John Splendid | Page 9

would
never weary of though you tramped with him in a thousand glens. We
call him Splendid, not for his looks but for his style."
The object of my friend's description was speaking into the ear of
MacCailein Mor by this time, and the Marquis's face showed his tale
was interesting, to say the least of it.

We waited no more, but went out into the street I was barely two closes
off from the Tolbooth when a messenger came running after me, sent
by the Marquis, who asked if I would oblige greatly by waiting till he
made up on me. I went back, and met his lordship with his kinsman and
mine-manager coming out of the court-room together into the lobby
that divided the place from the street.
"Oh, Elrigmore!" said the Marquis, in an offhand jovial and equal way;
"I thought you would like to meet my cousin here--M'Iver of the
Barbreck; something of a soldier like yourself, who has seen service in
Lowland wars."
"In the Scots Brigade, sir?" I asked M'lver, eyeing him with greater
interest than ever. He was my senior by about a dozen years seemingly,
a neat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over the middle height,
carrying a rattan in his hand, though he had a small sword tucked under
the skirt of his coat.
"With Lumsden's regiment," he said. "His lordship here has been telling
me you have just come home from the field."
"But last night. I took the liberty while Inneraora was snoring. You
were before my day in foreign service, and yet I thought I knew by
repute every Campbell that ever fought for the hard-won dollars of
Gustavus even before my day. There were not so many of them from
the West Country."
"I trailed a pike privately," laughed M'lver, "and for the honour of Clan
Diarmaid I took the name Munro. My cousin here cares to have none of
his immediate relatives make a living by steel at any rank less than a
cornal's, or a major's at the very lowest Frankfort, and Landsberg, and
the stark field of Leipzig were the last I saw of foreign battles, and the
God's truth is they were my bellyful. I like a bit splore, but give it to me
in our old style, with the tartan instead of buff, and the target for
breastplate and taslets. I came home sick of wars."
"Our friend does himself injustice, my dear Elrigmore," said Argile,
smiling; "he came home against his will, I have no doubt, and I know

he brought back with him a musketoon bullet in the hip, that couped
him by the heels down in Glassary for six months."
"The result," M'Iver hurried to exclaim, but putting out his breast with a
touch of vanity, "of a private rencontre, an affair of my own with a
Reay gentleman, and not to be laid to my credit as part of the war's
scaith at all."
"You conducted your duello in odd style under Lums-den, surely," said
I, "if you fought with powder and ball instead of steel, which is more of
a Highlander's weapon to my way of thinking. All our affairs in the
Reay battalion were with claymore--sometimes with targe, sometimes
wanting."
"This was a particular business of our own," laughed John Splendid (as
I may go on to call M'lver, for it was the name he got oftenest behind
and before in Argile). "It was less a trial of valour than a wager about
which had the better skill with the musket. If I got the bullet in my
groin, I at least showed the Mackay gentleman in question that an
Argile man could handle arquebus as well as arme blanche as we said
in the France. I felled my man at one hundred and thirty paces, with six
to count from a ritt-master's signal. Blow, present, God sain Mackay's
soul! But I'm not given to braggadocio."
"Not a bit, cousin," said the Marquis, looking quizzingly at me.
"I could not make such good play with the gun against a fort gable at so
many feet," said I.
"You could, sir, you could," said John Splendid in an easy, offhand,
flattering way, that gave me at the start of our acquaintance the whole
key to his character. "I've little doubt you could allow me half-a-dozen
paces and come closer on the centre of the target."
By this time we were walking down the street, the Marquis betwixt the
pair of us commoners, and I to the left side. Lowlanders and
Highlanders quickly got out of the way before us and gave us the crown
of the causeway. The main part of them the Marquis never let his eye

light on; he kept his nose cocked in the air in the