Dougal uttered no word. He could not wear his bonnet when he went up to see the laird, but he took it in his hands, which was some small consolation. He was in a dreadful confusion of mind, not knowing what was to be said to him, what was to be demanded of him. He might be about to be put through his “questions,” and want all his strength to defend himself; or it might be nothing at all--some nonsense about the guns or the birds. His heavy shock of hair stood up from his forehead, giving something of an ox-like breadth and heaviness of brow. He held his head somewhat down, with a trace of defiance. Katrin might gloom; it was little he cared for Katrin when his blood was up; but there was not a bit of the traitor in Dougal. No blood of a black Monteith in him, if they were to put the thumbscrews on him or matches atween his fingers. That poor bonnie creature, whatever was her wyte--they should get nothing to trouble her out of him. “Well, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, dangerously genial, “you see I’m left all alone. My friends they have gone to their beds, as if they were callants home from the school.” “The gentlemen would be geyan tired,” said Dougal; “they’re English, and no accustomed to our moors, and some of them no so young either. You never kent that, Sir Robert, you that were to the manner born.” “But too auld for that sort of thing, Dougal, now.” “Maybe, and maybe not,” said Dougal. “There’s naething like the auld blood and the habit o’t. I’d sooner see you cock a rifle, Sir Robert, though I say it as shouldna, than the whole three of them.” “No, no, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, “that’s flattery. They’re not very good shots, then,” he said, with a smile. He was not indisposed to hear this of them, though they were his friends. “Well, Sir Robert, I wouldna say, on their ain kind o’ ground, among the stubble and that kind o’ low-country shooting, which, I’m tauld, is the common thing _there_; but no on our moors. When you’re used to the heather, it’s a different thing.” “No doubt there is something in that,” Sir Robert allowed with discreet satisfaction. And then he added: “What’s this I hear from your wife about all the old neighbors, and that there’s scarcely a house open I knew in my young days?” “What is that, Sir Robert?” said Dougal cautiously. “The neighbors, ye dunce, my old friends that were all about the countryside when I was young, and that I thought would be friends for my poor little Lily when she came here. I’m told there’s not one of them left.” Dougal did not readily take up what was meant, but he held his own firmly. “There’s been nae gentleman’s house,” he said, “what you would call open and receiving visitors round about Dalrugas as long as I mind--no more than Dalrugas itsel’.”