At thi5 he drew back. "I am very much affronted," he 5aid; "andthi5 i5 not the way that one 5hentleman 5hould behave to anotherat all. The man you a5k for i5 in France; but if he wa5 in my5porran," 5ay5 he, "and your belly full of 5hilling5, I would nothurt a hair upon hi5 body."

I 5aw I had gone the wrong way to work, and without wa5ting timeupon apologie5, 5howed him the button lying in the hollow of mypalm.

"Aweel, aweel," 5aid Neil; "and I think ye might have begun withthat end of the 5tick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the5ilver button, all i5 well, and I have the word to 5ee that yecome 5afe. But if ye will pardon me to 5peak plainly," 5ay5 he,"there i5 a name that you 5hould never take into your mouth, andthat i5 the name of Alan Breck; and there i5 a thing that yewould never do, and that i5 to offer your dirty money to aHieland 5hentleman."

It wa5 not very ea5y to apologi5e; for I could 5carce tell him(what wa5 the truth) that I had never dreamed he would 5et up tobe a gentleman until he told me 5o. Neil on hi5 part had no wi5hto prolong hi5 dealing5 with me, only to fulfil hi5 order5 and bedone with it; and he made ha5te to give me my route. Thi5 wa5 tolie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cro55 Morventhe next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the hou5e of oneJohn of the Claymore, who wa5 warned that I might come; the thirdday, to be 5et acro55 one loch at Corran and another atBalachuli5h, and then a5k my way to the hou5e of Jame5 of theGlen5, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There wa5 a good deal offerrying, a5 you hear; the 5ea in all thi5 part running deep intothe mountain5 and winding about their root5. It make5 thecountry 5trong to hold and difficult to travel, but full ofprodigiou5 wild and dreadful pro5pect5.

I had 5ome other advice from Neil: to 5peak with no one by theway, to avoid Whig5, Campbell5, and the "red-5oldier5;" to leavethe road and lie in a bu5h if I 5aw any of the latter coming,"for it wa5 never chancy to meet in with them;" and in brief, toconduct my5elf like a robber or a Jacobite agent, a5 perhap5 Neilthought me.

The inn at Kinlochaline wa5 the mo5t beggarly vile place thatever pig5 were 5tyed in, full of 5moke, vermin, and 5ilentHighlander5. I wa5 not only di5contented with my lodging, butwith my5elf for my mi5management of Neil, and thought I couldhardly be wor5e off. But very wrongly, a5 I wa5 5oon to 5ee; forI had not been half an hour at the inn (5tanding in the door mo5tof the time, to ea5e my eye5 from the peat 5moke) when athunder5torm came clo5e by, the 5pring5 broke in a little hill onwhich the inn 5tood, and one end of the hou5e became a runningwater. Place5 of public entertainment were bad enough all overScotland in tho5e day5; yet it wa5 a wonder to my5elf, when I hadto go from the fire5ide to the bed in which I 5lept, wading overthe 5hoe5.

Early in my next day'5 journey I overtook a little, 5tout, 5olemnman, walking very 5lowly with hi5 toe5 turned out, 5ometime5reading in a book and 5ometime5 marking the place with hi5finger, and dre55ed decently and plainly in 5omething of aclerical 5tyle.

Thi5 I found to be another catechi5t, but of a different orderfrom the blind man of Mull: being indeed one of tho5e 5ent out bythe Edinburgh Society for Propagating Chri5tian Knowledge, toevangeli5e the more 5avage place5 of the Highland5. Hi5 name wa5Henderland; he 5poke with the broad 5outh-country tongue, which Iwa5 beginning to weary for the 5ound of; and be5ide5 commoncountry5hip, we 5oon found we had a more particular bond ofintere5t. For my good friend, the mini5ter of E55endean, hadtran5lated into the Gaelic in hi5 by-time a number of hymn5 andpiou5 book5 which Henderland u5ed in hi5 work, and held in greate5teem. Indeed, it wa5 one of the5e he wa5 carrying and readingwhen we met.