"Your business, gentlemen," I said, seeking to have done with them. They were slight men, whom I could have dropped out of the window; most unlike the kind of friends I should have thought my cousin Gilbert would have chosen.
"Well, if you will have our business," said the elder, speaking sulkily, "you are already aware of the unparalleled insult to which a gentlemen of our regiment was subjected at your hands?"
"Oh, yes," I said gaily, "I had forgotten. I broke Gilbert's head with a wine-glass. Does he want to ask my pardon?"
"You seem to take the matter easily, sir," said one severely. "Let me tell you that Master Gilbert Burnet demands that you meet him at once and give satisfaction with your sword."
"Right," I cried, "I am willing. At what hour shall it be? Shall we say seven o'clock to-morrow's morning? That is settled then? I have no second and desire none. There is the length of my sword. Carry my compliments to my cousin, and tell him I shall be most pleased to chastise him at the hour we have named. And now, gentlemen, I have the honour to wish you a very good day," and I bowed them out of the room.
They were obviously surprised and angered by my careless reception of their message and themselves. With faces as flushed as a cock's comb they went down stairs and into the street, and I marked that they never once looked back, but marched straight on with their heads in the air.
"Ye've gien thae lads a flee in their lug," said Nicol. "I wish ye may gie your cousin twae inches o' steel in his vitals the morn."
"Ah," said I, "that is a different matter. These folk were but dandified fools. My cousin is a man and a soldier."
The rest of the day I spent in walking by myself in the meadows beyond the college gardens, turning over many things in my mind. I had come to this land for study, and lo! ere I well knew how, I was involved in quarrels. I felt something of a feeling of shame in the matter, for the thing had been brought on mainly by my over-fiery temper. Yet when I pondered deeply I would not have the act undone, for a display of foolish passion was better in my eyes than the suffering of an insult to a lady to pass unregarded.
As for the fight on the morrow I did not know whether to await it with joy or shrinking. As I have said already, I longed to bring matters between the two of us to a head. There was much about him that I liked; he had many commendable virtues; and especially he belonged to my own house. But it seemed decreed that he should ever come across my path, and already there was more than one score laid up against him in my heart. I felt a strange foreboding of the man, as if he were my antithesis, which certain monkish philosophers believed to accompany everyone in the world. He was so utterly different from me in all things; my vices he lacked and my virtues; his excellencies I wanted, and also, I trust, his faults. I felt as if the same place could not contain us.