“Weel! weel! sae let it be. Bide awhile, and rest ye. We’ll no’ chairge ye for that--and we’ll see if your husband comes. I’ll just let the rooms, mistress, to _him,_, instead o’ lettin’ them to _you._ And, sae, good-morrow t’ ye.” With that final announcement of her royal will and pleasure, the Empress of the Inn withdrew. Anne made no reply. She watched the landlady out of the room--and then struggled to control herself no longer. In her position, suspicion was doubly insult. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes; and the heart-ache wrung her, poor soul--wrung her without mercy. A trifling noise in the room startled her. She looked up, and detected a man in a corner, dusting the furniture, and apparently acting in the capacity of attendant at the inn. He had shown her into the parlor on her arrival; but he had remained so quietly in the room that she had never noticed him since, until that moment. He was an ancient man--with one eye filmy and blind, and one eye moist and merry. His head was bald; his feet were gouty; his nose was justly celebrated as the largest nose and the reddest nose in that part of Scotland. The mild wisdom of years was expressed mysteriously in his mellow smile. In contact with this wicked world, his manner revealed that happy mixture of two extremes--the servility which just touches independence, and the independence which just touches servility--attained by no men in existence but Scotchmen. Enormous native impudence, which amused but never offended; immeasurable cunning, masquerading habitually under the double disguise of quaint prejudice and dry humor, were the solid moral foundations on which the character of this elderly person was built. No amount of whisky ever made him drunk; and no violence of bell-ringing ever hurried his movements. Such was the headwaiter at the Craig Fernie Inn; known, far and wide, to local fame, as “Maister Bishopriggs, Mistress Inchbare’s right-hand man.” “What are you doing there?” Anne asked, sharply. Mr. Bishopriggs turned himself about on his gouty feet; waved his duster gently in the air; and looked at Anne, with a mild, paternal smile. “Eh! Am just doostin’ the things; and setin’ the room in decent order for ye.” “For _me?_ Did you hear what the landlady said?” Mr. Bishopriggs advanced confidentially, and pointed with a very unsteady forefinger to the purse which Anne still held in her hand. “Never fash yoursel’ aboot the landleddy!” said the sage chief of the Craig Fernie waiters. “Your purse speaks for you, my lassie. Pet it up!” cried Mr. Bishopriggs, waving temptation away from him with the duster. “In wi’ it into yer pocket! Sae long as the warld’s the warld, I’ll uphaud it any where--while there’s siller in the purse, there’s gude in the woman!” Anne’s patience, which had resisted harder trials, gave way at this. “What do you mean by speaking to me in that familiar manner?” she asked, rising angrily to her feet again.