第66章 THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER:THE QUARREL(3)

"Whig"was the best name he had to give me."Here,"he would say,"here's a dub for ye to jump,my Whiggie!I ken you're a fine jumper!"And so on;all the time with a gibing voice and face.

I knew it was my own doing,and no one else's;but I was too miserable to repent.I felt I could drag myself but little farther;pretty soon,I must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox,and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast.My head was light perhaps;but Ibegan to love the prospect,I began to glory in the thought of such a death,alone in the desert,with the wild eagles besieging my last moments.Alan would repent then,I thought;he would remember,when I was dead,how much he owed me,and the remembrance would be torture.So I went like a sick,silly,and bad-hearted schoolboy,feeding my anger against a fellow-man,when I would have been better on my knees,crying on God for mercy.And at each of Alan's taunts,I hugged myself."Ah!"thinks I to myself,"I have a better taunt in readiness;when Ilie down and die,you will feel it like a buffet in your face;ah,what a revenge!ah,how you will regret your ingratitude and cruelty!"All the while,I was growing worse and worse.Once I had fallen,my leg simply doubling under me,and this had struck Alan for the moment;but I was afoot so briskly,and set off again with such a natural manner,that he soon forgot the incident.Flushes of heat went over me,and then spasms of shuddering.The stitch in my side was hardly bearable.At last I began to feel that Icould trail myself no farther:and with that,there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Alan,let my anger blaze,and be done with my life in a more sudden manner.He had just called me "Whig."I stopped.

"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[29]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."

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.