"God!" he cried, "but ye are a most mighty sworder—ne'er a one like ye within the Highland line. Who was your master at the play?"
Wat pointed to where old Jack Scarlett sat smiling complacently beside Lochiell.
"There is my teacher," he said, "and at my best I am but a bairn with a windlestraw in my master's hands."
Scarlett wagged his beard at Keppoch's evident consternation.
"No, no," he said, "I am old and stiff. Do not believe him. Why, lad, ye beat me the last time I tried ye with that same trick, though indeed I myself had taught it ye at the first."
"But I was vexed for the lad," he added under his breath, "and maybe I did not just try my best."
Of course after this nothing would serve the chiefs but that Wat and Scarlett must fight a long bout with the blunted point, which presently they did amid tremendous excitement.
"Oich! Oich!" shouted the clansmen, jumping in the air and yelling at every good stroke and lightning parry.
"Bone o' Dugald More—what heevenly fechtin'!" cried Keppoch. "I declare I am like to greet—me that hasna grat since the year sixty, when Ian Mackintosh of Auchnacarra died afore I could kill him. Oh, for the like o' you twa to lead a foray intil the country of the Lochiell Camerons—I mean the Appin Stewarts, foul fa' them! We wad gang in the daytime. For oh! it wad be a peety that sic bonny sword-play should be wasted in killing folk in the nicht season."
And the tears actually streamed from the eye of Black Colin as he watched the swords clash and click, meeting each other sweetly and willingly like trysted lovers.