“No, sir; I hope you know me better. But how’s it to be done? I thought of going up in front of the whole quay and making him chew his lie at the point of my dagger. Then I thought more formality was needed--a friend or two, a select venue, and careful leisure time for so important a meeting.” “But what’s the issue upon which the rencontre shall take place?” asked M’Iver, it seemed to me with ridiculous scrupulosity. “Why need you ask?” said I. “You do not expect me to invite him to repeat the insult or exaggerate the same.” M’Iver turned on me almost roughly and shook me by the shoulder. “Man!” said he, “wake up, and do not let your wits hide in the heels of your boots. Are you clown enough to think of sending a lady’s name around the country tacked on to a sculduddry tale like this? You must make the issue somewhat more politic than that.” “I agree with you,” I confessed; “it was stupid of me not to think of it, but what can I do? I have no other quarrel with the man.” “Make one, then,” said M’Iver. “I cannot comprehend where you learned your trade as cavalier, or what sort of company you kept in Mackay’s, if you did not pick up and practise the art of forcing a quarrel with a man on any issue you cared to choose. In ten minutes I could make this young fellow put down his gage in a dispute about the lacing of boots.” “But in that way at least I’m the poorest of soldiers; I never picked a quarrel, and yet here’s one that sets my gorge to my palate, but cannot be fought on.” “Tuts, tuts! man,” he cried, “it seems that, after all, you must leave the opening of this little play to John M’Iver. Come with me a bit yont the Cross here and take a lesson.” He led me up the wide pend close and round the back of old Stonefield’s dwelling, and into a corner of a lane that gave upon the fields, yet at the same time kept a plain view of the door of Askaig’s house, where we guessed MacLachlan was now on his visit to the Provost’s family. “Let us stand here,” said he, “and I’ll swear I’m not very well acquainted with our friend’s habits if he’s not passing this way to Carlunnan sometime in the next ten minutes, for I saw Mistress Betty going up there, as I said, not so very long ago.” This hint at MacLachlan’s persistency exasperated me the more. I felt that to have him by the throat would be a joy second only to one other in the world. M’Iver saw my passion--it was ill to miss seeing it--and seemed struck for the first time by the import of what we were engaged upon. “We were not given to consider the end of a duello from the opening when abroad,” he said; “but that was because we were abroad, and had no remonstrance and reminder in the face of familiar fields and houses and trees, and the passing footsteps of our own people. Here, however, the end’s to be considered from the beginning--have you weighed the risks in your mind?” “I’ve weighed nothing,” said I, shortly, “except that I feel in me here I shall have his blood before nightfall.”