I saw through his game of getting satisfaction out of John Paul thro’ goading me, and determined he should have his fill of it.  For, all in all, he had me mad enough to fight three times over.

“Set aside the gentleman,” said I, standing up and taking off MacMuir’s coat, “and call me a lubberly clout like yourself, and we will see which is the better clout.”  I put off the longsleeved jacket, and faced him with my fists doubled, crying:  “I’ll teach you, you spawn of a dunghill, to speak ill of a good man!”

A clamour of “Fecht! fecht!” arose, and some of them applauded me, calling me a “swankie,” which I believe is a compliment.  A certain sense of fairness is often to be found where least expected.  They capsized the fat, protesting browsterwife over her own stool, and were pulling Jamie’s coat from his back, when I began to suspect that a fight was not to the sniveller’s liking.  Indeed, the very look of him made me laugh out —­’twas now as mild as a summer’s morn.

“Wow,” says Jamie, “ye maun fecht wi’ a man o’ yere ain size.”

“I’ll lay a guinea that we weigh even,” said I; and suddenly remembered that I had not so much as tuppence to bless me.

Happily he did not accept the wager.  In huge disgust they hustled him from the inn and put forward the blacksmith, who was standing at the door in his leather apron.  Now I had not bargained with the smith, who seemed a well-natured enough man, and grinned broadly at the prospect.  But they made a ring on the floor, I going over it at one end, and he at the other, when a cry came from the street, those about the entrance parted, and in walked John Paul himself.  At sight of him my new adversary, who was preparing to deal me out a blow to fell an ox, dropped his arms in surprise, and held out his big hand.

“Haith!  John Paul,” he shouted heartily, forgetting me, “’tis blythe I am to see yere bonnie face ance mair!

“An’ wha are ye, Jamie Darrell,” said the captain, “to be bangin’ yere betters?  Dinna ye ken gentry when ye see’t?”

A puzzled look spread over the smith’s grimy face.

“Gentry!” says he; “nae gentry that I ken, John Paul.  Th’ fecht be but a bit o’ fun, an’ nane o’ my seekin’.”

“What quarrel is this, Richard?” says John Paul to me.

“In truth I have no quarrel with this honest man,” I replied; “I desired but the pleasure of beating a certain evil-tongued Davie, who seems to have no stomach for blows, and hath taken his lies elsewhere.”

So quiet was the place that the tinkle of the guidwife’s needle, which she had dropped to the flags, sounded clear to all.  John Paul stood in the middle of the ring, erect, like a man inspired, and the same strange sense of prophecy that had stirred my blood crept over him and awed the rest, as tho’ ’twere suddenly given to see him, not as he was, but as he would be.  Then he spoke.