arquharson, not to let me stand in the way.
Nay, if you will accept me, I shall be referee!"

I bent my head to thank her for this, and he bowed in the over-polite
fashion which he had learned among the French. By this time our
respective followers, now taking a fight for granted, had lined
themselves up to watch it, one set of men in one row, the other set in
another, with space between them. A spirit of the love of combat for
combat's sake, shone in their expectant eyes and echoed in their
suppressed, excited talk.

There had once been a small garden attached to the Tower of Lonach, but
it had been so overgrown with grass, and the grass had been so
industriously eaten by sheep and deer, that now it was a rough, hard
green, an entirely good place for swordsmen. On it, as the sun began
to dip behind the hills, we took our stand, with my sergeant for second
to me, while Red Murdo filled the same office towards the Black Colonel.

Things had happened so swiftly that I had scarcely time to think, and
perhaps that was well, for thought never nerves you in such business as
I had before me. There was I confronted with one of the best swordsmen
in the Highlands, while I was--well, passably good. He was bigger,
stronger, a more heroic, more impressive figure altogether than I was,
and these pictorial attitudes count by the impression they make. I had
to rely on a cool head, a nimble wrist, and I must in no wise depart
from the style of fighting by which alone, as I well knew, I could hope
to hold my own.

The Black Colonel would be sure, following the untutored Highland
manner, and keeping his French training in reserve, to attack
furiously, hoping so to destroy me at the beginning. My plan, based
upon the barracks and camp training of a regular soldier, was to parry
with him, to hold him off, to wear him down, and then, if I had the
luck, which Heaven give me, get a blow home.

Marget, for all her courage, had walked over to a far corner of the
green, where, however, she could still see us, because my soldiers and
the Black Colonel's men stood aside to let her do that. Their common
instinct for a fight flamed while they waited, but I knew that there
would be no interference from either party of retainers, however things
fell out, and so I had no anxiety as to the quarrel going beyond the
Black Colonel and myself. All men of Highland degree were brought up
to believe that honest disputes could be settled better by