"It's his head I want you to attend to," retorted Margaret, "not his politics."
"I doctor no rebels," said he, louder than ever.
"Man," intervened Maclachlan, taking a pistol from his belt, and emphasizing his words by gently tapping its barrel on the palm of his hand, "if in ten minutes yon head isn't doctored to pairfection, it's your own sel' will be beyond all the doctoring in England."
"It's against all law," said the doctor.
"I'm the law in this clachan to-day," said Maclachlan simply, still tapping away with his pistol. Hearing the parson behind, he turned round and added drily, "And the gospel." Hereupon the parson's face took on the appearance of ill-made, ill-risen dough, and he turned and slipped off with creeping, noiseless steps, like a cat.
"Come in," whispered the doctor.
"Ye're a man o' sense," said Maclachlan, and pushed his pistol back into his belt.
We all passed into the hall, and the doctor made the door carefully.
"That damned pudding-face is a Whig," said he, "and so, of course, he's a Justice. The Squire's a Whig, and he's a Justice. Here am I, well-reputed in the faculty, and my wife coming of the Parker Putwells, one of the rare old county stocks--none of your newfangled button-men and turnip-growers--and I'm no Justice, because I'm a Church-and-King man of the old school."
"They went out of fashion with flaxen bobs," said I.