But “Well! Well!” he cried again eagerly, and I resumed.
Of how I had come home, and crept into my guilty chamber and lay the long night through, torn by grief and anger, jealousy and distress. And how evading the others of the household as best I could that day, I had in the afternoon at the hour appointed gone out with Uncle Andrew's pistol.
My father moaned—a waefu' sound!
And found young Borland up on the moor before me with such another weapon, his face red byordinary, his hands and voice trembling with passion.
“Poor lad, poor lad!” my father cried blurting the sentiment as he had been a bairn.
How we tossed a coin to decide which should be the first to fire, and Borland had won the toss, and gone to the other end of our twenty paces with vulgar menaces and “Spoiled Horn” the sweetest of his epithets.
“Poor lad! he but tried to bluster down the inward voice that told him the folly o't,” said father.
And how Borland had fired first. The air was damp. The sound was like a slamming door.
“The door of hope shut up for him, poor dear,” cried father.
And how he missed me in his trepidation that made his hand that held the pistol so tremble that I saw the muzzle quiver even at twenty paces.