ed," said the Paymaster quickly,
putting his cane softly into a corner. "I had a little encounter with
that fellow Turner and it put by the time."

"What--Jamie?"

"No; Charlie."

"Man! I wonder at you, John," said the Cornal with a contempt in his
utterance and a tightening of the corner of his lips. "I wonder at you
changing words with him. What was it you were on?"

The Paymaster explained shortly, guardedly, because of Gilian's
presence, and as he spoke the purple of the Cornal's face turned to
livid and the scar became a sickly yellow. He rose and thumped his fist
upon the table.

"That was his defiance, was it?" he cried. "We are the old sonless
bachelors, are we, and the name's dead with the last of us? And you
argued with him about that! I would have put a hand on his cravat and
throttled him."

The Paymaster was abashed, but "Just consider, Colin," he pleaded. "I
am not so young as I was, and a bonny-like thing it would be to throttle
him on the ground he gave."

"Old Mars!" cried the Cornal, with a sneer. "Man! but MacColl hit your
character when he made his song; you were always well supplied by luck
with excuses for not fighting."

To the General the Paymaster turned with piteous appeal. "Dugald," said
he, "I'll leave it to you if Colin's acting fairly. Did ever I disgrace
the name of Campbell, or Gael, or soger?"

"I never said you did," cried the Cornal. "All I said was that fate was
a scurvy friend to you and seldom put you face to face with your foe
on any clear issue. Perhaps I said too much; I'm hot-tempered, I know;
never mind my taunt, John. But you'll allow it's galling to have a
beggarly upstart like Turner throwing our bachelorhood in our teeth. Now
if we had sons, or a son, one of us, I'll warrant we could bring him up
with more credit than Turner brings up his long-lugged Sandy, or that
randy lass of his."

"Isn't that what I told him?" said the Paymaster, scooping a great heap
of dust into his nostrils, and feverishly rubbing down the front of his
vest with a large handkerchief. "I wish----"

He stopped suddenly; he looked hard at Gilian, whose presence in the
shadow of the big chair he had seemingly forgotten; seeing him gaze
thus and pause, the Cornal turned too and looked at the youth, and the
General shrugged himself into some interest in the same object. Before
the gaze of the three brothers, the boy's skin burned; his eyes dropped.

"This is a queer callant you've brought