`` And what for no ? '' said he . `` I am seeking somebody , '' said I ; `` and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him . Alan Breck Stewart is his name . '' And very foolishly , instead of showing him the button , I sought to pass a shilling in his hand . At this he drew back . `` I am very much affronted , '' he said ; `` and this is not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all . The man you ask for is in France ; but if he was in my sporran , '' says he , `` and your belly full of shillings , I would not hurt a hair upon his body . '' I saw I had gone the wrong way to work , and without wasting time upon apologies , showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm . `` Aweel , aweel , '' said Neil ; `` and I think ye might have begun with that end of the stick , whatever ! But if ye are the lad with the silver button , all is well , and I have the word to see that ye come safe . But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly , '' says he , `` there is a name that you should never take into your mouth , and that is the name of Alan Breck ; and there is a thing that ye would never do , and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman . '' It was not very easy to apologise ; for I could scarce tell him -LRB- what was the truth -RRB- that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so . Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me , only to fulfil his orders and be done with it ; and he made haste to give me my route . This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn ; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour , and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore , who was warned that I might come ; the third day , to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish , and then ask my way to the house of James of the Glens , at Aucharn in Duror of Appin . There was a good deal of ferrying , as you hear ; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots . It makes the country strong to hold and difficult to travel , but full of prodigious wild and dreadful prospects . I had some other advice from Neil : to speak with no one by the way , to avoid Whigs , Campbells , and the `` red-soldiers ; '' to leave the road and lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming , `` for it was never chancy to meet in with them ; '' and in brief , to conduct myself like a robber or a Jacobite agent , as perhaps Neil thought me . The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in , full of smoke , vermin , and silent Highlanders . I was not only discontented with my lodging , but with myself for my mismanagement of Neil , and thought I could hardly be worse off .
But very wrongly , as I was soon to see ; for I had not been half an hour at the inn -LRB- standing in the door most of the time , to ease my eyes from the peat smoke -RRB- when a thunderstorm came close by , the springs broke in a little hill on which the inn stood , and one end of the house became a XXXXX water .
begun drew ferrying offer prolong running see showing tell warned