“Is it he?” asked the priest, dividing his attention between me and the approaching nobleman.
“It's no other,” said I. “I would know Prince Charles in ten thousand, though I saw him but the once in a rabble of caterans coming up the Gallow-gate of Glasgow.”
“Ah,” said the priest, with a curious sighing sound. “They said he passed here at the hour. And that's our gentleman, is it? I expected he would have been--would have been different.” When the Prince was opposite the café where we sat he let his glance come to earth, and it fell upon myself. His aspect changed; there was something of recognition in it; though he never slackened his pace and was gazing the next moment down the vista of the street, I knew that his glance had taken me in from head to heel, and that I was still the object of his thoughts.
“You see! you see!” cried the priest, “I was right, and he knew the Greig. Why, lad, shalt have an Easter egg for this--the best horologe in Versailles upon Monday morning.”
“Why, how could he know me?” I asked. “It is an impossibility, for when he and I were in the same street last he rode a horse high above an army and I was only a raw laddie standing at a close-mouth in Duff's Land in the Gallowgate.”
But all the same I felt the priest was right, and that there was some sort of recognition in the Prince's glance at me in passing.
Father Hamilton poured himself a generous glass and drank thirstily.
“La! la! la!” said he, resuming his customary manner of address. “I daresay his Royal Highness has never clapt eyes on thy _croque-mori_ countenance before, but he has seen its like--ay, and had a regard for it, too! Thine Uncle Andrew has done the thing for thee again; the mole, the hair, the face, the shoes--sure they advertise the Greig as by a drum tuck! and Charles Edward knew thy uncle pretty well so I supposed he would know thee. And this is my gentleman, is it? Well, well! No, not at all well; mighty ill indeed. Not the sort of fellow I had looked for at all. Seems a harmless man enough, and has tossed many a goblet in the way of company. If he had been a sour whey-face now--”
Father Hamilton applied himself most industriously to the bottle that afternoon, and it was not long till the last of my respect for him was gone. Something troubled him. He was moody and hilarious by turns, but neither very long, and completed my distrust of him when he intimated that there was some possibility of our trip across Europe never coming into effect. But all the same, I was to be assured of his patronage, I was to continue in his service as secretary, if, as was possible, he should take up his residence for a time in Paris. And money--why, look again! he had a ship's load of it, and 'twould never be said of Father Hamilton that he could not share with a friend. And there he thrust some rouleaux upon me and clapped my shoulder and was so affected at his own love for Andrew Greig's nephew that he must even weep.