is it ye want?" he asked MacNicoll, burring out his Gaelic _r's_
with punctilio.

"We want you in room of a murderer your father owes us," said MacNicoll.

"You would slaughter me, then?" said MacLachlan, amazingly undisturbed,
but bringing again to the front, by a motion of the haunch accidental to
look at, the sword he leaned on.

"_Fuil airson fuil!_" cried the rabble on the stairs, and it seemed
ghastly like an answer to the young laird's question; but Nicol Beg
demanded peace, and assured MacLachlan he was only sought for a hostage.

"We but want your red-handed friend Dark Neil," said he; "your father
kens his lair, and the hour he puts him in our hands for justice, you'll
have freedom."

"Do you warrant me free of scaith?" asked the young laird.

"I'll warrant not a hair of your head's touched," answered Nicol Beg--no
very sound warranty, I thought, from a man who, as he gave it, had to
put his weight back on the eager crew that pushed at his shoulders,
ready to spring like weasels at the throat of the gentleman in the red
tartan.

He was young, MacLachlan, as I said; for him this was a delicate
situation, and we about him were in no less a quandary than himself. If
he defied the Glen Shira men, he brought bloodshed on a peaceable house,
and ran the same risk of bodily harm that lay in the alternative of his
going with them that wanted him.

Round he turned and looked for guidance--broken just a little at the
pride, you could see by the lower lip. The Provost was the first to meet
him eye for eye.

"I have no opinion, Lachie," said the old man, snuffing rappee with the
butt of an egg-spoon and spilling the brown dust in sheer nervousness
over the night-shirt bulging above the band of his breeks. "I'm wae to
see your father's son in such a corner, and all my comfort is that
every tenant in Elrig and Braleckan pays at the Tolbooth or gallows of
Inneraora town for this night's frolic."

"A great consolation to think of!" said John Splendid.

The goodwife, a nervous body at her best, sobbed away with her
pock-marked hussy in the parlour, but Betty was to the fore in a passion
of vexation. To her the lad made next his appeal.

"Should I go?" he asked, and I thought he said it more like one who
almost craved to stay. I never saw a woman in such a coil. She looked
at the dark Mac-Nicolls, and syne she looked at the fair-haired young
fellow, and her eyes were swimming, her bosom heaving under her screen
o