With this most disabling thought in his mind to warn him from a too complete victory, Wat once more guarded, and for a long time contented himself with keeping off the furious strokes of the chief's assault, as easily, to all appearance, as a roof turns aside the pelting of a summer shower. Then, as Keppoch took breath a moment, his first fury having worn itself out, Wat attacked in his turn, and, puzzling his opponent, as was his wont, with the lightning swiftness of his thrust and recovery, caught his claymore deftly near the hilt, and in a moment it was flying out of his fingers. Keppoch gazed after his weapon with as much surprise as if a hand had been reached out of the blue sky to snatch it from his grasp. "God!" he cried, "but ye are a most mighty sworder--ne'er a one like ye within the Highland line. Who was your master at the play?" Wat pointed to where old Jack Scarlett sat smiling complacently beside Lochiell. "There is my teacher," he said, "and at my best I am but a bairn with a windlestraw in my master's hands." Scarlett wagged his beard at Keppoch's evident consternation. "No, no," he said, "I am old and stiff. Do not believe him. Why, lad, ye beat me the last time I tried ye with that same trick, though indeed I myself had taught it ye at the first." "But I was vexed for the lad," he added under his breath, "and maybe I did not just try my best." Of course after this nothing would serve the chiefs but that Wat and Scarlett must fight a long bout with the blunted point, which presently they did amid tremendous excitement. "Oich! Oich!" shouted the clansmen, jumping in the air and yelling at every good stroke and lightning parry. "Bone o' Dugald More--what heevenly fechtin'!" cried Keppoch. "I declare I am like to greet--me that hasna grat since the year sixty, when Ian Mackintosh of Auchnacarra died afore I could kill him. Oh, for the like o' you twa to lead a foray intil the country of the Lochiell Camerons--_I mean the Appin Stewarts, foul fa' them!_ We wad gang in the daytime. For oh! it wad be a peety that sic bonny sword-play should be wasted in killing folk in the nicht season." And the tears actually streamed from the eye of Black Colin as he watched the swords clash and click, meeting each other sweetly and willingly like trysted lovers. "This is worth a' the kye frae Achnasheen to Glen Urquhart," he cried. "Ah, that was a stroke! 'Tis better than ganging to a kirk!" More than once Wat nearly got home. But old Jack, standing a little stiffly on his legs and biting at a bit of sour-grass, always turned the point an inch aside at the critical moment. At last came the opening, and the master's return flew like lightning. Wat's blade was forced upward in spite of his lowered wrist, and lo! Scarlett's point stood against the third button of his coat as steadily as a master in a school points at the blackboard with his ferule.