Three Boys; Or, The Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai

“Look here, Scoodrach, if you call me she again, I’ll kick you!”
“I didna ca’ you she. I only said if she’d come ten the hoose aifter she had the parritch—”
“Well, what did I say?”
“Say? Why, she got in a passion.”
Whop! Flop!
The sound of a back-handed slap in the chest, followed by a kick, both delivered by Kenneth Mackhai, the recipient being a red-headed, freckled-faced lad of seventeen, who retaliated by making a sharp snatch at the kicking foot, which he caught and held one half moment. The result was startling.
Kenneth Mackhai, the sun-browned, well-knit, handsome son of “the Chief,” came down in a sitting position on the stones, and screwed up his face with pain.
“Scood, you beggar!” he roared; “I’ll serve you out for—”
“Ken, are you coming to breakfast?” cried a loud, severe voice from fifty yards away.
“Coming, father!” shouted the lad, leaping up, giving himself a shake to rearrange his dark green kilt, and holding up his fist threateningly at the bare-legged, grinning lad before him. “Just you wait till after breakfast, Master Scood, and I’ll make you squint.”
The lad ran up the steep slope to the garden surrounding the ancient castle of Dunroe, which had been built as a stronghold somewhere about the fourteenth century, and still stood solid on its rocky foundation; a square, keep-like edifice, with a round tower at each corner, mouldering, with portions of the battlements broken away, but a fine monument still of the way in which builders worked in the olden time.