"Wull that stan, then?" exclaimed Skimclean, making a lounge at the laird's face with his closed fist, which took full effect upon the enemy's left eye.
"I maun mak a rejoinder to that," said the laird, now attacking his host in turn, and with such effect, as finally to floor him, being, although the older, by much the stronger man—"I maun mak a rejoinder to that," he said, first striking at, and then grappling, his antagonist, when a deadly struggle ensued, which ended in both coming to the floor with an appalling thud.
The laird, although taken from his feet, still maintained his physical superiority by keeping the foe under him. He was uppermost, and uppermost he determined to remain; and this triumphant position he further secured himself in by seizing Skimclean by the neckcloth, and, by the vigour of his hold, subjecting him to a fac-simile of the process of strangulation.
"What think ye o' my law, noo, ye puir empty pretender?" said the laird, as he gave the other twist to Drumwhussle's neckcloth—"you and yer trash o' Latin, that ye ken nae mair aboot, I believe, than a cow kens about a steam-engine."
"That's aboot yer ain knowledge o' law, I'm thinkin," replied Skimclean, chokingly, but boldly; and in gallant defiance of his present adverse circumstances. "I wad match ony coo I hae in my byre against ye at a defeeckwalt point o' law."
"Do ye fin' that?" said the laird, twisting Drumwhussle's neckcloth with increasing ferocity. "There's law for ye. There's the strong arm o' the law for ye. Doin summary justice on an ignorant, pretendin idowit."
How or in what way this fierce struggle between the two lawyers would have terminated, we cannot tell, as it was not permitted to attain its own natural conclusion. It was interrupted. At the moment that the laird had renewed his efforts on Skimclean's neckcloth, which the reader will observe was doing the duty of a bowstring, the wife of the latter rushed into the apartment, exclaiming—
"The Lord hae a care o' me! what's this o't?—what's this o't? What are ye fechtin aboot, ye auld fules?"
"A case o' hamesookin, Jenny—a decided case o' hamesookin," shouted Skimclean. "A man attacked an' abused in his ain hoose. That's hamesookin, an' severely punishable by law."
"Tuts, confound yer law?—mind reason and common sense," said Skimclean's wife, seizing the laird by the coattails, and dragging him off her prostrate husband, of whose penchant for law she had long been perfectly sick. "Mind reason an' common sense, an' let alane law to them it belangs to."