Part 10 (1/2)

”Are you the leader of those men?” I asked. ”They looked a scurvy lot.

Do you call that a proper occupation for the best blood in Breadalbane?”

It was a silly speech, and I could have bitten my tongue out when I had uttered it. But I was in a vile temper, for the dregs of the negro's rum still hummed in my blood. His face grew dark, till he looked like the man I had seen the night before.

”I allow no man to slight my race,” he said in a harsh voice.

”It's the truth whether you like it or not. And you that claimed to be a gentleman! What is it they say about the Highlands?” And I quoted a ribald Glasgow proverb.

What moved me to this insolence I cannot say, I was in the wrong, and I knew it, but I was too much of a child to let go my silly pride.

Ringan got up very quickly and walked three steps. The blackness had gone from his face, and it was puzzled and melancholy.

”There's a precious lot of the bairn in you, Mr. Garvald,” he said, ”and an ugly spice of the Whiggamore. I would have killed another man for half your words, and I've got to make you pay for them somehow.”

And he knit his brow and pondered.

”I'm ready,” said I, with the best bravado I could muster, though the truth is I was sick at heart. I had forced a quarrel like an ill-mannered boy on the very man whose help I had come to seek. And I saw, too, that I had gone just that bit too far for which no recantation would win pardon.

”What sort of way are you ready?” he asked politely. ”You would fight me with your pistols, but you haven't got them, and this is no a matter that will wait. I could spit you in a jiffy with my sword, but it wouldna be fair. It strikes me that you and me are ill matched. We're like a shark and a wolf that cannot meet to fight in the same element.”

Then he ran his finger down the b.u.t.tons of his coat, and his eyes were smiling. ”We'll try the old way that laddies use on the village green.

Man, Andrew, I'm going to skelp you, as your mother skelped you when you were a breechless bairn,” And he tossed his coat on the gra.s.s.

I could only follow suit, though I was black ashamed at the whole business. I felt the disgrace of my conduct, and most bitterly the disgrace of the penalty.

My arm was too short to make a fighter of me, and I could only strive to close, that I might get the use of my weight and my great strength of neck and shoulder. Ringan danced round me, tapping me lightly on nose and cheek, but hard enough to make the blood flow, I defended myself as best I could, while my temper rose rapidly and made me forget my penitence. Time and again I looked for a chance to slip in, but he was as wary as a fox, and was a yard off before I could get my arm round him.

At last in extreme vexation, I lowered my head and rushed blindly for his chest. Something like the sails of a windmill smote me on the jaw, and I felt myself falling into a pit of great darkness where little lights twinkled.

The next I knew I was sitting propped against the tent-pole with a cold bandage round my forehead, and Ringan with a napkin bathing my face.

”Cheer up, man,” he cried; ”you've got off light, for there's no a scratch on your lily-white cheek, and the blood-letting from the nose will clear out the dregs of Moro's hocus.”

I blinked a little, and tried to recall what had happened. All my ill-humour had gone, and I was now in a hurry to set myself right with my conscience. He heard my apology with an embarra.s.sed face.

”Say no more, Andrew. I was as muckle to blame as you, and I've been giving myself some ill names for that last trick. It was ower hard, but, man, the temptation was sore.”

He elbowed me to the open air.

”Now for the questions you've a right to ask. We of the Brethren have not precisely a chief, as you call it, but there are not many of them would gainsay my word. Why? you ask. Well, it's not for a modest man to be sounding his own trumpet. Maybe it's because I'm a gentleman, and there's that in good blood which awes the commonalty. Maybe it's because I've no fish of my own to fry. I do not rob for greed, like Calvert and Williams, or kill for l.u.s.t, like the departed Cosh. To me it's a game, which I play by honest rules. I never laid finger on a bodle's worth of English stuff, and if now and then I ease the Dons of a pickle silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty's troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal? If I've a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded. But maybe the chief reason is that I've some little skill of arms, so that the lad that questions me is apt to fare like Cosh.”

There was a kind of boastful sincerity about the man which convinced me. But his words put me in mind of my own business.

”I came seeking you to ask help. Your friends have been making too free with my belongings. I would never complain if it were the common risk of my trade, but I have a notion that there's some sort of design behind it.” Then I told him of my strife with the English merchants.

”What are your losses?” he asked.

”The Ayr brig was taken off Cape Charles, and burned to the water. G.o.d help the poor souls in her, for I fear they perished.”

He nodded. ”I know. That was one of Cosh's exploits. He has paid by now for that and other things.”