sighed, and the stem of the beaker he was fingering broke in
his nervous fingers. He threw the fragments with an impatient cry into
the fireplace.

"It's the only weakness of our religion (God pardon the sin of hinting
at any want in that same!) that we have no chance of laying the heart
bare to mortal man. Many a time I could wish for the salving influence
of the confessional, even without the absolution to follow."

"I think," said John Splendid, "it would be a strange day when
MacCailein Mor, Marquis of Argile, would ask or need shriving from
anything or any one. There was never a priest or vicar in the shire you
couldn't twist the head off!"

The Marquis turned to me with a vexed toss of his shoulder. "It's a
hopeless task to look for a pagan's backbone," said he. "Come, I'll
confess. I dare not hint at my truant thought to Auchinbreac or before
any of these fiery officers of mine, who fear perhaps more than they
love me. At the black tale of my weakness they would make no allowance
for my courage as the same was shown before."

"Your courage, sir," said I, "has been proved; it is the inheritance of
your race. But I dare not strain my conscience, my lord, much as I
love and honour your house, to say I could comprehend or concur in the
extraordinary retirement you made from these parts when our need for
your presence was the sorest."

"I thank you for that, Elrigmore," said his lordship, cordially. "You
say no more now than you showed by your face (and perhaps said too)
on the night the beacon flamed on Dunchuach. To show that I value your
frankness--that my kinsman here seems to fancy a flaw ol character--I'll
be explicit on the cause of my curious behaviour in this crisis. When
I was a boy I was brought up loyally to our savage Highland tradition,
that feuds were to carry on, and enemies to confound, and that no logic
under heaven should keep the claymore in its sheath while an old grudge
was to wipe out in blood or a wrong to right."

"A most sensible and laudable doctrine!" cried M'Iver. "With that and
no more of a principle in life--except paying your way among friends--a
good man of his hands could make a very snug and reputable progress
through the world."

"Some men might," said Argile, calmly; "I do not know whether to envy
or pity their kind. But they are not my kind. I think I bore myself
not ungracefully in the Cabinet, in the field too, so long as I took my
father's logic without question. But I