ovost's house
on the night of the squabble in the town."

"It was an awkward position he was in. I'd have been a bit black-browed
about it myself," said John. "Man! it's easy to pick holes in the
character of an unfriend, and you and MacLachlan are not friendly, for
one thing that's not his fault any more than yours."

"You're talking of the girl," I said, sharply, and not much caring to
show him how hot my face burned at having to mention her.

"That same," said he; "I'll warrant that if it wasn't for the girl (the
old tale! the old tale!), you had thought the young sprig not a bad
gentleman after all."

"Oh, damn his soul!" I blurted out "What is he that he should pester his
betters with his attentions?"

"A cousin, I think, a simple cousin-german they tell me," said John,
drily; "and in a matter of betters, now--eh?"

My friend coughed on the edge of his plaid, and I could swear he was
laughing at me. I said nothing for a while, and with my skin burning,
led the way at a hunter's pace. But John was not done with the subject.

"I'm a bit beyond the age of it myself," he said; "but that's no reason
why I shouldn't have eyes in my head. I know how much put about you are
to have this young fellow gallivanting round the lady."

"Jealous, you mean," I cried.

"I didn't think of putting it that way."

"No; it's too straightforward a way for you,--ever the roundabout way
for you. I wish to God you would sometimes let your Campbell tongue come
out of the kink, and say what you mean."

With a most astonishing steady voice for a man as livid as the snow on
the hair of his brogues, and with his hand on the hilt of his dirk, John
cried--

"Stop a bit."

I faced him in a most unrighteous humour, ready to quarrel with my
shadow.

"For a man I'm doing a favour to, Elrigmore," he said, "you seem to have
a poor notion of politeness. I'm willing to make some allowance for a
lover's tirravee about a woman who never made tryst with him; but I'll
allow no man to call down the credit of my clan and name."

A pair of gowks, were we not, in that darkening wood, quarrelling on
an issue as flimsy as a spider's web, but who will say it was not human
nature? I daresay we might have come to hotter words and bloody blows
there and then, but for one of the trifles that ever come in the way to
change--not fate, for that's changeless, but the semblance of it.

"My mother herself was a Campbell of an older family than yours," I
st