"Come--come, never grudge so much at it, man," said the brave-spirited Englishman, with the placability of his country; "shake hands, and we will be better friends than ever." "Friends!" exclaimed Robin Oig with strong emphasis--"friends! Never. Look to yourself, Harry Waakfelt." "Then the curse of Cromwell on your proud Scots stomach, as the man says in the play, and you may do your worst, and be d--d; for one man can say nothing more to another after a tussle, than that he is sorry for it." On these terms the friends parted. Robin Oig drew out, in silence, a piece of money, threw it on the table, and then left the alehouse. But, turning at the door, he shook his hand at Wakefield, pointing with his forefinger upwards, in a manner which might imply either a threat or a caution. He then disappeared in the moonlight. Some words passed after his departure between the bailiff, who piqued himself on being a little of a bully, and Harry Wakefield, who, with generous inconsistency, was now not indisposed to begin a new combat in defence of Robin Oig's reputation, "although he could not use his daddies like an Englishman, as it did not come natural to him." But Dame Heskett prevented this second quarrel from coming to a head by her peremptory interference. "There should be no more fighting in her house," she said; "there had been too much already. And you, Mr. Wakefield, may live to learn," she added, "what it is to make a deadly enemy out of a good friend." "Pshaw, dame! Robin Oig is an honest fellow, and will never keep malice." "Do not trust to that: you do not know the dour temper of the Scots, though you have dealt with them so often. I have a right to know them, my mother being a Scot." "And so is well seen on her daughter," said Ralph Heskett. This nuptial sarcasm gave the discourse another turn; fresh customers entered the taproom or kitchen, and others left it. The conversation turned on the expected markets, and the reports of prices from different parts both of Scotland and England; treaties were commenced, and Harry Wakefield was lucky enough to find a chap for a part of his drove, and at a very considerable profit--an event of consequence more than sufficient to blot out all remembrances of the unpleasant scuffle in the earlier part of the day. But there remained one party from whose mind that recollection could not have been wiped away by the possession of every head of cattle betwixt Esk and Eden. This was Robin Oig M'Combich. "That I should have had no weapon," he said, "and for the first time in my life! Blighted be the tongue that bids the Highlander part with the dirk. The dirk hae! the English blood! My muhme's word--when did her word fall to the ground?" The recollection of the fatal prophecy confirmed the deadly intention which instantly sprang up in his mind. "Ha! Morrison cannot be many miles behind; and if it were an hundred, what then?"