So we waited there, sitting motionless in our saddles, on that fair morning when all around us the air was full of crying snipe and twittering hill-linnets. The stream made a cheerful sound, and the little green ferns in the rocks nodded beneath the spray of the water. I found my mind misgiving me again and again for the headstrong prank on which I was entered, as unworthy of one who knew something of better things. But I had little time for self-communings, for we had scarce been there two minutes before we heard the grating of hooves on the hill-gravel, and our two gentlemen came round the corner not twenty yards ahead. At the sight of us they reined up and stared stock still before them. Then I saw the hands of both reach to their belts, and I rejoiced at the movement, for I knew that the arms of neither were loaded. "Gentlemen," said I, "it will be at your peril that you move. We have here two loaded pistols. We are not soldiers of His Majesty, so we have some skill in shooting. Let me assure you on my word that your case is a desperate one." At my words the one still looked with a haughty, swaggering stare, but the jaw of the other dropped and he seemed like a man in excess of terror. "To-day," I went on, "you shot at a lady not half an hour agone. It is for this that I have come to have speech with you. Let us understand one another, my friends. I am an outlawed man and one not easy to deal with. I am the Laird of Barns—ah, I see you know the name—and let this persuade you to offer no resistance." One of the twain still stood helpless. The other’s hand twitched as if he would draw his sword or reach to his powder-flask, but the steely glitter of our barrels and my angry face deterred him. "What do you want with us?" he said in a tone of mingled sulkiness and bravado. "Let me tell you, I am one of His Majesty’s dragoons, and you’ll pay well for any ill you do to me. I care not a fig for you, for all your gentrice. If you would but lay down your pop-guns and stand before me man to man, I would give you all the satisfaction you want." The fellow was a boor but he spoke like a man, and I liked him for his words. But I replied grimly: "I will have none of your bragging. Go and try that in your own stye, you who shoot at women. I will give you as long as I may count a hundred, and if before that you have not stripped off every rag you have on and come forward to me here, by God I will shoot you down like the dogs you are." And with this I began solemnly to count aloud. At first they were still rebellious, but fear of the death which glinted to them from the barrels of the pistols won the mastery. Slowly and with vast reluctance they began to disrobe themselves of belt and equipments, of coat and jackboots, till they stood before me in the mild spring air as stark as the day they were born. Their faces were heavy with malice and shame.