d corselet one
day, and you shall hew at me, allowing me my broadsword to parry and pay
back? Eh, what say you?"

"By no manner of means, my dear friend. I should do you too much evil;
besides, to tell you the truth, I strike far more freely at a helmet or
bonnet when it is set on my wooden soldan; then I am sure to fetch it
down. But when there is a plume of feathers in it that nod, and two eyes
gleaming fiercely from under the shadow of the visor, and when the whole
is dancing about here and there, I acknowledge it puts out my hand of
fence."

"So, if men would but stand stock still like your soldan, you would play
the tyrant with them, Master Proudfute?"

"In time, and with practice, I conclude I might," answered Oliver. "But
here we come up with the rest of them. Bailie Craigdallie looks angry,
but it is not his kind of anger that frightens me."

You are to recollect, gentle reader, that as soon as the bailie and
those who attended him saw that the smith had come up to the forlorn
bonnet maker, and that the stranger had retreated, they gave themselves
no trouble about advancing further to his assistance, which they
regarded as quite ensured by the presence of the redoubted Henry Gow.
They had resumed their straight road to Kinfauns, desirous that nothing
should delay the execution of their mission. As some time had
elapsed ere the bonnet maker and the smith rejoined the party, Bailie
Craigdallie asked them, and Henry Smith in particular, what they meant
by dallying away precious time by riding uphill after the falconer.

"By the mass, it was not my fault, Master Bailie," replied the smith.
"If ye will couple up an ordinary Low Country greyhound with a Highland
wolf dog, you must not blame the first of them for taking the direction
in which it pleases the last to drag him on. It was so, and not
otherwise, with my neighbour Oliver Proudfute. He no sooner got up from
the ground, but he mounted his mare like a flash of lightning, and,
enraged at the unknightly advantage which yonder rascal had taken of
his stumbling horse, he flew after him like a dromedary. I could not but
follow, both to prevent a second stumble and secure our over bold friend
and champion from the chance of some ambush at the top of the hill. But
the villain, who is a follower of some Lord of the Marches, and wears a
winged spur for his cognizance, fled from our neighbour like fire from
flint."

The senior bailie of Perth listened with surpris