"You must cheer up," said the writer. "Come, some milk and whisky. Move about; I have got good news for you, but cannot trust you." The head of the man was raised up, and a slight beam was, as it were, struck from his eye by the jerk of a sudden impulse. His step, as he moved to gratify the agent, seemed to have acquired even a spring. "Why are you here," he said, as he brought the indispensable jug, with something even more than the five-eighths of the spiritual element added to the two glasses, "if you cannot tell me the grounds of my hope? I could not comprehend what you meant about the woman and the white mice." "Nor do I want you to understand it; it is enough if I do," replied Mr. M----, as he put the jug to his mouth; "but this I want you to understand, in the first place, that I want an order for fifty pounds from you." The farmer was too happy to write an order for any amount within the limits of his last farthing, and getting pen and ink, he wrote the cheque. "And you couldn't tell me the name of the woman with the mice; but I can tell you," he continued. "It is Margaret Davidson; and, hark ye--come near me, man--if you are called upon by any one with the appearance of a sheriff's beagle, or whatever he may be like, for the name of that woman, say it is Margaret Davidson, and that they will find her between Lerwick and Berwick. Do you comprehend?" "Perfectly." "And, moreover, you are to tell every living soul within ear-shot, servants or strangers, that it was that very woman who gave the dose to the lass, and that the woman herself does not deny it." "Gude Lord! but is all this true, Mr. M----?" "Is it true your wife did it, then, you d----d idiot?" cried the writer, using thus one of his most familiar terms, but with perfect good-nature. "Don't you in your heart--or hope, at any rate--think the Lord Advocate a liar? and has his lordship a better right to lie than I or Meg Davidson? Isn't the world a great leavened lump of lies from the Cape of Good Hope to the Cape of Wrath? And you want your wife hanged, because the nose of truth is out of joint a bit! Ay, what though it were cut off altogether, if you get your wife's back without being coloured blue by the hangman? But, I tell you, it's not a lie: the woman with the white mice says it of her own accord." "Wonderful! the woman with the white mice!" "The woman with the white mice!" echoed the writer.