Gordon sat with a Bible in his hand, abstracted, his eyes staring on a window that looked on the branches of the highest tree about the castle. He had been reading or praying with his master before the physician had come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived. There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in the eyes of M’Iver or myself. I can swear John was glad enough to escape their glance. He was as little at ease as his master, made all the fuss he could with his bottle, and drank his wine with far too great a deliberation for a person generally pretty brisk with the beaker. “It’s a fine day,” said he at last, breaking the silence. “The back of the winter’s broken fairly.” Then he started and looked at me, conscious that I might have some contempt for so frail an opening. “Did you come here to speak about the weather?” asked MacCailein, with a sour wearied smile. “No,” said M’Iver, ruffling up at once; “I came to ask when you are going to take us back the road we came?” “To--to--overbye?” asked MacCailein, baulking at the name. “Just so; to Inverlochy,” answered M’Iver. “I suppose we are to give them a call when we can muster enough men?” “Hadn’t we better consider where we are first?” said MacCailein. Then he put his fair hand through his ruddy locks and sighed. “Have you nothing to say (and be done with it) about my--my--my part in the affair? His reverence here has had his will of me on that score.” M’Iver darted a look of annoyance at the minister, who seemed to pay no heed, but still to have his thoughts far off. “I have really nothing to say, your lordship, except that I’m glad to see you spared to us here instead of being left a corpse with our honest old kinsman Auchinbreac (_beannachd leas!_) and more gentry of your clan and house than the Blue Quarry will make tombs for in Kilmalieu. If the minister has been preaching, it’s his trade; it’s what you pay him for. I’m no homilist, thank God, and no man’s conscience.” “No, no; God knows you are not,” said Argile, in a tone of pity and vexation. “I think I said before that you were the poorest of consciences to a man in a hesitancy between duty and inclination.... And all my guests have left me, John; I’m a lonely man in my castle of Inneraora this day, except for the prayers of a wife--God bless and keep her!--who knows and comprehends my spirit And I have one more friend here in this room------” “You can count on John M’Iver to the yetts of Hell,” said my friend, “and I am the proud man that you should think it.”