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!"