now he
brought back with him a musketoon bullet in the hip, that couped him by
the heels down in Glassary for six months."

"The result," M'Iver hurried to exclaim, but putting out his breast with
a touch of vanity, "of a private _rencontre_, an affair of my own with
a Reay gentleman, and not to be laid to my credit as part of the war's
scaith at all."

"You conducted your duello in odd style under Lums-den, surely," said I,
"if you fought with powder and ball instead of steel, which is more of
a Highlander's weapon to my way of thinking. All our affairs in the Reay
battalion were with claymore--sometimes with targe, sometimes wanting."

"This was a particular business of our own," laughed John Splendid (as I
may go on to call M'lver, for it was the name he got oftenest behind
and before in Argile). "It was less a trial of valour than a wager about
which had the better skill with the musket. If I got the bullet in my
groin, I at least showed the Mackay gentleman in question that an Argile
man could handle arquebus as well as _arme blanche_ as we said in the
France. I felled my man at one hundred and thirty paces, with six to
count from a ritt-master's signal. Blow, present, God sain Mackay's
soul! But I'm not given to braggadocio."

"Not a bit, cousin," said the Marquis, looking quizzingly at me.

"I could not make such good play with the gun against a fort gable at so
many feet," said I.

"You could, sir, you could," said John Splendid in an easy, offhand,
flattering way, that gave me at the start of our acquaintance the whole
key to his character. "I've little doubt you could allow me half-a-dozen
paces and come closer on the centre of the target."

By this time we were walking down the street, the Marquis betwixt the
pair of us commoners, and I to the left side. Lowlanders and Highlanders
quickly got out of the way before us and gave us the crown of the
causeway. The main part of them the Marquis never let his eye light on;
he kept his nose cocked in the air in the way I've since found peculiar
to his family. It was odd to me that had in wanderings got to look on
all honest men as equal (except Camp-Master Generals and Pike Colonels),
to see some of his lordship's poor clansmen cringing before him. Here
indeed was the leaven of your low-country scum, for in all the broad
Highlands wandering before and since I never saw the like! "Blood of my
blood, brother of my name!" says our good Gaelic old-word: it made no