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I wish you would keep my name in mind for the sake of Balwhidder," said I, "and I will yours for the sake of my lucky day." "My name is not spoken," she replied, with a great deal of haughtiness. "More than a hundred years it has not gone upon men's tongues, save for a blink. I am nameless, like the Folk of Peace. Catriona Drummond is the one I use." Now indeed I knew where I was standing.
"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 landward 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 Balwhidder."
I thought as Mrs Balwhidder, worthy woman as she was, did not understand the Latin tongue, it would not do to put on what I had to say in that language, as the laird had done nor indeed would it have been easy, as I found upon the experimenting, to tell what I had to tell in Latin, which is naturally a crabbed language, and very difficult to write properly.
But while we were thus standing discoursing on the causey, Mrs Balwhidder and the servant lassies could thole no longer, but in a troop came in quest of me, to hear what was doing. In short, it was a night both of sorrow and anxiety.
Out of this accident grew a sort of a neighbourliness between that Lord Eaglesham and me; so that when Andrew Lanshaw, the brother that was of the first Mrs Balwhidder, came to think of going to India, I wrote to my lord for his behoof, and his lordship got him sent out as a cadet, and was extraordinary discreet to Andrew when he went up to London to take his passage, speaking to him of me as if I had been a very saint, which the Searcher of Hearts knows I am far from thinking myself.
I could but shake my head and weep, as I gave them to the care of Mrs Balwhidder, and she was terrified but said nothing. I then read the letter. It was to send the bairns to a gentleman, their uncle, in London. Oh! it is a terrible tale; but the winding-sheet and the earth is over it. I sent for two of my elders. I related what I had seen.
Balwhidder lost upwards of twelve stone, which was intended for sarking to ourselves and sheets and napery. A great loss indeed it was, and the vexation thereof had a visible effect on her health, which from the spring had been in a dwining way. But for it, I think she might have wrestled through the winter.
The Lady Macadam, who had a knowledge of such things, declared it was the best of the best sort; for Mrs Malcolm sent her ladyship some of it in a doctor's bottle, as well as to Mrs Balwhidder, who was then at the downlying with our daughter Janet a woman now in the married state, that makes a most excellent wife, having been brought up with great pains, and well educated, as I shall have to record by-and-by.
This was greatly thought of at the time, and Mr Lorimore, who had a nerve for poesy himself in his younger years, was of opinion that it was so much to the purpose, and suitable withal, that he made his scholars write it out for their examination copies, at the reading whereof before the heritors, when the examination of the school came round, the tear came into my eye, and every one present sympathized with me in my great affliction for the loss of the first Mrs Balwhidder.
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