comradeship had to be justly handselled.

Now, shrewdly, as a matter of precaution against raiders high, or kern
lowly, the owner of the grazing kine had put a white beast among them.
Consequently when he was wakened by a loud lowing and came forth to
find the reason, he saw that his cattle were being stolen away, for
there walked the white one, a guiding star to his eye. He followed the
drove quietly at a distance, summoning friends as he passed their
several homes, and when he had gathered recruits enough, and while it
was still dark, he set upon Red Murdo and his thieves, gave them the
heartiest beating you could fancy, and re-captured the cattle.

This attempt to steal the kine was laid at the door of the Black
Colonel, rightly so, and when he heard of it and its failure he swore
at Red Murdo, saying he had lost all a henchman and provider's
artistry. He was one of those men, very numerous in the world, who
could ill-support a failure made by himself, and could not bear it at
all when another failed who was acting for him.

"Why," he rated Red Murdo, "you can neither steal nor lie, as a
Highland gentleman's ghillie should. You would have me do those petty
things myself, and they are not for me, although, mayhap, I'd be equal
enough to them."

Red Murdo answered nothing to his enraged chief, but perhaps made up
for his silence by some hard thinking. When a rebuke is taken silently
the wrath behind it is apt, in average human nature, to simmer out, but
the Black Colonel's black fire burned on.

"Why," he roared, "didn't you think of an expedient to keep those
cattle, the white one and all, for very probably it was a beast to
fetch a good price? Where were your wits? You recollect when, for an
act which has since been counted brave, I had to fly with half-a-dozen
men on my heels, and how, coming to a mill, and nobody being there, I
put on the miller's dusty suit. I was asked by my pursuers, sure that
they had seen the man they pursued disappear into the mill a few
minutes before, 'Did any one enter here?' 'Only the miller is here,' I
told them, and, as it seemed so, they went their way, and, after a
while, I went mine."

"But," said Red Murdo, "they wid na' hae believed me if I had sworn a
score o' oaths that I was the miller. I'm nae sae good at swearin'
untrooths as some folk you ken!"

"Possibly," quoth the Colonel loftily. "To be believed one must, after
all, look one's words and you might find