His face grew dark, till he looked like
the man I had seen the night before.
"I allow no man to slight my race," he said in a harsh voice.
"It's the truth whether you like it or not. And you that claimed to be
a gentleman! What is it they say about the Highlands?" And I quoted a
ribald Glasgow proverb.
What moved me to this insolence I cannot say, I was in the wrong, and I
knew it, but I was too much of a child to let go my silly pride.
Ringan got up very quickly and walked three steps. The blackness had
gone from his face, and it was puzzled and melancholy.
"There's a precious lot of the bairn in you, Mr. Garvald," he said,
"and an ugly spice of the Whiggamore. I would have killed another man
for half your words, and I've got to make you pay for them somehow."
And he knit his brow and pondered.
"I'm ready," said I, with the best bravado I could muster, though
the truth is I was sick at heart. I had forced a quarrel like an
ill-mannered boy on the very man whose help I had come to seek. And I
saw, too, that I had gone just that bit too far for which no recantation
would win pardon.
"What sort of way are you ready?" he asked politely. "You would fight
me with your pistols, but you haven't got them, and this is no a matter
that will wait.
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