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I kept my anger out of my head, and sunk to the pit of my stomach while I spoke to him. "You have said too much about Archibald, Marquis of Argile," I said. "A week or two ago, the quarrel was more properly M'Iver's; now that he's severed by his own act from the clan, I'm ready to take his place and chastise you for your insolence. Are you willing, John?" I asked, turning to my friend.
M'Iver's voice had a sneer in every word of it when he answered in a very affected tongue of English he was used to assume when he wished to be at his best before a Saxon. "Is it the logic of your school," he asked, "that what's the right conduct of war when we are in regiments is robbery when we are but seven broken men?
"If he did in this matter, it would be for as true an affection for his chief as any lalland cleric ever felt for his patron." "And yet, sir, you shuffle for another reason too. You do not want to give your ridiculous Highland pride the shock of hearing that your chief left in a galley before the battle he lost had well begun." A curious cry came from M'Iver's lips.
Still at times, by day and night ay! in the very midmost watches of the stars-I walked, in my musing, as I thought, upon the causeyed street, where perhaps I had been sooner in the actual fact if M'Iver's departure had not been delayed.
But M'Iver fixed him with an eye that pricked like a rapier. "Sit ye down, Stewart," said he; "your race is royal, as ye must be aye telling us, but there's surely many a droll bye-blow in the breed." "Are you not all from Appin?" asked the woman, with a new interest, taking a corner of M'Iver's plaiding in her hand and running a few checks through fine delicate fingers of a lady.
Thus a third of our force fell behind us in the march, and I would have been behind too, but for M'Iver's encouragement. His songs were long done; his stories chilled on his lip. The hunger had him at the heart, but he had a lion's will and a lion's vigour. "For the love of God!" he said to me, "do not let them think we are so much of the Covenanter that we cannot keep up!
More than a dozen MacDonalds came running round the gable end, lit by the upper windows, and we dispersed like chaff to the wind before M'Iver's speech concluded. He and I ran for a time together, among the bushes of the garden, through the curly kail, under low young firs that clutched at the clothing.
At that M'Iver's countenance changed: he threw off his soft complacence, and cruelty and temper stiffened his jaw. "I'll soon give you that, my Lord of Argile," said he. "I can lie like a Dutch major for convenience sake, but put me on honour and you'll get the truth if it cost me my life.
The blood swept to M'Iver's face, and his eye quailed. "I favoured no such impolitic act," said he, slowly. "I saw you were bent on going, and I but backed you up, to leave you some rags of illusion to cover your naked sin." "I thought no less," said Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder.
Indeed it was not difficult to learn the true particulars, for the place rang all the worse for its comparative emptiness with the scandal of M'Iver's encounter with Mac-Lachlan, whom, it appeared, he had found laying a gallant's siege to the upper window of Askaig's house, whose almost unharmed condition had made it a convenient temporary shelter for such as had returned to the town.
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