’Hearken to me. If my lord continue to do ye wrong, and will not use you kindly, by mine honourable word in the hearing of all these friends, I will not only leave his lordship—I will maintain you to the last drop of my blood. But if ye pursue my lord to take his life, seeing that he has sent for me to aid him, I will defend him to the uttermost of my power.’ Then said the Sheriff, ’Bargany, we are honourable men and peaceful. We are not here to attack the Earl, but to defend ourselves in that thing in which he would do us wrong.’ ’I will deal straightly with my lord,’ said Bargany; ’be content, and leave the outcome to me.’ ’We are content,’ they replied, both of them as one. ’We ken a man when we front him, for we ourselves are men. We will abide your judgment, whatever you may command.’ So in a trice Bargany had gotten the Earl to promise all good things, and the Galloway men were satisfied. Thereafter they all dined together with my lord in the house of Inch, and parted very merry. And the men of Galloway convoyed us northward to the braes of Glenap, where the whole force and retinue of Bargany’s servants and friends met us. Thus was the Earl released from durance, and his promises were loud and many, so that we were all well-contented. And I thought that the old feud was at last come to an end. *CHAPTER XXIV* *THE SLAUGHTER IN THE SNOW* But, alas! I was never more disappointed, shamed, deceived in my life. For no sooner was our Earl back in his own messuages and domains, and behind his lines of hackbuttmen, than he resiled from all his promises—both to the Galloway men, who had done so honourably in the releasing and convoying of him, and (what seemed to me worse) also to Bargany, who had pledged himself in honour to satisfy the Sheriff and Garthland. For after all, a lie told to a loon of Galloway is not like one to a man’s own kin and country. Though, of course, a man that is true all through the web, will not tell a lie to any. But such men are few, at least in the shire of Ayr where I dwell, and in Edinburgh to which I have at different times voyaged. But Bargany, as was natural, was fierce in his indignation with the crack-tryst Earl. ’For,’ said he, ’he has made me, that am a man of my word, break faith with men of a like pattern, even with Uchtred MacDowall of Garthland and the Sheriff of Galloway.’ So after all this tangled business, instead of peace, as my deeply-deceived master had supposed when he gave over his daughter to the traitors of Auchendrayne, there issued at the last naught but feud, more deadly and hateful than ever.