The exercise of walking and the thought of my destination braced me yet
more, so that I began to pluck up a kind of spirit. In the village of
Dean, where it sits in the bottom of a glen beside the river, I inquired
my way of a miller's man, who sent me up the hill upon the farther side
by a plain path, and so to a decent-like small house in a garden of
lawns and apple-trees. My heart beat high as I stepped inside the garden
hedge, but it fell low indeed when I came face to face with a grim and
fierce old lady, walking there in a white mutch with a man's hat
strapped upon the top of it.

"What do ye come seeking here?" she asked.

I told her I was after Miss Drummond.

"And what may be your business with Miss Drummond?" says she.

I told her I had met her on Saturday last, had been so fortunate as to
render her a trifling service, and was come now on the young lady's
invitation.

"Oh, so you're Saxpence!" she cried, with a very sneering manner. "A
braw gift, a bonny gentleman. And hae ye ony ither name and designation,
or were ye bapteesed Saxpence?" she asked.

I told my name.

"Preserve me!" she cried. "Has Ebenezer gotten a son?"

"No, ma'am," said I. "I am a son of Alexander's. It's I that am the
Laird of Shaws."