Audrey

The two from Fair View plantation kept their forest gait; for the trader

was in a hurry to fulfill his part of the bargain, which was merely to

exhibit and value the skins. There was an ordinary in Nicholson Street

that was to his liking. Sailors gamed there, and other traders, and half

a dozen younger sons of broken gentlemen. It was as cleanly dining in its

chief room as in the woods, and the aqua vitæ, if bad, was cheap. In good

humor with himself, and by nature lavish with his earnings, he offered to

make the storekeeper his guest for the day. The latter curtly declined the

invitation. He had bread and meat in his wallet, and wanted no drink but

water. He would dine beneath the trees on the market green, would finish

his business in town, and be half way back to the plantation while the

trader--being his own man, with no fear of hue and cry if he were

missed--was still at hazard.

This question settled, the two kept each other company for several hours

longer, at the end of which time they issued from the store at which the

greater part of their business had been transacted, and went their several

ways,--Hugon to the ordinary in Nicholson Street, and MacLean to his

dinner beneath the sycamores on the green. When the frugal meal had been

eaten, the latter recrossed the sward to the street, and took up again the

round of his commissions.

It was after three by the great clock in the cupola of the Capitol when he

stood before the door of Alexander Ker, the silversmith, and found

entrance made difficult by the serried shoulders of half a dozen young men

standing within the store, laughing, and making bantering speeches to some

one hidden from the Highlander's vision. Presently an appealing voice,

followed by a low cry, proclaimed that the some one was a woman.

MacLean had a lean and wiry strength which had stood him in good stead

upon more than one occasion in his checkered career. He now drove an arm

like a bar of iron between two broadcloth coats, sent the wearers thereof

to right and left, and found himself one of an inner ring and facing

Mistress Truelove Taberer, who stood at bay against the silversmith's long

table. One arm was around the boy who had rowed her to the Fair View store

a week agone; with the other she was defending her face from the attack of

a beribboned gallant desirous of a kiss. The boy, a slender, delicate lad

of fourteen, struggled to free himself from his sister's restraining arm,

his face white with passion and his breath coming in gasps. "Let me go,

Truelove!" he commanded. "If I am a Friend, I am a man as well! Thou

fellow with the shoulder knots, thee shall pay dearly for thy insolence!"