"Then, why," said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from
head to foot, "why do you wear your hat before the king?"

"Why should I take it off," retorted MacIan, with equal heat,
"before a usurper?"

Turnbull swung round on his heel. "Well, really," he said, "I
thought at least you were a loyal subject."

"I am the only loyal subject," answered the Gael. "For nearly
thirty years I have walked these islands and have not found
another."

"You are always hard to follow," remarked Turnbull, genially,
"and sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following."

"I alone am loyal," insisted MacIan; "for I alone am in
rebellion. I am ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I
am ready at any instant to defy the Hanoverian brood--and I defy
it now even when face to face with the actual ruler of the
enormous British Empire!"

And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face,
he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and
the eccentric elbow.

"What right had you stunted German squires," he cried, "to
interfere in a quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish
gentlemen? Who made you, whose fathers could not splutter English
while they walked in Whitehall, who made you the judge between