Laird of
Drimmindorren's seventh son, with a reputation for the second sight.
But Argile laughed at the thing, no way alarmed, and then with a grave
demeanour he said, said he, 'The wine's in your head, sir; and even if
it was an omen, what then? The axe in troublous times is no disgrace,
and a chief of Clan Diarmaid would be a poor chief indeed if he failed
to surrender his head with some show of dignity."'

"But to leave his people twice in one war with no apparent valid excuse
must look odd to his unfriends," I said, and I toasted my hose at the
fire.

"I wish I could make up my mind whether an excuse is valid or not," said
the cleric; "and I'm willing to find more excuses for MacCailein than
I'll warrant he can find for himself this morning, wherever he may
happen to be. It is the humour of God Almighty sometimes to put two men
in the one skin. So far as I may humbly judge, Argile is the poor
victim of such an economy. You have seen the sort of man I mean: to-day
generous to his last plack, to-morrow the widow's oppressor; Sunday a
soul humble at the throne of grace, and writhing with remorse for some
child's sin, Monday riding vain-gloriously in the glaur on the road
to hell, bragging of filthy amours, and inwardly gloating upon a crime
anticipated. Oh, but were the human soul made on less devious plan, how
my trade of Gospel messenger were easy! And valour, too, is it not in
most men a fever of the moment; at another hour the call for courage
might find them quailing and flying like the coney of the rocks."

"Then Argile, you think, was on those occasions the sport of his weaker
self?" I pushed. I found so many obstacles in the way of satisfaction to
my natural curiosity that I counted no persistence too rude now.

"He was the result of his history," said the minister, quickly, his face
flushing with a sudden inspiration. "From the start of time those black
moments for the first Marquis of Argile have been preparing. I can speak
myself of his more recent environment He has about him ever flatterers
of the type of our friend the sentinel out there, well-meaning but a
woeful influence, keeping from him every rumour that might vex his ear,
colouring every event in such a manner as will please him. They kept the
man so long in a delusion that fate itself was under his heel, that when
the stress of things came--"

"Not another word!" cried M'Iver from the doorway.

We turned round and found him standing there wr