John Splendid | Page 8

the richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin,
John Splendid, a chance of a living and occupation for his wits, I would
drown them out with the water of Cromalt Burn."
The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking his head oddly like one
taking liberties with a master, said, "We're a drouthy set, my lord, at the
mines, and I wouldn't be saying but what we might drink them dry
again of a morning, if we had been into town the night before."
His lordship cut short his sour smile at the man's fancy, and bade the
officers on with the case.

"You have heard the proof," he said to the jury when it came to his turn
to charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me I
should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men
at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them
on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these
Coillebhraid miners is what I am not going to guarantee."
Of course the fellows were found guilty--one of stabbing, the other of
art and part--for MacLachlan was no friend of MacCailein Mor, and as
little friend to the merchant burghers of Inneraora, for he had the poor
taste to buy his shop provand from the Lamont towns of Low Cowal.
"A more unfriendly man to the Laird of MacLachlan might be for
hanging you on the gibbet at the town-head," said his lordship to the
prisoners, spraying ink-sand idly on the clean page of a statute-book as
he spoke; "but our three trees upbye are leased just now to other
tenants,--Badenoch hawks a trifle worse than yourselves, and more
deserving."
The men looked stupidly about them, knowing not one word of his
lordship's English, and he was always a man who disdained to converse
much in Erse. He looked a little cruelly at them and went on.
"Perhaps clipping your lugs might be the bonniest way of showing you
what we think of such on-goings in honest Inneraora; or getting the
Doomster to bastinado you up and down the street But we'll try what a
fortnight in the Tolbooth may do to amend your visiting manners. Take
them away, officers."
"Abair moran taing--say 'many thanks' to his lordship," whispered one
of the red-coat halberdiers in the ear of the bigger of the two prisoners.
I could hear the command distinctly where I sat, well back in the court,
and so no doubt could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used to such
obsequious foolishness and he made no dissent or comment.
"Taing! taing!" said one spokesman of the two MacLachlans in his
hurried Cowal Gaelic, and his neighbour, echoing him word for word
in the comic fashion they have in these parts; "Taing! taing! I never

louted to the horseman that rode over me yet, and I would be
ill-advised to start with the Gruamach one!"
The man's face flushed up as he spoke. It's a thing I've noticed about
our own poor Gaelic men: speaking before them in English or Scots,
their hollow look and aloofness would give one the notion that they
lacked sense and sparkle; take the muddiest-looking among them and
challenge him in his own tongue, and you'll find his face fill with wit
and understanding.
I was preparing to leave the court-room, having many people to call on
in Inneraora, and had turned with my two friends to the door, when a
fellow brushed in past us--a Highlander, I could see, but in trews--and
he made to go forward into the body of the court, as if to speak to his
lordship, now leaning forward in a cheerful conversation with the
Provost of the burgh, a sonsy gentleman in a peruke and figured
waistcoat.
"Who is he, this bold fellow?" I asked one of my friends, pausing with
a foot on the door-step, a little surprised at the want of reverence to
MacCailein in the man's bearing.
"Iain Aluinn--John Splendid," said my friend. We were talking in the
Gaelic, and he made a jocular remark there is no English for. Then he
added, "A poor cousin of the Marquis, a M'Iver Campbell (on the
wrong side), with little schooling, but some wit and gentlemanly parts.
He has gone through two fortunes in black cattle, fought some fighting
here and there, and now he manages the silver-mines so adroitly that
Gillesbeg Gruamach is ever on the brink of getting a big fortune, but
never done launching out a little one instead to keep the place going. A
decent soul the Splendid! throughither a bit, and better at promise than
performance, but at the core as good as gold, and a fellow you