r, nothing worse; not bad temper,
merely temper, so pray excuse it. Mostly I
have, as you know, been accustomed to express
myself with the sword. . . ."

"Except," I interrupted with some sharpness,
for I was still nettled, "when you have
confided your language to the dirk, or let it
speak in silence for itself."

"Now we are even, Captain Gordon, for
that is not worthy of you, if, as I take it, you
suggest that, on occasion, I have struck foul.
No, sir, not that, never on my honour, as a
gentleman; outlawed, if you like, though that
troubles me little. But the fine ethics of the
broad-sword and the dirk are too nice for
discussion between a Gordon and a Farquharson;
met as we are with, I suspect, a Forbes to
attract and divide us. Besides, I spoke
clumsily, not meaning any personal insult,
since I want, sincerely want, to be friendly, if
that be possible. Anger is a poor hostess,
believe me, and I, who have been in its way,
should know better than you who are young, amiably young."

Mine melted under his soft words, because
such, even when they are not deeply sincere,
may turn wrath aside like balm. Moreover,
he had a wild charm of manner which, if it
did not quite capture another man, as almost
surely it would have won a woman, yet had
its effect. Where exactly it lay I have never
been able to decide, but the melody of his
tongue had something to do with it, even when
he spoke in Sassenach English. We could
have talked in the Gaelic, I also having it
natively, but the Black Colonel would always
speak English if he met somebody to whom
he could show his command of the language.
It was one of his several accomplishments,
acquired by study and travel in England and
France, and he prided and guarded them all,
as a woman does her graces of the person.

So we stood in the chasm of night and the
Pass, one waiting upon the other, because our
trouble, as in all affairs where two men and
a maid are concerned, was how to begin,
more particularly as we had no idea what
would be the end. The Black Colonel had
said as much when he spoke the name Forbes,
the third of our Aberdeenshire clans, though
it may not have all the lustre of the Gordons
or the Farquharsons.

"Ehum," he murmured, dropping into a
Scots mannerism which made no more than
an overture to speech between us, and yet
signified something already said.

"Your letter was urgent," I said. "It
might have been a summons to another
hoisting