The question was a feathered arrow in the white, but Boyd avoided it.
“Your minister is a man that should be ashamed to enter a kirk and preach the Gospel. Who would associate with the like of Quintin MacClellan?”
“Of a certainty not traitors and turncoats!” cried a deep voice in the background, toward which all turned in amazement.
It was that of Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, the reputed head of the Societies, whose boast it had been that he could call seven thousand men to arms in the day of trouble.
I saw Boyd pale to the lips at sight of him.
“I do not argue with sectaries!” he stammered, turning on his heel.
“Nor I with knavish deceivers,” cried Alexander Gordon, “of whom there are two here—Andrew Cameron and William Boyd. With this right hand I paid them the golden money for their education, wrung from the instant needs of poor hill folk who had lost their all, and who depended oftentime on charity for their bite of bread. From men attainted, from men earning in foreign lands the bitter bread of exile, from men and women imprisoned, shilling by shilling, penny by penny, that money came. It was ill-spent on men like these. William Boyd and Andrew Cameron swore solemn oaths. They took upon them the unbreakable and immutable Covenants. In time they became ministers, and we looked for words of light and wisdom and guidance from them. But we of the Faithful Remnant looked in vain. For lo! Cæsar sat upon his throne, and right gladly they bowed the knee. They licked the gold from his garments like honey. They mumbled his shoe-string that he might graciously permit them to sit at ease in his high places.
“Bah!” he cried, so that his voice was heard miles off on the hill-tops, “out upon all such cowards and traitors! And now, folk of this parish, will ye let such scurril loons persuade you to give up your true and faithful minister, on whose tongue is the word of truth, and in whose heart is no fear of the face of any man?”
The frightened Presbyters melted before him, some of them swarming off with the men of evil life—the lairds and heritors of the parish. Others mounted their horses and rode homeward as if the devil of Rerrick himself had been after them.
Thus was ended the Disputation of Cullenoch near to Clachanpluck, in the shaming of those that withstood us.