He paused and looked moodily out of the window. I think now, as I picture him to myself standing there, that he knew himself well enough to know what was coming. For another picture of him comes to my mind, as I saw him in Rome many years later, and shuddered as I saw him.
He turned and smiled at me, as one smiles who sips sour wine.
"If we go back, friend Wheatman, I shall just rot into it."
He spoke truth. I saw him rotting. And then, because he had more stuff in him than any other royal Stuart that ever lived, he turned round, proud and princely, as the door opened and in came Mr. Secretary with Macdonald of Glencoe, a short-horned bull of a man.
"And when was it," said he, rapping the words out like hammer-strokes on an anvil, "that the Macdonalds got feart?"
The Chief pulled up short, hit clean and hard between the eyes.
"Ye'll never see a feart Macdonald," he said, "if ye live to be as auld as Ben Nevis."
"Ye're in the wrong, Glencoe," said Charles. "I saw one this morning, and he was frightened of the English."
"I'll gie ye the lie o' that," roared Glencoe, "if I hae to scrat my way into London wi' ma nails."
"I'll be glad of the lie from you on those terms," replied Charles calmly, "and you shall ride into London at my right hand while I take my words back."