shrewd ignorance;
and at last the lawyer took occasion to say,

"Master John Smithies, you are worthy to serve under the colors of a
Yordas."

"That I have, Sir, that I have," cried the veteran, taken unawares, and
shaking the stump of his arm in proof; "I have served under Sir Duncan
Yordas, who will come home some day and claim his own; and he won't want
no covenants of me."

"You can not have served under Duncan Yordas," Mr. Jellicorse answered,
with a smile of disbelief, craftily rousing the pugnacity of the man;
"because he was not even in the army of the Company, or any other army.
I mean, of course, unless there was some other Duncan Yordas."

"Tell me!" Jack o' Smithies almost shouted--"tell me about Duncan
Yordas, indeed! Who he was, and what he wasn't! And what do lawyers
know of such things? Why, you might have to command a regiment, and read
covenants to them out there! Sir Duncan was not our colonel, nor our
captain; but we was under his orders all the more; and well he knew how
to give them. Not one in fifty of us was white; but he made us all as
good as white men; and the enemy never saw the color of our backs. I
wish I was out there again, I do, and would have staid, but for being
hoarse of combat; though the fault was never in my throat, but in my
arm."

"There is no fault in your throat, John Smithies, except that it is a
great deal too loud. I am sorry for Sally, with a temper such as yours."

"That shows how much you know about it. I never lose my temper, without
I hearken lies. And for you to go and say that I never saw Sir Duncan--"

"I said nothing of the kind, my friend. But you did not come here
to talk about Duncan, or Captain, or Colonel, or Nabob, or Rajah, or
whatever potentate he may be--of him we desire to know nothing more--a
man who ran away, and disgraced his family, and killed his poor father,
knows better than ever to set his foot on Scargate land again. You talk
about having a lease from him, a man with fifty wives, I dare say, and a
hundred children! We all know what they are out there."

There are very few tricks of the human face divine more forcibly
expressive of contempt than the lowering of the eyelids so that only a
narrow streak of eye is exposed to the fellow-mortal, and that streak
fixed upon him steadfastly; and the contumely is intensified when (as in
the present instance) the man who does it is gifted with yellow lashes
on the under lid. Jack o' the Smithies tre