, after a moment's hesitation - »But I would
first like to ken what sort of questions they are. I hae had sae mony questions
speered at me in my day, and in sic queer ways, that if ye ken'd a', ye wadna
wonder at my jalousing a'thing about them. My mother gar'd me learn the Single
Carritch, whilk was a great vex; then I behoved to learn about my godfathers and
godmothers to please the auld leddy; and whiles I jumbled them thegither and
pleased nane o' them; and when I cam to man's yestate, cam another kind o'
questioning in fashion, that I liked waur than Effectual Calling; and the 'did
promise and vow' of the tane were yoked to the end o' the tother. Sae ye see,
sir, I aye like to hear questions asked before I answer them.«
    »You have nothing to apprehend from mine, my good friend; they only relate
to the state of the country.«
    »Country?« replied Cuddie. »Ou, the country's weel eneugh, an it werena that
dour deevil, Claver'se (they ca' him Dundee now), that's stirring about yet in
the Highlands, they say, wi' a' the Donalds, and Duncans, and Dugalds, that ever
wore bottomless breeks, driving about wi' him, to set things asteer again, now
we hae gotten them a' reasonably weel settled. But Mackay will pit him down,
there's little doubt o' that; he'll gie him his fairing, I'll be caution for
it.«
    »What makes you so positive of that, my friend?« asked the horseman.
    »I heard it wi' my ain lugs,« answered Cuddie, »foretauld to him by a man
that had been three hours stane dead, and came back to this earth again just to
tell him his mind. It was at a place they ca,' Drumshinnel.«
    »Indeed?« said the stranger. »I can hardly believe you, my friend.«
    »Ye might ask my mither, then, if she were in life,« said Cuddie, »it was
her explained it a' to me, for I thought the man had only been wounded. At ony
rate, he spake of the casting out of the Stuarts by their very names, and the
vengeance that was brewing for Claver'se and his dragoons. They ca'd the man
Habakkuk Mucklewrath; his brain was a
