y sorrow!
they are sorely unamenable to policies of order and peace."

"Deil the hair vexed am I," said John Splendid in my ear; "I have a
wonderful love for nature that's raw and human, and this session-made
morality is but a gloss. They'll be taking the tartan off us next maybe!
Some day the old dog at the heart of the Highlands will bark for all
his sleek coat Man! I hate the very look of those Lowland cattle sitting
here making kirk laws for their emperors, and their bad-bred Scots
speech jars on my ear like an ill-tuned bagpipe."

Master Gordon possibly guessed what was the topic of Splendid's
confidence,--in truth, few but knew my hero's mind on these matters;
and I have little doubt it was for John's edification he went on to
sermonise, still at the shaping of his pen.

"Your lordship will have the civil chastisement of these MacNicolls
after this session is bye with them. We can but deal with their
spiritual error. Nicol Beg and his relatives are on our kirk rolls as
members or adherents, and all we can do is to fence the communion-table
against them for a period, and bring them to the stool of repentance.
Some here may think a night of squabbling and broken heads in a Highland
burgh too trifling an affair for the interference of the kirk or the
court of law: I am under no such delusion. There is a valour better than
the valour of the beast unreasoning. Your lordship has seen it at its
proper place in your younger wars; young Elrigmore, I am sure, has seen
it on the Continent, where men live quiet burgh lives while left alone,
and yet comport themselves chivalrously and gallantly on the stricken
fields when their country or a cause calls for them so to do. In the
heart of man is hell smouldering, always ready to leap out in flames of
sharpened steel; it's a poor philosophy that puffs folly in at the ear
to stir the ember, saying, 'Hiss, catch him, dog!' I'm for keeping hell
(even in a wild High-landman's heart) for its own business of punishing
the wicked."

"Amen to yon!" cried MacCailein, beating his hand on a book-board, and
Master Gordon took a snuff like a man whose doctrine is laid out plain
for the world and who dare dispute it. In came the beadle with the
MacNicolls, very much cowed, different men truly from the brave
gentlemen who cried blood for blood on Provost Brown's stair.

They had little to deny, and our evidence was but a word ere the session
passed sentence of suspension from the kirk tabl