I was angry, not at her words, for I knew she did not mean them, but at my inability to see what the fascinating jade was driving at. "Inconsiderate," she repeated firmly. "You'd be content to be introduced to the Prince with a great swathe of dirty, blood-stained linen round your head, regardless of how it reflected on me." "Reflected on you?" I echoed blankly. "Yes. We shouldn't match. I suppose dear old Bloggs was a bachelor?" "He was," said I, resigning the contest in despair. The doctor lived in a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken. He had just opened the door to us, and was eyeing us uncertainly, when the Colonel and the Chief, returning on foot from their inspection, having left their horses to be baited under the watchful eye of a Highlander, stopped beside us. "Are you the doctor?" asked Margaret promptly, as if to forestall any backing out on my part. If I could have joyed at anything, I should have been overjoyed at her keenness in having me seen to. "Yes," he said, but very softly. "Then please attend to this gentleman's wound," she said. "Is he a rebel?" he asked, so loudly that he might have been talking to some one across the street, and instinctively I turned round There, sure enough, was the parson, a pasty, pursy, mean-looking rogue, coming across to see what was doing. "It's his head I want you to attend to," retorted Margaret, "not his politics." "I doctor no rebels," said he, louder than ever. "Man," intervened Maclachlan, taking a pistol from his belt, and emphasizing his words by gently tapping its barrel on the palm of his hand, "if in ten minutes yon head isn't doctored to pairfection, it's your own sel' will be beyond all the doctoring in England." "It's against all law," said the doctor. "I'm the law in this clachan to-day," said Maclachlan simply, still tapping away with his pistol. Hearing the parson behind, he turned round and added drily, "And the gospel." Hereupon the parson's face took on the appearance of ill-made, ill-risen dough, and he turned and slipped off with creeping, noiseless steps, like a cat. "Come in," whispered the doctor. "Ye're a man o' sense," said Maclachlan, and pushed his pistol back into his belt. We all passed into the hall, and the doctor made the door carefully. "That damned pudding-face is a Whig," said he, "and so, of course, he's a Justice. The Squire's a Whig, and he's a Justice. Here am I, well-reputed in the faculty, and my wife coming of the Parker Putwells, one of the rare old county stocks--none of your newfangled button-men and turnip-growers--and I'm no Justice, because I'm a Church-and-King man of the old school." "They went out of fashion with flaxen bobs," said I.