If I am a spinner, I'll never be the first to smirch the roll o' my house with debt and dishonesty, if I can help it." "Fair nonsense! The height of nonsense! Your ancestors indeed! Mules make a great to-do about their ancestors having been horses!" David retorted with hot sarcasm on the freebooting Leslies, and their kin the Armstrongs and Kennedys; and to Scotchmen this is the very sorest side of a quarrel.

They can forgive a bitter word against themselves perhaps, but against their clan, or their dead, it is an unpardonable offence.

And certainly Robert had an unfair advantage; he was in a cool, wicked temper of envy and covetousness.

He could have struck himself for not having foreseen that old John Callendar would be sure to clear the name of dishonor, and thus let David and his L20,000 slip out of his control.
David had drunk enough to excite all the hereditary fight in his nature, and not enough to dull the anger and remorse he felt for having drunk anything at all.

The dreary, damp atmosphere and the cold, sloppy turf of Glasgow Green might have brought them back to the ordinary cares and troubles of every-day life, but it did not.