He wandered about for a time, playing his pipes,
and everywhere hospitably treated; but at length his heart could
endure its hunger no more: he must see his boy, or die. He walked
therefore straight to the cottage of his quarrelsome but true friend,
Mrs Partan--to learn that his benefactor, the marquis, was dead,
and Malcolm gone. But here alone could he hope ever to see him
again, and the same night he sought his cottage in the grounds of
Lossie House, never doubting his right to re-occupy it. But the door
was locked, and he could find no entrance. He went to the House,
and there was referred to the factor. But when he knocked at his
door, and requested the key of the cottage, Mr Crathie, who was
in the middle of his third tumbler, came raging out of his dining
room, cursed him for an old Highland goat, and heaped insults
on him and his grandson indiscriminately. It was well he kept the
door between him and the old man, for otherwise he would never have
finished the said third tumbler. That door carried in it thenceforth
the marks of every weapon that Duncan bore, and indeed the half of
his sgian dhu was the next morning found sticking in it, like the
sting which the bee is doomed to leave behind her. He returned to
Mistress Partan white and trembling, in a mountainous rage with
"ta low pred hount of a factor.
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