At that M'Iver's countenance changed: he threw off his soft complacence,
and cruelty and temper stiffened his jaw.

"I'll soon give you that, my Lord of Argile," said he. "I can lie like
a Dutch major for convenience sake, but put me on honour and you'll get
the truth if it cost me my life. Purgatory's your portion, Argile, for a
Sunday's work that makes our name a mock to-day across the envious
world. Take to your books and your preachers, sir--you're for the
cloister and not for the field; and if I live a hundred years, I'll deny
I went with you to Inverlochy. I left my sword in Badenoch, but here's
my dagger" (and he threw it with a clatter on the floor); "it's the last
tool I'll handle in the service of a scholar. To-morrow the old big wars
for me; Hebron's troopers will welcome an umquhile comrade, and I'll
find no swithering captains among the cavaliers in France."

Back sat my lord in bed, and laughed with a surrender shrill and
distraught, until Master Gordon and I calmed him, and there was his
cousin still before him in a passion, standing in the middle of the
floor.

"Stop, stop, John," he cried; "now that for once I've got the truth from
you, let us be better friends than ever before."

"Never the same again," said M'I ver, firmly, "never the same again, for
you ken my estimate of you now; and what avails my courtesy?"

"Your flatteries, you mean," said Argile, good-natured. "And, besides,
you speak only of my two blunders; you know my other parts,--you know
that by nature I am no poltroon."

"That's no credit to you, sir--it's the strong blood of Diarmaid; there
was no poltroon in the race but what came in on the wrong side of the
blanket I've said it first, and I'll say it to the last, your spirit is
smoored among the books. Paper and ink will be the Gael's undoing; my
mother taught me, and my mother knew. So long as we lived by our hands
we were the world's invincibles. Rome met us and Rome tried us, and her
corps might come in winter torrents, but they never tore us from our
hills and keeps. What Rome may never do, that may paper and sheepskin;
you, yourself, MacCailein, have the name of plying pen and ink very well
to your own purpose in the fingers of old lairds who have small skill of
that contrivance."

He would have passed on in this outrageous strain without remission, had
not Gordon checked him with a determined and unabashed voice. He told
him to sit down in silence or leave the room, and a