seeing a nobleman
on the rack?"

As the door closed behind us we could hear Argile sob.

Seventeen years later, if I may quit the thread of my history and take
in a piece that more properly belongs to the later adventures of John
Splendid, I saw my lord die by the maiden. Being then in his tail, I
dined with him and his friends the day before he died, and he spoke with
exceeding cheerfulness of that hour M'Iver and I found him in bed in
Inneraora. "You saw me at my worst," said he, "on two occasions; bide
till to-morrow and you'll see me at my best I never unmasked to mortal
man till that day Gordon put you out of my room." I stayed and saw him
die; I saw his head up and his chin in the air as behoved his
quality, that day he went through that noisy, crowded, causied
Edinburgh--Edinburgh of the doleful memories, Edinburgh whose ports I
never enter till this day but I feel a tickling at the nape of my neck,
as where a wooden collar should lie before the shear fall.

"A cool enough reception this," said M'Iver, as we left the gate. "It
was different last year, when we went up together on your return from
Low Germanie. Then MacCailein was in the need of soldiers, now he's in
the need of priests, who gloze over his weakness with their prayers."

"You are hardly fair either to the one or the other," I said. "Argile,
whom I went in to meet to-day with a poor regard for him, turns out a
better man than I gave him credit for being; he has at least the grace
to grieve about a great error of judgment, or weakness of the spirit,
whichever it may be. And as for Master Gordon, I'll take off my hat to
him. Yon's no type of the sour, dour, anti-prelatics; he comes closer on
the perfect man and soldier than any man I ever met."

M'Iver looked at me with a sign of injured vanity.

"You're not very fastidious in your choice of comparisons," said he. "As
for myself, I cannot see much more in Gordon than what he is paid for--a
habit of even temper, more truthfulness than I have myself, and that's a
dubious virtue, for see the impoliteness that's always in its train! Add
to that a lack of any clannish regard for MacCailein Mor, whom he treats
just like a common merchant, and that's all. Just a plain, stout, fozy,
sappy burrow-man, keeping a gospel shop, with scarcely so much of a
man's parts as will let him fend a blow in the face. I could march four
miles for his one, and learn him the A B _ab_ of every manly art."

"I like you fin