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...malcontents as we thought them, and found Montrose on the braes above us as the dawn broke. We had but a shot or two apiece to the musket, they tell me. Dun-barton’s drums rolled, the pipes clamoured, the camp rose from its sleep in a confusion, and a white moon was fainting behind us. Argile, who had slept in a galley all night, came ashore in a wherry with his left arm in a sling. His face was like the clay, but he had a firm lip, and he was buckling a hauberk with a steady hand as the men fell under arms. Left alone then, I have a belief that he would have come through the affair gallantly; but the Highland double-dealings were too much for him. He turned to Auchinbreac and said ‘Shall I take the command, or——?’ leaving an alternative for his relative to guess at Auchinbreac, a stout soldier but a vicious, snapped him very short ‘Leave it to me, leave it to me,’ he answered, and busied himself again in disposing his troops, upon whom I was well aware he had no great reliance. Then Sir James Rollock-Niddry, and a few others pushed the Marquis to take his place in his galley again, but would he? Not till Auchinbreac came up a second time, and seeing the contention of his mind, took your Highland way of flattering a chief, and made a poltroon act appear one of judgment and necessity. ‘As a man and soldier only, you might be better here at the onset,’ said Auchinbreac, who had a wily old tongue; ‘but you are disabled against using sword or pistol; you are the mainstay of a great national movement, depending for its success on your life, freedom, and continued exertion.’ Argile took to the galley again, and Auchinbreac looked after him with a shamed and dubious eye. Well, well, Sir Duncan has paid for his temporising; he’s in his place appointed. I passed the knowe where he lay writhing to a terrible end, with a pike at his vitals, and he was moaning for the chief he had helped to a shabby flight.”
“A shabby flight!” said M’Iver, with a voice that was new to me, so harsh was it and so high-set.
“You can pick the word for yourself,” said the minister; “if by heaven’s grace I was out of this, in Inneraora I should have my own way of putting it to Argile, whom I love and blame.”
“Oh you Lowland dog!” cried John Splendid, more high-keyed than ever, “you to blame Argile!” And he stepped up to the cleric, who was standing by the chimney-jambs, glowered hellishly in his face, then with a fury caught his throat in his fingers, and pinned him up against the wall.
CHAPTER XXVI.—TRAPPED.
I caught M’Iver by the coat-lapels, and took him off the gasping cleric.
“Oh man!” I cried, “is this the Highland brigadier to be throttling an old soldier of Christ?”
“Let me get at him and I’ll set him in the way of putting the last truth of his trade to its only test,” said he, still with a face corp-white, tugging at my hold and eyeing Master Gordon with a very uplifted and ferocious demeanour.