"Will you drink a rummer o' toddy, or try some fine auld usquebaugh I
hae got frae my cousin in Buchan?"
I sat down on the settle outside the tavern door. "This is my errand. I
want you to bring me to a man or bring that man to me. His name is
Ninian Campbell."
Mercer looked at me dully.
"There was a lad o' that name was hanged at Inveraray i' '68 for
stealin' twae hens and a wether."
"The man I mean is long and lean, and his head is as red as fire. He
gave me your name, so you must know him."
His eyes showed no recognition. He repeated the name to himself,
mumbling it toothlessly. "It sticks i' my memory," he said, "but when
and where I canna tell. Certes, there's no man o' the name in
Virginia."
I was beginning to think that my memory had played me false, when
suddenly the whole scene in the Saltmarket leaped vividly to my brain.
Then I remembered the something else I had been enjoined to say.
"Ninian Campbell," I went on, "bade me ask for him here, and I was to
tell you that the lymphads are on the loch and the horn of Diarmaid has
sounded."
In a twinkling his face changed from vacancy to shrewdness and from
senility to purpose. He glanced uneasily round.
"For God's sake, speak soft," he whispered.
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