 for your
private affairs, if you had spoken Greek, I might have had more guess at them.«
    She made me a little, distant curtsey. »There is no harm done,« she said,
with a pretty accent, most like the English (but more agreeable). »A cat may
look at a king.«
    »I do not mean to offend,« said I. »I have no skill of city manners; I never
before this day set foot inside the doors of Edinburgh. Take me for a country
lad - it's what I am; and I would rather I told you than you found it out.«
    »Indeed, it will be a very unusual thing for strangers to be speaking to
each other on the causeway,« she replied. »But if you are landward2 bred it will
be different. I am as landward as yourself; I am Highland, as you see, and think
myself the farther from my home.«
    »It is not yet a week since I passed the line,« said I. »Less than a week
ago I was on the braes of Balquhidder.«
    »Balwhither?« she cries. »Come ye from Balwhither? The name of it makes all
there is of me rejoice. You will not have been long there, and not known some of
our friends or family?«
    »I lived with a very honest, kind man called Duncan Dhu Maclaren,« I
replied.
    »Well, I know Duncan, and you give him the true name!« she said; »and if he
is an honest man, his wife is honest indeed.«
    »Ay,« said I, »they are fine people, and the place is a bonny place.«
    »Where in the great world is such another?« she cries; »I am loving the
smell of that place and the roots that grow there.«
    I was infinitely taken with the spirit of the maid. »I could be wishing I
had brought you a spray of that heather,« says I. »And though I did ill to speak
with you at the first, now it seems we have common acquaintance, I make it my
petition you will not forget me. David Balfour is the name I am known by. This
is my lucky day, when I have just come into a landed estate, and am not very
long out of a deadly peril. I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake
of Balquhidder,« said I, »and I will yours for the
