surprise) instantly enriched the same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she played, with a very droll expression and broad accent: "Haenae I got just the lilt of it? Isnae this the tune that ye whustled?" "You see," she says, "I can do the poetry too, only it won't rhyme." And then again: "I am Miss Grant, sib to the Advocate: You, I believe, are Dauvit Balfour." I told her how much astonished I was by her genius. "And what do you call the name of it?" she asked. "I do not know the real name," said I. "I just call it _Alan's air_." She looked at me directly in the face. "I shall call it _David's air_," said she; "though if it's the least like what your namesake of Israel played to Saul I would never wonder that the king got little good by it, for it's but melancholy music. Your other name I do not like; so, if you was ever wishing to hear your tune again you are to ask for it by mine." This was said with a significance that gave my heart a jog. "Why that, Miss Grant?" I asked. "Why," says she, "if ever you should come to get hanged, I will set your last dying speech and confession to that tune and sing it." This put it beyond a doubt that she was partly informed of my story and peril. How, or just how much, it was more difficult to guess. It was plain she knew there was something of danger in the name of Alan, and thus warned me to leave it out of reference; and plain she knew that I stood under some criminal suspicion. I judged besides that the harshness of her last speech (which besides she had followed up immediately with a very noisy piece of music) was to put an end to the present conversation. I stood beside her, affecting to listen and admire, but truly whirled away by my own thoughts. I have always found this young lady to be a lover of the mysterious; and certainly this first interview made a mystery that was beyond my plummet. One thing I learned long after, the hours of the Sunday had been well employed, the bank porter had been found and examined, my visit to Charles Stewart was discovered, and the deduction made that I was pretty deep with James and Alan, and most likely in a continued correspondence with the last. Hence this broad hint that was given me across the harpsichord.