d transparent; I have found my blood drumly enough."

"And ready enough to run freely for you," said M'Iver, but half
comprehending this perplexed mind. "Your lordship should be the last to
echo any sentiment directed against the name and fame of Clan Campbell."

"Indeed they gave me their blood freely enough--a thousand of them lying
yonder in the north--I wish they had been so lavish, those closest about
me, with truth and honour. For that I must depend on an honest servant
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one man in my pay with the courage to
confront me with no cloaked speech, but his naked thought, though it
should lash me like whips. Oh, many a time my wife, who is none of our
race, warned me against the softening influence, the blight and rot of
this eternal air of flattery that's round about Castle Inneraora like
a swamp vapour. She's in Stirling to-day--I ken it in my heart that
to-night shell weep upon her pillow because she'll know fate has found
the weak joint in her goodman's armour again."

John Splendid's brow came down upon a most perplexed face; this seemed
all beyond him, but he knew his master was somehow blaming the world at
large for his own error.

"Come now, John," said his lordship, turning and leaning on his arm and
looking curiously at his kinsman. "Come now, what do you think of me
here without a wound but at the heart, with Auchinbreac and all my
gallant fellows yonder?"

"Auchinbreac was a soldier by trade and a good one too," answered
M'Iver, at his usual trick of prevarication.

"And a flatterer like yourself, you mean," said his lordship. "He and
you learned the lesson in the same school, I'm thinking. And as ill-luck
had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, as yours did when
Colkitto came down the glens there to rape and burn. That's the Devil
for you; he's aye planning to have the minute and the man together.
Come, sir, come, sir, what do you think, what do you think?"

He rose as he spoke and put his knees below him, and leaned across the
bed with hands upon the blankets, staring his kinsman in the face as if
he would pluck the truth from him out at the very eyes. His voice rose
to an animal cry with an agony in it; the sinister look that did him
such injustice breathed across his visage. His knuckle and collar-bones
shone blae through the tight skin.

"What do I think?" echoed M'Iver. "Well, now----"

"On your honour now," cried Argile, clutching him by the shoulder.