e nearest
kinsman of the murdered Braleckan lad. He had a targe on his left arm--a
round buckler of _darach_ or oakwood covered with dun cow-hide, hair
out, and studded in a pleasing pattern with iron bosses--a prong several
inches long in the middle of it Like every other scamp in the pack, he
had dirk out. _Beg_ or little he was in the countryside's bye-name, but
in truth he was a fellow of six feet, as hairy as a brock and in the
same straight bristly fashion. He put out his arms at full reach to keep
back his clansmen, who were stretching necks at poor MacLachlan like
weasels, him with his nostrils swelling and his teeth biting his bad
temper.

"Wait a bit, lads," said Nicol Beg; "perhaps we may get our friend
here to come peaceably with us. I'm sorry" (he went on, addressing the
Provost) "to put an honest house to rabble at any time, and the Provost
of Inneraora specially, for I'm sure there's kin's blood by my mother's
side between us; but there was no other way to get MacLachlan once his
tail was gone."

"You'll rue this, MacNicoll," fumed the Provost--as red as a bubblyjock
at the face--mopping with a napkin at his neck in a sweat of annoyance;
"you'll rue it, rue it, rue it!" and he went into a coil of lawyer's
threats against the invaders, talking of brander-irons and gallows,
hame-sucken and housebreaking.

We were a daft-like lot in that long lobby in a wan candle-light. Over
me came that wonderment that falls on one upon stormy occasions (I mind
it at the sally of Lecheim), when the whirl of life seems to come to a
sudden stop, all's but wooden dummies and a scene empty of atmosphere,
and between your hand on the basket-hilt and the drawing of the sword
is a lifetime. We could hear at the close-mouth and far up and down the
street the shouting of the burghers, and knew that at the stair-foot
they were trying to pull out the bottom-most of the marauders like tods
from a hole. For a second or two nobody said a word to Nicol MacNicoll's
remark, for he put the issue so cool (like an invitation to saunter
along the road) that all at once it seemed a matter between him and
MacLachlan alone. I stood between the housebreakers and the women-folk
beside me--John Splendid looking wonderfully ugly for a man fairly clean
fashioned at the face by nature. We left the issue to MacLachlan, and I
must say he came up to the demands of the moment with gentlemanliness,
minding he was in another's house than his own.

"What