"My Lord of Barra had it from the prince's own hand. He says that the stadtholder has long marked the address of my husband, and hath only delayed to reward it lest the short space he has been with the colors should arouse the jealousy of his comrades."
A spark of fury burned up suddenly in Wat's eyes.
"Is the paper genuine, think you?" he asked, loudly enough for all to hear.
Maisie looked up quickly, astonished, not so much at his words as by the fierce, abrupt manner of his speech.
"Genuine!" she said, in astonishment. "Why, my Lord Barra brought it himself. It is signed by his own hand and issued in the name of the prince. Why do you ask if it be genuine?"
"I ask," cried Lochinvar, in the same fiercely offensive tone, "because the only document which I have ever seen bearing that signature and issued in the name of the prince was a forgery, and as such was repudiated two days later by my Lord of Barra."
The words rang clearly and unmistakably through the room. Doubtless Barra heard them, and Kate also, for a deep flush of annoyance mounted slowly to her neck, touched with rose the ivory of her cheek, and faded out again, leaving her with more than her former paleness. But Barra never stopped a moment in the full, easy current of his narration. He continued to let fall his sentences with precisely the same cool, untroubled deliberation, fingering meanwhile the prince's signet-ring, which he habitually wore on his hand. Kate almost involuntarily moved a little nearer to him and fixed her eyes the more earnestly on his face, because she felt that Wat's words were a deliberate insult intended for her deliverer of the preceding day.
Wat on his part pushed his chair noisily back from the table, and rapped nervously and defiantly with his knuckles on the board.
"There is not a man in my wild western isles," Barra's voice was heard going on, evenly and calmly, "who would not die for his chief, giving his life as readily as a platter of drammoch—not a poor unlearned cotter who would not send his family to the death to save the honor of the clan from the least stain, or the life of the chief from any shadow of danger. The true clansman can do anything for his chief—"
"Except tell the truth," burst in Walter Gordon, fiercely.