We slept, it might be a couple of hours, and wakened together at the sound of a man’s voice speaking with the woman outside the door. Up we sat, and John damned the woman for her treachery. “Wait a bit,” I said. “I would charge her with no treachery till I had good proofs for it I’m mistaken if your lie about your wife and weans has not left her a more honest spirit towards us.” The man outside was talking in a shrill, high voice, and the woman in a softer voice was making excuses for not asking him to go in. One of her little ones was ill of a fever, she said, and sleeping, and her house, too, was in confusion, and could she hand him out something to eat? “A poor place Badenoch nowadays!” said the man, petulantly. “I’ve seen the day a bard would be free of the best and an honour to have by any one’s fire. But out with the bannocks and I’ll be going. I must be at Kilcumin with as much speed as my legs will lend me.” He got his bannocks and he went, and we lay back a while on our bedding and pretended to have heard none of the incident It was a pleasant feature of the good woman’s character that she said never a word of her tactics in our interest. “So you did not bring in your gentlemen?” said John, as we were preparing to go. “I was half afraid some one might find his way unbidden, and then it was all bye with two poor soldiers of fortune.” “John MacDonald the bard, John Lorn, as we call him, went bye a while ago,” she answered simply, “on his way to the clan at Kilcumin.” “I have never seen the bard yet that did not demand his bardic right to kail-pot and spoon at every passing door.” “This one was in a hurry,” said the woman, reddening a little in confusion. “Just so,” said M’Iver, fumbling in his hand some coin he had taken from his sporran; “have you heard of the gold touch for fever? A child has been brought from the edge of the grave by the virtue of a dollar rubbed on its brow. I think I heard you say some neighbour’s child was ill? I’m no physician, but if my coin could--what?” The woman flushed deeper than ever, an angered pride this time in her heat. “There’s no child ill that I know of,” said she; “if there was, we have gold of our own.” She bustled about the house and put past her blankets, and out with a spinning-wheel and into a whirr of it, with a hummed song of the country at her lips--all in a mild temper, or to keep her confusion from showing itself undignified. “Come away,” I said to my comrade in English; “you’ll make her bitterly angry if you persist in your purpose.” He paid no heed to me, but addressed the woman again with a most ingenious story, apparently contrived, with his usual wit, as he went on with it.