And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with impatience to renew their former conversation. The lady had branched some while before from Alan's stomach to the case of a goodbrother of her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at extraordinary length. Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with unction. The upshot was that I fell in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I saw. Presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start. "We pit a fomentation to his feet," the goodwife was saying, "and a het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast...." "Sir," says I, cutting very quietly in, "there's a friend of mine gone by the house." "Is that e'en sae?" replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small-account. And then, "Ye were saying, mem?" says he; and the wearyful wife went on. Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go forth after the change. "Was it him with the red head?" asked Alan. "Ye have it," said I. "What did I tell you in the wood?" he cried. "And yet it's strange he should be here too! Was he his lane?" "His lee-lane for what I could see," said I. "Did he gang by?" he asked. "Straight by," said I, "and looked neither to the right nor left." "And that's queerer yet," said Alan. "It sticks in my mind, Davie, that we should be stirring. But where to?--deil hae't! This is like old days fairly," cries he. "There is one big differ, though," said I, "that now we have money in our pockets." "And another big differ, Mr. Balfour," says he, "that now we have dogs at our tail. They're on the scent; they're in full cry, David. It's a bad business and be damned to it." And he sat thinking hard with a look of his that I knew well. "I'm saying, Luckie," says he, when the goodwife returned, "have ye a back road out of this change house?" She told him there was and where it led to. "Then, sir," says he to me, "I think that will be the shortest road for us. And here's good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I'll no forget thon of the cinnamon water." We went out by way of the woman's kale yard, and up a lane among fields. Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow place of the country, out of view of men, sat down. "Now for a council of war, Davie," said he. "But first of all, a bit lesson to ye. Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife have minded of the pair of us? Just that we had gone out by the back gate. And what does she mind now? A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man, that suffered with the stomach, poor body! and was real ta'en up about the goodbrother. O man, David, try and learn to have some kind of intelligence!" "I'll try, Alan," said I. "And now for him of the red head," says he; "was he gaun fast or slow?" "Betwixt and between," said I.