y," said M'Iver, sharply, to the cleric.

"The gentry of your clan," said Gordon, paying no heed to my query,
"were easy enough to guide; but yon undisciplined kerns from the hills
had no more regard for martial law than for the holy commandments. God
help them! They went their own gait, away from the main body, plundering
and robbing."

"I would not just altogether call it plundering, nor yet robbing," said
John, a show of annoyance on his face.

"And I don't think myself," said Sonachan, removing, as he spoke, from
our side, and going to join the three others, who sat apart from us a
few yards, "that it's a gentleman's way of speaking of the doings of
other gentlemen of the same name and tartan as ourselves."

"Ay, ay," said the minister, looking from one to the other of us, his
shaven jowl with lines of a most annoying pity on it--"Ay, ay," said
he, "it would be pleasing you better, no doubt, to hint at no vice or
folly in your army; that's the Highlands for you! I'm no Highlander,
thank God, or at least with the savage long out of me; for I'm of an
honest and orderly Lowland stock, and my trade's the Gospel and the
truth, and the truth you'll get from Alexander Gordon, Master of the
Arts, if you had your black joctilegs at his neck for it!"

He rose up, pursing his face, panting at the nostril, very crouse and
defiant in every way.

"Oh, you may just sit you down," said McIver, sharply, to him. "You
can surely give us truth without stamping it down our throats with your
boots, that are not, I've noticed, of the smallest size."

"I know you, sir, from boot to bonnet," said Gordon.

"You're well off in your acquaintance," said M'Iver, jocularly. "I wish
I kent so good a man."

"From boot to bonnet," said Gordon, in no whit abashed by the irony.
"Man, do you know," he went on, "there's a time comes to me now when
by the grace of God I can see to one's innermost as through a lozen. I
shudder, sometimes, at the gift. For there's the fair face, and there's
the smug and smiling lip, and there's the flattery at the tongue,
and below that masked front is Beelzebub himself, meaning well
sometimes--perhaps always--but by his fall a traitor first and last."

"God!" cried M'Iver, with a very ugly face, "that sounds awkwardly like
a roundabout way of giving me a bad character."

"I said, sir," answered Gordon, "that poor Beelzebub does not sometimes
ken his own trade. I have no doubt that in your heart you are touched