rd anything of his doings,
and will you deny that the world was well quit of him? There's a
decency in all trades, and Cosh fair stank to heaven. But I'm glad the
thing ended as it did. I never get to like a cold execution. 'Twas
better for everybody that he should fly at my face and get six inches
of kindly steel in his throat. He had a gentleman's death, which was
more than his crimes warranted."

I was only half convinced. Here was I, a law-abiding merchant,
pitchforked suddenly into a world of lawlessness. I could not be
expected to adjust my views in the short space of a night.

"You gave me a rough handling," I said, "Where was the need of it?"

"And you showed very little sense in bursting in on us the way you did!
Could you not have bided quietly till Shalah gave the word? I had to be
harsh with you, or they would have suspected something and cut your
throat. Yon gentry are not to take liberties with. What made you do it,
Andrew?"

"Just that I was black afraid. That made me more feared of being a
coward, so I forced myself to yon folly."

"A very honourable reason," he said.

"Are you the leader of those men?" I asked. "They looked a scurvy lot.
Do you call that a proper occupation for the best blood in
Breadalbane?"

It was a silly speech, and I could have bitten my tongue out when I had
uttered it. But I was in a vile temper, for the dregs of the negro's
rum still hummed in my blood. His face grew dark, till he looked like
the man I had seen the night before.

"I allow no man to slight my race," he said in a harsh voice.

"It's the truth whether you like it or not. And you that claimed to be
a gentleman! What is it they say about the Highlands?" And I quoted a
ribald Glasgow proverb.

What moved me to this insolence I cannot say, I was in the wrong, and I
knew it, but I was too much of a child to let go my silly pride.

Ringan got up very quickly and walked three steps. The blackness had
gone from his face, and it was puzzled and melancholy.

"There's a precious lot of the bairn in you, Mr. Garvald," he said,
"and an ugly spice of the Whiggamore. I would have killed another man
for half your words, and I've got to make you pay for them somehow."
And he knit his brow and pondered.

"I'm ready," said I, with the best bravado I could muster, though
the truth is I was sick at heart. I had forced a quarrel like an
ill-mannered boy on the very man whose help I had come to seek. And I
saw, too, that