’You may wonder,’ he went on, ’that I choose to speak in confidence to one that is but an esquire, and, I hear, as ready with his sword in the quarrel as any of them. But at least you are not like the rest, occupied entirely with the safety of your own skin, and unwilling to look the matter in the face. I told him that I did not wonder at all that he was willing to speak to me, for that I could keep my counsel truly and well. ’Faith, and I believe that,’ he cried, ’if it were only your self-conceit of being able to do it.’ But I understood not at all what he meant, for if there is anything that I am conspicuously lacking in, it is this very quality of self-conceit. ’Hear ye, then, and mark well my words,’ said the Minister of Edinburgh. ’There is a man in this country who is at the root of all the blood and all the slaughter, and who, if he be not curbed, will yet do tenfold more mischief. Your master thinks that he can bribe him to friendship; well, I am no judge of men, if the man is to be bribed at any price beneath the sole power and sway of all this wild country of the west.’ ’It is Gilbert Kennedy of Bargany that you mean,’ said I, for I own I was jealous of his good name, enemy though he was. ’Gilbert Kennedy is but a hammer in this man’s hand. Your good knight here at Culzean is but a spoon for him to sup with. And the only man that sees through him (and that but partially) is your joker-headed Earl, whose keen care for the merks, the duties, and the tacks, makes him somewhat clearer in the eye than the rest of you.’ ’And who is this plotter?’ said I. He stopped and looked about him to see that none was listening. Then he laid his lips almost to my ear. He whispered a name which, in this place, I must not write, though afterwards it will be plain enough. ’It is simply not possible,’ said I; ’the man you mention is but a bonnet laird, as one might say, with a peel-tower and a holding of half-a-dozen crofts. Why, my master could eat him up saltless, without turning out more than half a parish of his fighting men.’ ’Nevertheless,’ said Robert Bruce, ’that is the man who stands behind and makes the miracles work, as in Popish days the priests were wont to do behind the altar. Ye are but a set of jigging fools here in Carrick, and the man that pipes to you is the man I’ve told ye of!’ Then I thought over the matter—all that I knew of the man. ’In truth,’ said I, ’I am none so sure that you may not be right.’ Robert Bruce smiled as one that waxes aweary of a babe’s prattle. ’For,’ said I, ’I mind that I heard him endeavour to win one by promises to the side of Bargany—’