“And a flatterer like yourself, you mean,” said his lordship. “He and you learned the lesson in the same school, I’m thinking. And as ill-luck had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, as yours did when Colkitto came down the glens there to rape and burn. That’s the Devil for you; he’s aye planning to have the minute and the man together. Come, sir, come, sir, what do you think, what do you think?” He rose as he spoke and put his knees below him, and leaned across the bed with hands upon the blankets, staring his kinsman in the face as if he would pluck the truth from him out at the very eyes. His voice rose to an animal cry with an agony in it; the sinister look that did him such injustice breathed across his visage. His knuckle and collar-bones shone blae through the tight skin. “What do I think?” echoed M’Iver. “Well, now----” “On your honour now,” cried Argile, clutching him by the shoulder. At that M’Iver’s countenance changed: he threw off his soft complacence, and cruelty and temper stiffened his jaw. “I’ll soon give you that, my Lord of Argile,” said he. “I can lie like a Dutch major for convenience sake, but put me on honour and you’ll get the truth if it cost me my life. Purgatory’s your portion, Argile, for a Sunday’s work that makes our name a mock to-day across the envious world. Take to your books and your preachers, sir--you’re for the cloister and not for the field; and if I live a hundred years, I’ll deny I went with you to Inverlochy. I left my sword in Badenoch, but here’s my dagger” (and he threw it with a clatter on the floor); “it’s the last tool I’ll handle in the service of a scholar. To-morrow the old big wars for me; Hebron’s troopers will welcome an umquhile comrade, and I’ll find no swithering captains among the cavaliers in France.” Back sat my lord in bed, and laughed with a surrender shrill and distraught, until Master Gordon and I calmed him, and there was his cousin still before him in a passion, standing in the middle of the floor. “Stop, stop, John,” he cried; “now that for once I’ve got the truth from you, let us be better friends than ever before.” “Never the same again,” said M’I ver, firmly, “never the same again, for you ken my estimate of you now; and what avails my courtesy?” “Your flatteries, you mean,” said Argile, good-natured. “And, besides, you speak only of my two blunders; you know my other parts,--you know that by nature I am no poltroon.”