been beaten on both sides?"

The air stopped on Alan's lips. "David!" said he.

"But it's time these manners ceased," I continued; "and I mean you shall
henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells."

"I am a Stewart----" began Alan.

"O!" says I, "I ken ye bear a king's name. But you are to remember,
since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those
that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be
none the worse of washing."

"Do you know that you insult me?" said Alan, very low.

"I am sorry for that," said I, "for I am not done; and if you distaste
the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue[29] will please you as little. You
have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a
poor kind of pleasure to outface a boy. Both the Campbells and the Whigs
have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to
speak of them as of your betters."

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him
in the wind.

"This is a pity," he said at last. "There are things said that cannot be
passed over."

"I never asked you to," said I. "I am as ready as yourself."

"Ready?" said he.

"Ready," I repeated. "I am no blower and boaster like some that I could
name. Come on!" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself
had taught me.

"David!" he cried. "Are ye daft? I canna draw upon ye, David. It's fair
murder."

"That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.

"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his
mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "It's the bare truth,"
he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with
mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "Na, na," he
kept saying, "na, na--I canna, I canna."

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself
only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have
given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken,
who can recapture it? I minded me of all Alan's kindness and courage in
the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil
days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever
that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me
seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for
sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.

Th