air words. Look! Elrigmore.
You'll have heard of our kittle state in this shire for the past ten
years, and not only in this shire but all over the West Highlands. I
give you my word I'm no sooner with the belt off me and my chair pulled
in to my desk and papers than its some one beating a point of war or a
piper blowing the warning under my window. To look at my history for the
past few years any one might think I was Dol' Gorm himself, fight and
plot, plot and fight! How can I help it--thrust into this hornets' nest
from the age of sixteen, when my father (_beannachd leis!_) took me out
warring against the islesmen, and I only in the humour for playing at
shinty or fishing like the boys on the moor-lochs behind the town. I
would sooner be a cottar in Auchnagoul down there, with porridge for my
every meal, than constable, chastiser, what not, or whatever I am, of
all these vexed Highlands. Give me my book in my closet, or at worst let
me do my country's work in a courtier's way with brains, and I would ask
no more."

"Except Badenoch and Nether Lochaber--fat land, fine land, MacCailein!"
said John Splendid, laughing cunningly.

"You're an ass, John," he said; "picking up the countryside's gossip. I
have no love for the Athole and Great Glen folks as ye ken; but I could
long syne have got letters of fire and sword that made Badenoch and
Nether Lochaber mine if I had the notion. Don't interrupt me with your
nonsense, cousin; I'm telling Elrigmore here, for he's young and has
skill of civilised war, that there may, in very few weeks, be need of
every arm in the parish or shire to baulk Colkitto. The MacDonald and
other malignants have been robbing high and low from Lochow to Loch
Finne this while back; I have hanged them a score a month at the
town-head there, but that's dealing with small affairs, and I'm sore
mistaken if we have not cruel times to come."

"Well, sir," I said, "what can I do?"

The Marquis bit his moustachio and ran a spur on the ground for a little
without answering, as one in a quandary, and then he said, "You're no
vassal of mine, Baron" (as if he were half sorry for it), "but all you
Glen Shira folk are well disposed to me and mine, and have good cause,
though that Macnachtan fellow's a Papisher. What I had in my mind was
that I might count on you taking a company of our fencible men, as John
here is going to do, and going over-bye to Lorn with me to cut off those
Irish blackguards of Alasdair Ma