of
Barbreck--a kind of a Campbell with a great respect for the Mac-Donalds,
of whom I kent a few perfect gentry in foreign wars I have been at the
fighting of. And--good day, mistress, we must be going. My friends have
the very small manners surely, for they're off down the road. Well just
let them go that way. What need ye expect off small men and gillies?"

He signed to me with a shake of his sporran to show it was empty, and,
falling to his meaning, I took some silver from my own purse and offered
it to the glum-faced lad in the blankets. Beetle-brow scowled, and
refused to put a hand out for it, so I left it on a table without a
clink to catch the woman's ear.

"Would you not have a _deoch-an-doruis?_" asked the woman, making to a
press and producing a bottle.

M'Iver started in a new alarm. "No, no. You're very good," said he; "but
I never take it myself in the morning, and--good day, mistress--and my
friend Elrigmore, who's left with me here, is perhaps too free with it
sometimes; and indeed maybe I'm that way myself too--it's a thing that
grows on you. Good-bye, mistress."

She put out her hand, facing us with uplifted eyes. I felt a push at my
shoulder, and the minister, who had left the four others down the brae,
stepped softly into the room. M'Iver was in a high perplexity. He dare
not shake the woman's hand, and still he dare not hurt her feelings. "My
thong's loose," said he, stooping to fumble with a brogue that needed no
such attention. He rose with the minister at his shoulder.

"And good day to you again, mistress," said M'Iver, turning about to go,
without heeding the outstretched hand.

Master Gordon saw the whole play at a glance. He took the woman's hand
in his without a word, wrung it with great warmth, and, seized as it
seemed by a sudden whim, lifted the fingers to his lips, softly kissed
them, and turned away.

"O," cried the woman, with tears welling to her poor eyes--"O Clan
Campbell, I'll never call ye down! Ye may have the guile they claim for
ye, but ye have the way with a widow's heart!"

I did it with some repugnance, let me own; but I, too, shook her hand,
and followed the minister out at the door. M'Iver was hot with annoyance
and shame, and ready to find fault with us for what we had done; but the
cleric carded him like wool in his feelings.

"Oh, valour, valour!" he said in the midst of his sermon, "did I not say
you knew your duty in hate better than in affection?"

John