“MacCailein!” said he, “I’ll never call you coward, but I’ll call you mad, book mad, closet mad! Was this strong fabric your house of Argile (John M’Iver the humblest of its members) built up on doubt and whim and shillyshally hither and yond? Was’t that made notable the name of your ancestor Cailein Mor na Sringe, now in the clods of Kilchrenan, or Cailein Iongataich who cooled his iron hide in Linne-na-luraich; or your father himself (peace with him!), who did so gallantly at Glenlivet?” “----And taught me a little of the trade of slaughter at the Western Isles thirty years ago come Candlemas,” said the Marquis. “How a man ages! Then--then I had a heart like the bird of spring.” “He could have taught you worse! I’m your cousin, and I’ll say it to your beard, sir! Your glens and howes are ruined, your cattle are houghed and herried, your clan’s name is a bye-word this wae day in all Albainn, and you sit there like a chemist weighing the wind on your stomach.” “You see no farther than your nose, John,” said the Marquis, petulantly, the candle-light turning his eyes blood-red. “Thank God for that same!” said Mlver, “if it gives me the wit to keep an enemy from striking the same. If the nose was Argile’s, it might be twisted off his face while he debated upon his right to guard it.” “You’re in some ways a lucky man,” said the Marquis, still in the most sad and tolerant humour. “Did you never have a second’s doubt about the right of your side in battle?” “Here’s to the doubt, sir!” said M’Iver. “I’m like yourself and every other man in a quandary of that kind, that thinking on it rarely brought me a better answer to the guess than I got from my instinct to start with.” Argile put his fingers through his hair, clearing the temples, and shutting wearied eyes on a perplexing world. “I have a good deal of sympathy with John’s philosophy,” I said, modestly. “I hold with my father that the sword is as much God’s scheme as the cassock. What are we in this expedition about to start but the instruments of Heaven’s vengeance on murtherers and unbelievers?” “I could scarcely put it more to the point myself,” cried M’Iver. “A soldier’s singular and essential duty is to do the task set him with such art and accomplishment as he can--in approach, siege, trench, or stronghold.” “Ay, ay! here we are into our dialectics again,” said his lordship, laughing, with no particular surrender in his merriment. “You gentlemen make no allowance for the likelihood that James Grahame, too, may be swearing himself Heaven’s chosen weapon. ‘Who gave Jacob to the spoil and Israel to the robbers--did not I, the Lord?’ Oh, it’s a confusing world!”