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He turned to Auchinbreac and said 'Shall I take the command, or ? leaving an alternative for his relative to guess at Auchinbreac, a stout soldier but a vicious, snapped him very short 'Leave it to me, leave it to me, he answered, and busied himself again in disposing his troops, upon whom I was well aware he had no great reliance.
"You see, Elrigmore, what a happy King of the Highlands I am," said the Marquis, despondently. "Fortunate Auchinbreac, to be all bye with it after a moment's agony!" "He died like a good soldier, sir," I said; "he was by all accounts a man of some vices, but he wiped them out in his own blood." "Are you sure of that?
I blame Auchinbreac; I blame the chieftains, they said I must take to the galley; I blame " "Blame no one, Argile," said Master Gordon, standing up before him, not a second too soon, for his lordship had his hand on the dirk M'Iver had thrown down. Then he turned to us with ejecting arms. "Out you go," he cried sternly, "out you go; what delight have you in seeing a nobleman on the rack?"
John Splendid's brow came down upon a most perplexed face; this seemed all beyond him, but he knew his master was somehow blaming the world at large for his own error. "Come now, John," said his lordship, turning and leaning on his arm and looking curiously at his kinsman. "Come now, what do you think of me here without a wound but at the heart, with Auchinbreac and all my gallant fellows yonder?"
Then Sir James Rollock-Niddry, and a few others pushed the Marquis to take his place in his galley again, but would he? Not till Auchinbreac came up a second time, and seeing the contention of his mind, took your Highland way of flattering a chief, and made a poltroon act appear one of judgment and necessity.
Behind his lordship came eleven hundred Lowland levies that had been with Baillie in England, and to command them came his cousin, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreac, luckily new over from Ireland, and in the spirit for campaigning.
"Auchinbreac was a soldier by trade and a good one too," answered M'Iver, at his usual trick of prevarication. "And a flatterer like yourself, you mean," said his lordship. "He and you learned the lesson in the same school, I'm thinking. And as ill-luck had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, as yours did when Colkitto came down the glens there to rape and burn.
'As a man and soldier only, you might be better here at the onset, said Auchinbreac, who had a wily old tongue; 'but you are disabled against using sword or pistol; you are the mainstay of a great national movement, depending for its success on your life, freedom, and continued exertion. Argile took to the galley again, and Auchinbreac looked after him with a shamed and dubious eye.
Argile and Auchinbreac rode at our head his lordship on a black horse called Lepanto, a spirited beast that had been trained to active exercises and field-practice; Auchinbreac on a smaller animal, but of great spirit and beauty. M'Iver and I walked, as did all the officers.
There was never a priest or vicar in the shire you couldn't twist the head off!" The Marquis turned to me with a vexed toss of his shoulder. "It's a hopeless task to look for a pagan's backbone," said he. "Come, I'll confess. I dare not hint at my truant thought to Auchinbreac or before any of these fiery officers of mine, who fear perhaps more than they love me.
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