The liveliest excitement was
at once exhibited by both my comrades. They climbed hillocks, they
studied the approaching drove from under their hand, they consulted
each other with an appearance of alarm that seemed to me
extraordinary. I had learned by this time that their stand-oft
manners implied, at least, no active enmity; and I made bold to ask
them what was wrong.
'Bad yins,' was Sim's emphatic answer.
All day the dogs were kept unsparingly on the alert, and the drove
pushed forward at a very unusual and seemingly unwelcome speed.
All day Sim and Candlish, with a more than ordinary expenditure
both of snuff and of words, continued to debate the position. It
seems that they had recognised two of our neighbours on the road--
one Faa, and another by the name of Gillies. Whether there was an
old feud between them still unsettled I could never learn; but Sim
and Candlish were prepared for every degree of fraud or violence at
their hands. Candlish repeatedly congratulated himself on having
left 'the watch at home with the mistress'; and Sim perpetually
brandished his cudgel, and cursed his ill-fortune that it should be
sprung.
'I willna care a damn to gie the daashed scoon'rel a fair clout wi'
it,' he said. 'The daashed thing micht come sindry in ma hand.'
'Well, gentlemen,' said I, 'suppose they do come on, I think we can
give a very good account of them.
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