By this time he was unshelled, and stood before the fire musing with a face of drunken wisdom on the events of the evening.  What seemed chiefly to interest him, was the character of Allan M’Aulay.  “To come over the Englishmen so cleverly with his Highland torch-bearers—­eight bare-breeched Rories for six silver candlesticks!—­it was a master-piece—­a tour de Passe—­it was perfect legerdemain—­and to be a madman after all!—­I doubt greatly, my lord” (shaking his head), “that I must allow him, notwithstanding his relationship to your lordship, the privileges of a rational person, and either batoon him sufficiently to expiate the violence offered to my person, or else bring it to a matter of mortal arbitrement, as becometh an insulted cavalier.”

“If you care to hear a long story,” said Lord Menteith, “at this time of night, I can tell you how the circumstances of Allan’s birth account so well for his singular character, as to put such satisfaction entirely out of the question.”

“A long story, my lord,” said Captain Dalgetty, “is, next to a good evening draught and a warm nightcap, the best shoeinghorn for drawing on a sound sleep.  And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient and obliged auditor.”

“Anderson,” said Lord Menteith, “and you, Sibbald, are dying to hear, I suppose, of this strange man too! and I believe I must indulge your curiosity, that you may know how to behave to him in time of need.  You had better step to the fire then.”

Having thus assembled an audience about him, Lord Menteith sat down upon the edge of the four-post bed, while Captain Dalgetty, wiping the relics of the posset from his beard and mustachoes, and repeating the first verse of the Lutheran psalm, ALLE GUTER Geister LOBEN den HERRN, etc. rolled himself into one of the places of repose, and thrusting his shock pate from between the blankets, listened to Lord Menteith’s relation in a most luxurious state, between sleeping and waking.

“The father,” said Lord Menteith, “of the two brothers, Angus and Allan M’Aulay, was a gentleman of consideration and family, being the chief of a Highland clan, of good account, though not numerous; his lady, the mother of these young men, was a gentlewoman of good family, if I may be permitted to say so of one nearly connected with my own.  Her brother, an honourable and spirited young man, obtained from James the Sixth a grant of forestry, and other privileges, over a royal chase adjacent to this castle; and, in exercising and defending these rights, he was so unfortunate as to involve himself in a quarrel with some of our Highland freebooters or caterans, of whom I think, Captain Dalgetty, you must have heard.”

“And that I have,” said the Captain, exerting himself to answer the appeal.  “Before I left the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, Dugald Garr was playing the devil in the Garioch, and the Farquharsons on Dee-side, and the Clan Chattan on the Gordons’ lands, and the Grants and Camerons in Moray-land.  And since that, I have seen the Cravats and Pandours in Pannonia and Transylvania, and the Cossacks from the Polish frontier, and robbers, banditti, and barbarians of all countries besides, so that I have a distinct idea of your broken Highlandmen.”