MacLean had a lean and wiry strength which had stood him in good stead upon more than one occasion in his checkered career.  He now drove an arm like a bar of iron between two broadcloth coats, sent the wearers thereof to right and left, and found himself one of an inner ring and facing Mistress Truelove Taberer, who stood at bay against the silversmith’s long table.  One arm was around the boy who had rowed her to the Fair View store a week agone; with the other she was defending her face from the attack of a beribboned gallant desirous of a kiss.  The boy, a slender, delicate lad of fourteen, struggled to free himself from his sister’s restraining arm, his face white with passion and his breath coming in gasps.  “Let me go, Truelove!” he commanded.  “If I am a Friend, I am a man as well!  Thou fellow with the shoulder knots, thee shall pay dearly for thy insolence!”

Truelove tightened her hold.  “Ephraim, Ephraim!  If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, thee is to go with him twain; if he take thy cloak, thee is to give him thy coat also; if he—­Ah!” She buried her profaned cheek in her arm and began to cry, but very softly.

Her tormentors, flushed with wine and sworn to obtain each one a kiss, laughed more loudly, and one young rake, with wig and ruffles awry, lurched forward to take the place of the coxcomb who had scored.  Ephraim wrenched himself free, and making for this gentleman might have given or received bodily injury, had not a heavy hand falling upon his shoulder stopped him in mid-career.

“Stand aside, boy,” said MacLean, “This quarrel’s mine by virtue of my making it so.  Mistress Truelove, you shall have no further annoyance.  Now, you Lowland cowards that cannot see a flower bloom but you wish to trample it in the mire, come taste the ground yourself, and be taught that the flower is out of reach!”

As he spoke he stepped before the Quakeress, weaponless, but with his eyes like steel.  The half dozen spendthrifts and ne’er-do-weels whom he faced paused but long enough to see that this newly arrived champion had only his bare hands, and was, by token of his dress, undoubtedly their inferior, before setting upon him with drunken laughter and the loudly avowed purpose of administering a drubbing.  The one that came first he sent rolling to the floor.  “Another for Hector!” he said coolly.

The silversmith, ensconced in safety behind the table, wrung his hands.  “Sirs, sirs!  Take your quarrel into the street!  I’ll no have fighting in my store.  What did ye rin in here for, ye Quaker baggage?  Losh! did ye ever see the like of that!  Here, boy, ye can get through the window.  Rin for the constable!  Rin, I tell ye, or there’ll be murder done!”

A gentleman who had entered the store unobserved drew his rapier, and with it struck up a heavy cane which was in the act of descending for the second time upon the head of the unlucky Scot.  “What is all this?” he asked quietly.  “Five men against one,—­that is hardly fair play.  Ah, I see there were six; I had overlooked the gentleman on the floor, who, I hope, is only stunned.  Five to one,—­the odds are heavy.  Perhaps I can make them less so.”  With a smile upon his lips, he stepped backward a foot or two until he stood with the weaker side.