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"Oh, indeed!" cried Miss Mary, when her emissary brought to her those tidings. "Then it seems the Campbells of Keil are not good enough company for Sheriff Maclachlan's supper parties! My brother the Cornal, and my brother the Major-General, would have their own idea about that if so small a trifle as Madam's tart supper and green tea was worth their notice or annoyance."
He recovered himself in a few minutes, and then stood up, and gave a brief command in Gaelic. Four awe-struck men spread a plaid on the ground, placed the dead body on it, and carried it into the hut. Donald, gravely silent, took the pipes from the man who had been playing, and followed them. I bared my head and went after him miserably. Maclachlan's body lay on the floor of the hut.
"A poor town indeed," admitted M'Iver, readily, "but it might be worse. It can be built anew. There's nothing in nature, from a pigsty to a name for valour and honour, that a wise man may not patch up somehow." MacLachlan's retort to this opening was on the tip of his tongue; but his haste made him surrender a taunt as likely to cause trouble.
In life, as often as in the stories of man's invention, it is the one wanted who comes when the occasion needs, for God so arranges, and if it may seem odd that the skilly woman the messenger brought back with him for the dressing of MacLachlan's wound was no other than our Dark Dame of Lorn, the dubiety must be at the Almighty's capacity, and not at my chronicle of the circumstance.
So she kept to her resolution, writing the occasional notes she had promised to write to her poor forsaken girls, without saying a word of her illness; and when she grew better, though not strong enough to undertake a new situation, finding her money slipping away though, with her good salaries and small wants, she was not poor, and had already begun to lay up for a lonely old age she accepted this temporary home at Miss Maclachlan's, at Brighton.
M'Iver stood dumfounded, to behold a cavalier of fortune's tears, and MacLachlan's face, for all his pain, gave up its hate and anger for surprise, as he looked at me over the shoulder of his kneeling clansman plying rude leech-craft on his wound. "Are you vexed?" said he, with short breaths. "And that bitterly!" I answered.
"If I cannot draw a sword for my cousin I can at least second his defender," he answered quickly. MacLachlan's colour came back; he looked from one to the other of us, and made an effort to laugh with cunning. "There's more here than I can fathom, gentlemen." said he. "I'll swear this is a forced quarrel; but in any case I fear none of you.
In all this horoyally I took but an onlooker's part MacLachlan's quarrel was not mine, the burgh was none of my blood, and the Glen Shira men were my father's friends and neighbours. Splendid, too, candidly kept out of the turmoil when he saw that young MacLachlan was safely free of his warders, and that what had been a cause militant was now only a Highland diversion.
The fly was already at the door, and Miss Williams, with her small luggage, would in five minutes have departed, followed by the good wishes of all the household, from Miss Maclachlan's school to her new situation, when the postman passed and left a letter for her. "I will put it in my pocket and read it in the train," she said, with a slight change of color.
"Since your head's still on your shoulders," said the Colonel, fumbling for his snuff, "I do. He knocked Maclachlan's Donald into a log of timber, and, damme, I hardly saw his hand move." "That's only a trick, sir," I protested. "Weel, Captain Wheatman," said Murray, "keep your ugly English tricks to y'rsel. Mind ye, colonel or no colonel, I'll break ye first chance ye gie me."
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