e sore in want of tact" His face was throbbing and hoved.
"Here's half-a-dozen men," said he, "with plenty to occupy their wits
with what's to be done and what's to happen them before they win home,
and all your talk is on a most vexatious trifle. Have you found me, a
cousin of the Marquis, anxious to query our friends here about the ins
and outs of the engagement? It's enough for me that the heather's above
the gall. I saw this dreary morning the sorrow of my life, and I'm in no
hurry to add to it by the value of a single tear."

Sonachan was quite as bitter. "I don't think," said he, "that it matters
very much to you, sir, what Argile may have done or may not have done;
you should be glad of your luck (if luck it was and no design), that
kept you clear of the trouble altogether." And again he plunged ahead of
us with Ardkinglas, to avoid my retort to an impertinence that, coming
from a younger man, would have more seriously angered me.

The minister by now had recovered his wind, and was in another of his
sermon moods, with this ruffling at Mac-Cailein's name as his text.

"I think I can comprehend," said he, "all this unwillingness to talk
about my lord of Argile's part in the disaster of to-day. No Gael though
I am, I'm loath myself to talk about a bad black business, but that's
because I love my master--for master he is in scholarship, in gifts,
in every attribute and intention of the Christian soldier. It is for a
different reason, I'm afraid, that our friend Barbreck shuffles."

"Barbreck never shuffles," said John, stiffly. "If he did in this
matter, it would be for as true an affection for his chief as any
lalland cleric ever felt for his patron."

"And yet, sir, you shuffle for another reason too. You do not want to
give your ridiculous Highland pride the shock of hearing that your chief
left in a galley before the battle he lost had well begun."

A curious cry came from M'Iver's lips. He lifted his face, lined with
sudden shadows, to the stars that now were lighting to the east, and I
heard his teeth grind.

"So that's the bitter end of it!" said I to myself, stunned by this
pitiful conclusion. My mind groped back on the events of the whole
waeful winter. I saw Argile again at peace among his own people; I heard
anew his clerkly but wavering sentiment on the trade of the sword; I sat
by him in the mouth of Glen Noe, and the song and the guess went round
the fire. But the picture that came to me first an