field by the grown men of my party; it seems a poor kind of pleasure to outface 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.”
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.”
At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank,
