f Campbell tartan, her fingers twisting at the pleated hair that fell
in sheeny cables to her waist.

"If I were a man I would stay, and yet--if you stay---- Oh, poor
Lachlan! I'm no judge," she cried; "my cousin, my dear cousin!" and over
brimmed her tears.

All this took less time to happen than it tikes to tell with pen and
ink, and though there may seem in reading it to be too much palaver on
this stair-head, it was but a minute or two, after the bar was off the
door, that John Splendid took me by the coat-lapel and back a bit to
whisper in my ear--

"If he goes quietly or goes gaffed like a grilse, it's all one on the
street. Out-bye the place is hotching with the town-people. Do you think
the MacNicolls could take a prisoner bye the Cross?"

"It'll be cracked crowns on the causeway," said I.

"Cracked crowns any way you take it," said he, "and better on the
causeway than on Madame Brown's parlour floor. It's a gentleman's
policy, I would think, to have the squabble in the open air, and save
the women the likely sight of bloody gashes."

"What do you think, Elrigmore?" Betty cried to me the next moment, and I
said it were better the gentleman should go. The reason seemed to flash
on her there and then, and she backed my counsel; but the lad was not
the shrewdest I've seen, even for a Cowal man, and he seemed vexed that
she should seek to get rid of him, glancing at me with a scornful eye as
if I were to blame.

"Just so," he said, a little bitterly; "the advice is well meant," and
on went his jacket that had hung on a peg behind him, and his bonnet
played scrug on his forehead. A wiry young scamp, spirited too! He was
putting his sword into its scabbard, but MacNicoll stopped him, and he
went without it.

Now it was not the first time "Slochd a Chubair!" was cried as slogan in
Baile Inneraora in the memory of the youngest lad out that early morning
with a cudgel. The burgh settled to its Lowlandishness with something of
a grudge. For long the landward clans looked upon the incomers to it as
foreign and unfriendly. More than once in fierce or drunken escapades
they came into the place in their _mogans_ at night, quiet as ghosts,
mischievous as the winds, and set fire to wooden booths, or shot in
wantonness at any mischancy unkilted citizen late returning from the
change-house. The tartan was at those times the only passport to their
good favour; to them the black cloth knee-breeches were red rags to a
bull