第5章

THE BOAR'S HEAD.

Miss Napier was the eldest of three maiden sisters who kept the principal hostelry of Rothieden, called The Boar's Head; from which, as Robert reached the square in the dusk, the mail-coach was moving away with a fresh quaternion of horses.He found a good many boxes standing upon the pavement close by the archway that led to the inn-yard, and around them had gathered a group of loungers, not too cold to be interested.These were looking towards the windows of the inn, where the owner of the boxes had evidently disappeared.

'Saw ye ever sic a sicht in oor toon afore!' said Dooble Sanny, as people generally called him, his name being Alexander Alexander, pronounced, by those who chose to speak of him with the ordinary respect due from one mortal to another, Sandy Elshender.Double Sandy was a soutar, or shoemaker, remarkable for his love of sweet sounds and whisky.He was, besides, the town-crier, who went about with a drum at certain hours of the morning and evening, like a perambulating clock, and also made public announcements of sales, losses, &c.; for the rest--a fierce, fighting fellow when in anger or in drink, which latter included the former.

'What's the sicht, Sandy?' asked Robert, coming up with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers.

'Sic a sicht as ye never saw, man,' returned Sandy; 'the bonniest leddy ever man set his ee upo'.I culd na hae thocht there had been sic a woman i' this warl'.'

'Hoot, Sandy!' said Robert, 'a body wad think she was tint (lost)and ye had the cryin' o' her.Speyk laicher, man; she'll maybe hear ye.Is she i' the inn there?'

'Ay is she,' answered Sandy.'See sic a warl' o' kists as she's brocht wi' her,' he continued, pointing towards the pile of luggage.

'Saw ye ever sic a bourach (heap)? It jist blecks (beats) me to think what ae body can du wi' sae mony kists.For I mayna doobt but there's something or ither in ilka ane o' them.Naebody wad carry aboot toom (empty) kists wi' them.I cannot mak' it oot.'

The boxes might well surprise Sandy, if we may draw any conclusions from the fact that the sole implement of personal adornment which he possessed was two inches of a broken comb, for which he had to search when he happened to want it, in the drawer of his stool, among awls, lumps of rosin for his violin, masses of the same substance wrought into shoemaker's wax for his ends, and packets of boar's bristles, commonly called birse, for the same.

'Are thae a' ae body's?' asked Robert.

'Troth are they.They're a' hers, I wat.Ye wad hae thocht she had been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler.

The Bothie was the name facetiously given by Alexander, Baron Rothie, son of the Marquis of Boarshead, to a house he had built in the neighbourhood, chiefly for the accommodation of his bachelor friends from London during the shooting-season.

'Haud yer tongue, Caumill,' said the shoemaker.'She's nae sic cattle, yon.'

'Haud up the bit bowat (stable-lantern), man, and lat Robert here see the direction upo' them.Maybe he'll mak' something o't.He's a fine scholar, ye ken,' said another of the bystanders.

The ostler held the lantern to the card upon one of the boxes, but Robert found only an M., followed by something not very definite, and a J., which might have been an I., Rothieden, Driftshire, Scotland.

As he was not immediate with his answer, Peter Lumley, one of the group, a lazy ne'er-do-weel, who had known better days, but never better manners, and was seldom quite drunk, and seldomer still quite sober, struck in with,'Ye dinna ken a' thing yet, ye see, Robbie.'

>From Sandy this would have been nothing but a good-humoured attempt at facetiousness.From Lumley it meant spite, because Robert's praise was in his ears.

'I dinna preten' to ken ae hair mair than ye do yersel', Mr.Lumley;and that's nae sayin' muckle, surely,' returned Robert, irritated at his tone more than at his words.

The bystanders laughed, and Lumley flew into a rage.

'Haud yer ill tongue, ye brat,' he said.'Wha' are ye to mak' sic remarks upo' yer betters? A'body kens yer gran'father was naething but the blin' piper o' Portcloddie.'