e, man," I cried; "I would sooner go tramping the glens
with you any day than Master Gordon; but that's a weakness of the
imperfect and carnal man, that cares not to have a conscience at his
coat-tail every hour of the day: you have your own parts and he his,
and his parts are those that are not very common on our side of the
country--more's the pity."

M'Iver was too busy for a time upon the sudden rupture with Argile to
pay very much heed to my defence of Master Gordon. The quarrel--to call
that a quarrel in which one man had all the bad temper and the other
nothing but self-reproach--had soured him of a sudden as thunder
turns the morning's cream to curd before noon. And his whole demeanour
revealed a totally new man. In his ordinary John was very pernicketty
about his clothing, always with the most shining of buckles and buttons,
always trim in plaiding, snod and spruce about his hair and his hosen, a
real dandy who never overdid the part, but just contrived to be pleasant
to the eye of women, who, in my observation, have, the most sensible of
them, as great a contempt for the mere fop as they have for the sloven.
It took, indeed, trimness of apparel to make up for the plainness of
his face. Not that he was ugly or harsh-favoured,--he was too genial
for either; he was simply well-favoured enough to pass in a fair, as the
saying goes, which is a midway between Apollo and plain Donald But what
with a jacket and vest all creased for the most apparent reasons, a
plaid frayed to ribbons in dashing through the wood of Dalness, brogues
burst at the toes, and a bonnet soaked all out of semblance to itself by
rains, he appeared more common. The black temper of him transformed his
face too: it lost the geniality that was its main charm, and out of his
eyes flamed a most wicked, cunning, cruel fellow.

He went down the way from the castle brig to the "arches cursing with
great eloquence. A soldier picks up many tricks of blasphemy in a career
about the world with foreign legions, and John had the reddings of
three or four languages at his command, so that he had no need to repeat
himself much in his choice of terms aboat his chief. To do him justice
he had plenty of condemnation for himself too.

"Well," said I, "you were inclined to be calm enough with MacCailein
when first we entered his room. I suppose all this uproar is over his
charge of flattery, not against yourself alone but against all the
people about."

"That's