those Irish dogs get through our passes. For twenty thousand pounds
Saxon I would not have the bars off the two roads of Accurach! And I
thank you, Elrigmore, that at the worst I can count on your service at
home. We may need good men here on Loch Finneside as well as farther
afield, overrun as we are by the blackguardism of the North and the
Papist clans around us. Come in, friends, and have your meridian. I have
a flagon of French brown brandy you never tasted the equal of in any
town you sacked in all Low Germanie."

CHAPTER III.--THE LADY ON THE STAIR.

John Splendid looked at me from the corner of an eye as we came out
again and daundered slowly down the town.

"A queer one yon!" said he, as it were feeling his way with a
rapier-point at my mind about his Marquis.

"Do you tell me?" I muttered, giving him parry of low quarte like a good
swordsman, and he came to the recover with a laugh.

"Foil, Elrigmore!" he cried. "But we're soldiers and lads of the world,
and you need hardly be so canny. You see MacCailein's points as well as
I do. His one weakness is the old one--books, books,--the curse of the
Highlands and every man of spirit, say I. He has the stuff in him by
nature, for none can deny Clan Diarmaid courage and knightliness; but
for four generations court, closet, and college have been taking the
heart out of our chiefs. Had our lordship in-bye been sent a fostering
in the old style, brought up to the chase and the sword and manly
comportment, he would not have that wan cheek this day, and that
swithering about what he must be at next!"

"You forget that I have had the same ill-training," I said (in no bad
humour, for I followed his mind). "I had a touch of Glascow College
myself."

"Yes, yes," he answered quickly; "you had that, but by all accounts it
did you no harm. You learned little of what they teach there."

This annoyed me, I confess, and John Splendid was gleg enough to see it

"I mean," he added, "you caught no fever for paper and ink, though you
may have learned many a quirk I was the better of myself. I could never
even write my name; and I've kept compt of wages at the mines with a
pickle chuckie-stones."

"That's a pity," says I, drily.

"Oh, never a bit," says he, gaily, or at any rate with a way as if to
carry it off vauntingly. "I can do many things as well as most, and a
few others colleges never learned me. I know many winter tales, from
'Minochag and Morag' to 'The Shi