“That’s no credit to you, sir--it’s the strong blood of Diarmaid; there was no poltroon in the race but what came in on the wrong side of the blanket I’ve said it first, and I’ll say it to the last, your spirit is smoored among the books. Paper and ink will be the Gael’s undoing; my mother taught me, and my mother knew. So long as we lived by our hands we were the world’s invincibles. Rome met us and Rome tried us, and her corps might come in winter torrents, but they never tore us from our hills and keeps. What Rome may never do, that may paper and sheepskin; you, yourself, MacCailein, have the name of plying pen and ink very well to your own purpose in the fingers of old lairds who have small skill of that contrivance.” He would have passed on in this outrageous strain without remission, had not Gordon checked him with a determined and unabashed voice. He told him to sit down in silence or leave the room, and asked him to look upon his master and see if that high fever was a condition to inflame in a fit of temper. John Splendid cooled a little, and went to the window, looking down with eyes of far surmise upon the pleasance and the town below, chewing his temper between his teeth. “You see, Elrigmore, what a happy King of the Highlands I am,” said the Marquis, despondently. “Fortunate Auchinbreac, to be all bye with it after a moment’s agony!” “He died like a good soldier, sir,” I said; “he was by all accounts a man of some vices, but he wiped them out in his own blood.” “Are you sure of that? Is it not the old folly of the code of honour, the mad exaltation of mere valour in arms, that makes you think so? What if he was spilling his drops on the wrong side? He was against his king at least, and--oh, my wits, my wits, what am I saying?... I saw you did not drink my wine, Elrigmore; am I so low as that?” “There is no man so low, my lord,” said I, “but he may be yet exalted. We are, the best of us, the instruments of a whimsical providence” (“What a rank doctrine,” muttered the minister), “and Caesar himself was sometimes craven before his portents. You, my lord, have the one consolation left, that all’s not bye yet with the cause you champion, and you may yet lead it to the highest victory.”