“Frost and snow might have been Argile’s friend when that proverb was made,” said John Splendid, “but here are changed times; our last snow did not keep Colkitto on the safe side of Cladich. Still, if this be snow in earnest,” he added with a cheerier tone, “it may rid us of these vermin, who’ll find provand iller to get every extra day they bide. Where are you going, Master Gordon?” “To the well,” said the minister, simply, stopping at the port, with a wooden stoup in his hand. “Some of our friends must be burning for a mouthful, poor dears; the wounded flesh is drouthy.” John turned himself round on a keg he sat on, and gave a French shrug he had picked up among foreign cavaliers. “Put it down, sir,” he said; “there’s a wheen less precious lives in this hold than a curate’s, and for the turn you did us in coming up to alarm us of the rear attack, if for nothing else, I would be sorry to see you come to any skaith. Do you not know that between us and the well there might be death half-a-dozen times? The wood, I’ll warrant, is hotching still with those disappointed warriors of Clanranald, who would have no more reverence for your life than for your Geneva bands.” “There’s no surer cure for the disease of death in a hind than for the same murrain in a minister of the Gospel--or a landed gentleman,” said Gordon, touched in his tone a little by the austerity of his speeches as we heard them at the kirk-session. John showed some confusion in his face, and the minister had his feet on the steps before he could answer him. “Stop, stop!” he cried. “Might I have the honour of serving the Kirk for once? I’ll get the water from the well, minister, if you’ll go in again and see how these poor devils of ours are thriving. I was but joking when I hinted at the risk; our Athole gentry are, like enough, far off by this time.” “I liked you better when you were selfish and told the truth, than now that you’re valiant (in a small degree) and excuse it with a lie,” quo’ the minister, and off he set. He was beyond the wall, and stepping down the brae before we could be out at the door to look after him. “Damn his nipped tongue!” fumed John. “But man! there’s a lovable quirk in his character too. I’ll give twenty pounds (Scots) to his kirk-plate at the first chance if he wins out of this fool’s escapade of his without injury.” There was no doubt the minister’s task had many hazards in it, for he carried stave nor steel as he jogged on with the stoup, over the frank open brae-side, down to the well. Looking at him going down into the left of the gut as unafeared as he had come up on the right of it, I put myself in his place, and felt the skin of my back pimp-ling at the instinct of lurking enemies.