then he paused, and said it again. “There’s a wee bit siller that I half promised ye before ye were born,” he continued; “promised it to your father. O, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen daffing at their wine. Well, I keepit that bit money separate—it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise—and it has grown by now to be a maitter of just precisely—just exactly”—and here he paused and stumbled—“of just exactly forty pounds!” This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, “Scots!” The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which I answered—“O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!”
“That’s what I said,” returned my uncle: “pounds sterling! And if you’ll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, I’ll get it out to ye and call ye in again.”
I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast
