All I care for is adventure, moving chance, and hot encounter; therefore all of law I learned was how to live without it.

Nevertheless, for amusement's sake, as I must needs be at my desk an hour or so in the afternoon, I took to the sporting branch of the law, the pitfalls, and the ambuscades; and of all the traps to be laid therein, pedigrees are the rarest.

There is scarce a man worth a cross of butter, but what you may find a hole in his shield within four generations.

And so I struck our own escutcheon, and it sounded hollow.

There is a point--but heed not that; enough that being curious now, I followed up the quarry, and I am come to this at last--we, even we, the lords of Loch Awe, have an outlaw for our cousin, and I would we had more, if they be like you." '"Sir," I answered, being amused by his manner, which was new to me (for the Doones are much in earnest), "surely you count it no disgrace to be of kin to Sir Ensor Doone, and all his honest family!" '"If it be so, it is in truth the very highest honour and would heal ten holes in our escutcheon.