Lochinvar: A Novel

by S. R. Crockett

The men at the nearest table had also begun talking loudly, and the voice of Haxo pierced the din.

"I tell you the girl is safely my master's meat, and she is a dainty filly enough. Her name is Kate McGhie, and she is a land-owner's daughter somewhere in the barren land of Scots. My lord bought her good-will quickly enough with a gay present for herself and a commission for her gossip's loutish husband—trust Barra for that. He is never laggard in his affairs with women."

Wat Gordon was on his feet in an instant. The Little Marie instinctively shrank aside from the white fierce face which she encountered. It looked like the countenance of some one whom she had never seen. The young man fairly spurned the table at which he had been sitting, and with a single spring he was over the next and at the breast of Haxo the Bull.

"Villain, you lie in your throat," he shouted, "and I will kill you for your lie! 'Tis false as the lying tongue which I will presently tear out of your foul mouth!"

The four men rose simultaneously and drew, some of them their swords and the others their daggers. Wat would instantly have been stabbed among them but that the Little Marie, dashing forward like a hawk, threw her arms about the nearest of his foes, for a minute pinioning his hands to his side.

Then Scarlett, with a sweep of his sword, leaped on the table in the midst of them, crying "Fair play! Stand back there, all of you who do not want to be spitted!"

Presently, finding Wat's grasp relax on his throat as he reached for his weapon, Haxo shook himself free and drew the hanger which, in honor of his advancement, he wore instead of his butcher's knife. Wat had neither room nor yet time to draw his long sword; but with quick baresark fury he caught up by the leg the heavy oaken chair on which Haxo had been sitting, and twirling it over his head like a staff, he struck the brawny butcher with the carved back of it fair on the temple, almost crushing in his cheek. The Bull dropped to the floor without a groan.

Then there ensued a battle fierce and fell in that upper corner of the great room of the Coronation. There Wat stood at bay with the oaken chair in his hand, while Scarlett's long sword turned every way, and even the Little Marie, long unaccustomed to courtesy, showed her fidelity to the salt of kindness she had tasted. She crouched low behind the fighters, almost on her knees, and waited for a chance to strike upward with the dagger she held in her hand. But the long room swarmed black with their foes. The remaining four had already been reinforced by half a dozen others, and the way to the door seemed completely blocked. Then it was that Scarlett raised the rallying cry, "Scots to me! Hither to me, blue bonnets all!"

And through the press were thrust the burly shoulders of Sergeant Davie Dunbar and two of his comrades. All might now have gone differently but for the madness working in the brain of Wat of Lochinvar. For the insult to his sweetheart's good name, uttered by Haxo, had made him resolve to kill every man at the table who had heard the blasphemous slander.

"Arrest him!" the provost-marshal's men cried. "He has murdered Haxo!"