“Mr. Stewart,” said I, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, “you are older than I am, and should know your manners.  Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth?  I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some of yours.”

Alan had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his breeches pockets, his head a little on one side.  He listened, smiling evilly, as I could see by the starlight; and when I had done he began to whistle a Jacobite air.  It was the air made in mockery of General Cope’s defeat at Preston Pans: 

     “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet? 
     And are your drums a-beatin’ yet?”

And it came in my mind that Alan, on the day of that battle, had been engaged upon the royal side.

“Why do ye take that air, Mr. Stewart?” said I.  “Is that to remind me you have been beaten on both sides?”

The air stopped on Alan’s lips.  “David!” said he.

“But it’s time these manners ceased,” I continued; “and I mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Campbells.”

“I am a Stewart—­” began Alan.

“O!” says I, “I ken ye bear a king’s name.  But you are to remember, since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing.”

“Do you know that you insult me?” said Alan, very low.

“I am sorry for that,” said I, “for I am not done; and if you distaste the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue* will please you as little.  You have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a poor kind of pleasure to out-face a boy.  Both the Campbells and the Whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare.  It behoves you to speak of them as of your betters.”

     * A second sermon.

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

“This is a pity” he said at last.  “There are things said that cannot be passed over.”

“I never asked you to,” said I.  “I am as ready as yourself.”

“Ready?” said he.

“Ready,” I repeated.  “I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name.  Come on!” And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

“David!” he cried.  “Are ye daft?  I cannae draw upon ye, David.  It’s fair murder.”

“That was your look-out when you insulted me,” said I.

“It’s the truth!” cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity.  “It’s the bare truth,” he said, and drew his sword.  But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground.  “Na, na,” he kept saying, “na, na—­I cannae, I cannae.”