nt for your last pair of brogues,
Alasdair M'Iver," said a black-avised juryman.

"What's your trade?" asked the Marquis of the witness.

"I'm at the Coillebhraid silver-mines," said he. "We had a little
too much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to
variance."

The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought down his fist with a bang
on the table before him.

"Damn those silver-mines!" said he; "they breed more trouble in this
town of mine than I'm willing to thole. If they put a penny in my purse
it might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking, and
I'm not a plack the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, John
Splendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I would
drown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn."

The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking his head oddly like one
taking liberties with a master, said, "We're a drouthy set, my lord,
at the mines, and I wouldn't be saying but what we might drink them dry
again of a morning, if we had been into town the night before."

His lordship cut short his sour smile at the man's fancy, and bade the
officers on with the case.

"You have heard the proof," he said to the jury when it came to his turn
to charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me
I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men
at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them
on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these
Coillebhraid miners is what I am not going to guarantee."

Of course the fellows were found guilty--one of stabbing, the other of
art and part--for MacLachlan was no friend of MacCailein Mor, and as
little friend to the merchant burghers of Inneraora, for he had the poor
taste to buy his shop provand from the Lamont towns of Low Cowal.

"A more unfriendly man to the Laird of MacLachlan might be for hanging
you on the gibbet at the town-head," said his lordship to the prisoners,
spraying ink-sand idly on the clean page of a statute-book as he
spoke; "but our three trees upbye are leased just now to other
tenants,--Badenoch hawks a trifle worse than yourselves, and more
deserving."

The men looked stupidly about them, knowing not one word of his
lordship's English, and he was always a man who disdained to converse
much in Erse. He looked a little cruelly at them and went on.

"Perhaps clipping your lugs might be the