CHAPTER XVI .-- THE BLOODY CARTRIDGE.
So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear; And hears him in the rustling wood, and sees His course at distance by the bending trees; And thinks--Here comes my mortal enemy, And either he must fall in fight or I.
DRYDEN'S _Palamon and Arcite_.
Nay, never shake thy gory locks at me; Thou canst not say I did it! _Macbeth_.
It was on a fine summer morning, somewhere about four o'clock, when I wakened from my night's rest, and was about thinking to bestir myself, that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard stretching south from our back windows.

I listened--and I listened--and I better listened--and still the sound of the argle-bargling became more distinct, now in a fleeching way, and now in harsh angry tones, as if some quarrelsome disagreement had taken place.

I had not the comfort of my wife's company in this dilemmy; she being away, three days before, on the top of Tammie Trundle the carrier's cart, to Lauder, on a visit to her folks there; her mother (my gudemother like) having been for some time ill with an income in her leg, which threatened to make a lameter of her in her old age, the two doctors there--not speaking of the blacksmith, and sundry skeely old women--being able to make nothing of the business; so nobody happened to be with me in the room saving wee Benjie, who was lying asleep at the back of the bed, with his little Kilmarnock on his head, as sound as a top.

Nevertheless, I looked for my clothes; and, opening one half of the window shutter, I saw four young birkies, well dressed--indeed three of them customers of my own--all belonging to the town; two of them young doctors, one of them a writer's clerk, and the other a grocer.

The whole appeared very fierce and fearsome, like turkey-cocks; swaggering about with warlike arms as if they had been the king's dragoons; and priming a pair of pistols, which one of the surgeons, a spirity, outspoken lad, Maister Blister, was holding in his grip.
I jealoused at once what they were after, being now a wee up to fire-arms; so I saw that scaith was to come of it; and that I would be wanting in my duty on four heads,--first, as a Christian; second, as a man; third, as a subject; and fourth, as a father; if I withheld myself from the scene; nor lifted up my voice, however fruitlessly, against such crying iniquity as the wanton letting out of human blood; so forth I hastened, half dressed, with my grey stockings rolled up my thighs over my corduroys, and my old hat above my cowl, to the kail-yard of contention.
I was just in the nick of time; and my presence checked the effusion of blood for a little--but wait a wee.