rgetting me, "'tis blythe I
am to see yere bonnie face ance mair!

"An' wha are ye, Jamie Darrell," said the captain, "to be bangin' yere
betters? Dinna ye ken gentry when ye see't?"

A puzzled look spread over the smith's grimy face.

"Gentry!" says he; "nae gentry that I ken, John Paul. Th' fecht be but
a bit o' fun, an' nane o' my seekin'."

"What quarrel is this, Richard?" says John Paul to me.

"In truth I have no quarrel with this honest man," I replied; "I desired
but the pleasure of beating a certain evil-tongued Davie, who seems to
have no stomach for blows, and hath taken his lies elsewhere."

So quiet was the place that the tinkle of the guidwife's needle, which
she had dropped to the flags, sounded clear to all. John Paul stood in
the middle of the ring, erect, like a man inspired, and the same strange
sense of prophecy that had stirred my blood crept over him and awed the
rest, as tho' 'twere suddenly given to see him, not as he was, but as he
would be. Then he spoke.

"You, who are my countrymen, who should be my oldest and best friends,
are become my enemies. You who were companions of my childhood are
revilers of my manhood; you have robbed me of my good name and my honour,
of my ship, of my very means of livelihood, and you are not content; you
would rob me of my country, which I hold dearer than all. And I have
never done you evil, nor spoken aught against you. As for the man
Maxwell, whose part you take, his child is starving in your very midst,
and you have not lifted your hands. 'Twas for her sake I shipped him,
and none other. May God forgive you! He alone sees the bitterness in my
heart this day. He alone knows my love for Scotland, and what it costs
me to renounce her."

He had said so much with an infinite sadness, and I read a response in
the eyes of more than one of his listeners, the guidwife weeping aloud.
But now his voice rose, and he ended with a fiery vigour.

"Renounce her I do," he cried, "now and forevermore! Henceforth I am no
countryman of yours. And if a day of repentance should come for this
evil, remember well what I have said to you."

They stood for a moment when he had finished, shifting uneasily, their
tongues gone, like lads caught in a lie. I think they felt his greatness
then, and had any one of them possessed the nobility to come forward with
an honest word, John Paul might yet have been saved to Scotland. As it
was, they slunk away in twos and threes, leaving