"Silence, yeoman!" cried the angry curate. "Are you one to teach your betters, let alone your priest?"
"Ay," said Pate, "or any honest man; and I acknowledge no priest but only him that teaches the Word—which never yet bade to pass over the weak, even when it is to your own hurt, as this is to mine."
"Here's one coming that will give you grand reason for every fule-deed you like to do," cried Sir John—"ay, and tie you up safe and fast to the lass that ye think has such a grand tocher. But bide awhile, bide awhile, Pate the pious. Succouring orphans is a fine thing when your own rights are not so clear as ye thought; but when you find a useless wife on your hands, and all the cows to milk, and the byres to clean——"
"You have an ill tongue, if you were ten times a priest!" cried Pate, with a clouded brow.
But the controversy was stopped by Master Melville, who came up hastily, quickening his usually sober steps at the sound of Pate's voice raised above its usual tone, and the laughing, scornful attitude of Sir John.
"Your look is not peaceful, Peter," he said, "nor your eye content."
"Did you expect to find me content, Maister Melville," said Pate, "with my rights taken up by others, and myself scorned before my neighbours? I would then be a man not like other men."
"The Lord of Over-Kellie," said Sir John, "was, by my faith, near upon charging me with a cartel of war to that other nobleman the Lord Oliphant; but that I am a man of peace and carry no gage."
"You might moderate your jesting, Brother Low," said Melville, "and so show yourself a man of peace. This is not the time, Peter, to bandy words, with whosoever it may be. You have your duty to do for your kindred and your name."
"It is what I am ready to do at all times," cried Pate, hastily, eager to find in the minister's face the counsel already established in his own.