It was in the old Black Bull Inn at Jedburgh that the meeting took place.  There had been a Head Court that forenoon to determine the list of voters for the year, and a large and already somewhat convivial company assembled afterwards in the dining-room of the Black Bull.  Wine flowed, and as the evening waned, guest after guest prudently took himself off, till of the original party there were left but five—­Sir Gilbert, Colonel Stewart, two officers of the Royal Regiment of North British Dragoons (the Scots Greys), and the proprietor of Timpendean—­the latter described in the evidence as being “very noysie.”

It is easy to imagine the scene.  The long, low-ceilinged room, lit by candles, reeking of dinner and of wine.  Eliott, still brooding over his defeat in the recent parliamentary election, bent on picking a quarrel; Stewart, amiable and for a time conciliatory, till goaded beyond endurance; the two officers, very red in the face, laughing and treating the whole affair as a huge joke; and Timpendean, the while, in a monotonous loud bawl, chanting, very much out of tune, a song, most of the verses of which he forgot before he had sung two lines, ever starting afresh ad nauseam, after the manner of drunken men.  It was not a seemly spectacle, but it was the fashion of the day, and but for Eliott all might have ended with no worse effect than a bad headache next morning.  But for Eliott—­unfortunately.  Nothing, apparently, would satisfy that gentleman.  Colonel Stewart had let fall words which were twisted into an affront.  The Colonel assured him that no such words had passed his lips; but that if he had by chance uttered anything which could be construed as an insult, or if anything said by him had hurt Sir Gilbert’s feelings, he was sorry for it, and he willingly apologised.

Then Sir Gilbert must needs drag in politics.  There was the burning question of the late election.  Why had Colonel Stewart voted against him?  He would have expected the Colonel’s vote sooner than anybody’s, and he took it ill that it had not been given to him.  Colonel Stewart explained that as he lay under very great obligations to Sir Patrick Scott and his family, he considered that he had no choice but to vote as he had done; but this did not satisfy Sir Gilbert; the vote should have been his by rights, and all the efforts of Captain Ross as peacemaker could not keep him from harping on this one string—­the supposed slight put upon him in the matter of the vote.  Colonel Stewart was more than willing to drop the subject, and at last Captain Ross, thinking the matter settled, momentarily turned away, in an endeavour to stop the monotony of Timpendean’s tuneless, dreary song.

And then the mischief began.  Sir Gilbert used words which, owing to Timpendean’s noise, Ross did not catch, but he heard Colonel Stewart’s reply:  “Pray, Sir Gilbert, you have said a great deal already to provoke me; don’t provoke me further.”  Then more hot words from Eliott, and Colonel Stewart threw a glass of wine in the baronet’s face.  With that, Eliott started to his feet, drew his sword, and plunged it into Stewart’s stomach before the latter could rise from his chair or defend himself in any way.