John Splendid | Page 7

of Loch Finne,
and far in the Highlands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in
them, and over the doors signboards telling of the most curious trades
for a Campbell burgh--horologers, cordiners, baxters, and such like
mechanicks that I felt sure poor Donald had small call for. They might
be incomers, but they were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I found
later on.
It was the court day, and his lordship was sitting in judgment on two
Strathlachlan fellows, who had been brawling at the Cross the week
before and came to knives, more in a frolic than in hot blood, with
some of the town lads. With two or three old friends I went into the
Tolbooth to see the play--for play it was, I must confess, in town
Inneraora, when justice was due to a man whose name by ill-luck was
not Campbell, or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem.
The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a spacious high-ceiled room,
well lighted from the bay-side. It was crowded soon after we got in,
with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the one way or the
other--for or against the poor lads in bilboes, who sat, simple-looking
enough, between the town officers, a pair of old bodachs in long scarlet
coats and carrying tuaghs, Lochaber axes, or halberds that never smelt

blood since they came from the smith.
It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Gruamach sitting on the bench,
and I was startled at the look of the man. I've seen some sour dogs in
my day--few worse than Ruthven's rittmasters whom we met in
Swabia--but I never saw a man who, at the first vizzy, had the dour
sour countenance of Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of Lochow.
Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called him in a bye-name,
and well he owned it, for over necklace or gorget I've seldom seen a
sterner jowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair and honest, this
was but the notion one got at a first glint; in a while I thought little was
amiss with his looks as he leaned on the table and cracked in a
humoursome laughing way with the paneled jury.
He might have been a plain cottar on Glen Aora side rather than King
of the Highlands for all the airs he assumed, and when he saw me,
better put-on in costume than my neighbours in court, he seemingly
asked my name in a whisper from the clerk beside him, and finding
who I was, cried out in St Andrew's English--
"What! Young Elrigmore back to the Glens! I give you welcome, sir, to
Baile Inneraora!"
I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying nothing in answer, for the
whole company glowered at me, all except the home-bred ones who
had better manners.
The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the charge the sheriff clerk
read to them in a long farrago of English with more foreign words to it
than ever I learned the sense of in College.
His lordship paid small heed to the witnesses who came forward to
swear to the unruliness of the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked
heedlessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to see. The man
who had been stabbed--it was but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk
had gone through from front to back with only some lose of blood--was
averse from being hard on the panels. He was a jocular fellow with the
right heart for a duello, and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made light of

the disturbance and his injury.
"Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen--MacCailein--my lordship--a bit
play. If the poor lad didn't happen to have his dirk out and I to run on it,
nobody was a bodle the worse."
"But the law"--started the clerk to say.
"No case for law at all," said the man. "It's an honest brawl among
friends, and I could settle the account with them at the next market-day,
when my shoulder's mended."
"Better if you would settle my account for your last pair of brogues,
Alasdair M'Iver," said a black-avised juryman.
"What's your trade?" asked the Marquis of the witness.
"I'm at the Coillebhraid silver-mines," said he. "We had a little too
much drink, or these MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to
variance."
The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought down his fist with a
bang on the table before him.
"Damn those silver-mines!" said he; "they breed more trouble in this
town of mine than I'm willing to thole. If they put a penny in my purse
it might not be so irksome, but they plague me sleeping and waking,
and I'm not a plack