“Said ten thousand fiends in Hell!” cried M’Iver. “I may be vexed I angered the man; but I’ll never let him know it by my words, if he cannot make it out from my acts.” CHAPTER XXXI.--MISTRESS BETTY. I dressed myself up in the morning with scrupulous care, put my hair in a queue, shaved cheek and chin, and put at my shoulder the old heirloom brooch of the house, which, with some other property, the invaders had not found below the _bruach_ where we had hid it on the day we had left Elngmore to their mercy. I was all in a tremor of expectation, hot and cold by turns in hope and apprehension, but always with a singular uplifting at the heart, because for good or ill I was sure to meet in the next hour or two the one person whose presence in Inneraora made it the finest town in the world. Some men tell me they have felt the experience more than once; light o’ loves they, errant gallants, I’ll swear (my dear) the tingle of it came to me but at the thought of meeting one woman. Had she been absent from Inneraora that morning I would have avoided it like a leper-house because of its gloomy memorials; but the very reek of its repairing tenements as I saw them from the upper windows of my home floating in a haze against the blue over the shoulder of Dun Torvil seemed to call me on. I went about the empty chambers carolling like the bird. Aumrie and clothes-press were burst and vacant, the rooms in all details were bereft and cheerless because of the plenishing stolen, and my father sat among his losses and mourned, but I made light of our spoiling. As if to heighten the rapture of my mood, the day was full of sunshine, and though the woods crowding the upper glen were leafless and slumbering, they were touched to something like autumn’s gold. Some people love the country but in the time of leafage! And laden with delights in every season of the year, and the end of winter as cheery a period as any, for I know that the buds are pressing at the bark, and that the boughs in rumours of wind stretch out like the arms of the sleeper who will soon be full awake. Down I went stepping to a merry lilt, banishing every fear from my thoughts, and the first call I made was on the Provost. He was over in Akaig’s with his wife and family pending the repair of his own house, and Askaig was off to his estate. Master Brown sat on the balusters of the outer stair, dangling his squat legs and studying through horn specs the talc of thig and theft which the town officer had made up a report on. As I put my foot on the bottom step he looked up, and his welcome was most friendly. “Colin! Colin!” he cried, hastening down to shake me by the hand, “come your ways in. I heard you got home yesterday, and I was sure you would give us a call in the by-going to-day. And you’re little the waur of your jaunt-hale and hearty. We ken all about your prisoning; M’Iver was in last night and kept the crack going till morning--a most humorous devil.”