And how, going out thus under cover of night, I had meant to indulge a boyish fancy by seeing the light of Isobel Fortune's window. And how, coming to the Kirkillstane, I met David Borland leaving the house, whistling cheerfully. “Oh, Paul, Paul!” cried my father, “I mind of you an infant on her knees that's ben there, and it might have been but yesterday your greeting in the night wakened me to mourn and ponder on your fate.” And how Borland, divining my object there, and himself new out triumphant from that cheerful house of many daughters, made his contempt for the Spoiled Horn too apparent. “You walked to the trough-stane when you were a twelvemonth old,” said my father with the irrelevance of great grief, as if he recalled a dead son's infancy. And how, maddened by some irony of mine, he had struck a blow upon my chest, and so brought my challenge to something more serious and gentlemanly than a squalid brawl with fists upon the highway. I stopped my story; it seemed useless to be telling it to one so much preoccupied with the thought of the woman he loved. His lips were open, his eyes were constant on the door. But “Well! Well!” he cried again eagerly, and I resumed. Of how I had come home, and crept into my guilty chamber and lay the long night through, torn by grief and anger, jealousy and distress. And how evading the others of the household as best I could that day, I had in the afternoon at the hour appointed gone out with Uncle Andrew's pistol. My father moaned--a waefu' sound! And found young Borland up on the moor before me with such another weapon, his face red byordinary, his hands and voice trembling with passion. “Poor lad, poor lad!” my father cried blurting the sentiment as he had been a bairn. How we tossed a coin to decide which should be the first to fire, and Borland had won the toss, and gone to the other end of our twenty paces with vulgar menaces and “Spoiled Horn” the sweetest of his epithets. “Poor lad! he but tried to bluster down the inward voice that told him the folly o't,” said father. And how Borland had fired first. The air was damp. The sound was like a slamming door. “The door of hope shut up for him, poor dear,” cried father. And how he missed me in his trepidation that made his hand that held the pistol so tremble that I saw the muzzle quiver even at twenty paces. “And then you shot him deliberately I M cried my father. “No, no,” I cried at that, indignant. “I aimed without a glance along the barrel: the flint flashed; the prime missed fire, and I was not sorry, but Borland cried 'Spoiled Horn' braggingly, and I cocked again as fast as I could, and blindly jerked the trigger. I never thought of striking him. He fell with one loud cry among the rushes.” “Murder, by God!” cried my father, and he relapsed into a chair, his body all convulsed with horror.