he smith.

It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Gruamach sitting on the
bench, and I was startled at the look of the man. I've seen some sour
dogs in my day--few worse than Ruthven's rittmasters whom we met in
Swabia--but I never saw a man who, at the first vizzy, had the dour
sour countenance of Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow.
Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called him in a bye-name, and
well he owned it, for over necklace or gorget I've seldom seen a sterner
jowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair and honest, this was
but the notion one got at a first glint; in a while I thought little
was amiss with his looks as he leaned on the table and cracked in a
humoursome laughing way with the paneled jury.

He might have been a plain cottar on Glen Aora side rather than King of
the Highlands for all the airs he assumed, and when he saw me, better
put-on in costume than my neighbours in court, he seemingly asked my
name in a whisper from the clerk beside him, and finding who I was,
cried out in St Andrew's English--

"What! Young Elrigmore back to the Glens! I give you welcome, sir, to
Baile Inneraora!"

I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying nothing in answer, for
the whole company glowered at me, all except the home-bred ones who had
better manners.

The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the charge the sheriff clerk
read to them in a long farrago of English with more foreign words to it
than ever I learned the sense of in College.

His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward to
swear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked
heedlessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man who
had been stabbed--it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had
gone through from front to back with only some lose of blood--was averse
from being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the right
heart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of the
disturbance and his injury.

"Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen--MacCailein--my lordship--a bit
play. If the poor lad didn't happen to have his dirk out and I to run on
it, nobody was a bodle the worse."

"But the law"--started the clerk to say.

"No case for law at all," said the man. "It's an honest brawl
among friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next
market-day, when my shoulder's mended."

"Better if you would settle my accou