His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward to swear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked heedlessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man who had been stabbed—it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had gone through from front to back with only some lose of blood—was averse from being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the right heart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of the disturbance and his injury.
“Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen—MacCailein—my lordship—a bit play. If the poor lad didn’t happen to have his dirk out and I to run on it, nobody was a bodle the worse.”
“But the law”—started the clerk to say.
“No case for law at all,” said the man. “It’s an honest brawl among friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next market-day, when my shoulder’s mended.”
“Better if you would settle my account for your last pair of brogues, Alasdair M’Iver,” said a black-avised juryman.
“What’s your trade?” asked the Marquis of the witness.
“I’m at the Coillebhraid silver-mines,” said he. “We had a little too much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to variance.”
The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought down his fist with a bang on the table before him.
“Damn those silver-mines!” said he; “they breed more trouble in this town of mine than I’m willing to thole. If they put a penny in my purse it might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking, and I’m not a plack the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, John Splendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I would drown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn.”
The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking his head oddly like one taking liberties with a master, said, “We’re a drouthy set, my lord, at the mines, and I wouldn’t be saying but what we might drink them dry again of a morning, if we had been into town the night before.”