when left to oursells! Ay, he forgot wha said, "Vengeance is mine,
and I will repay it."'

'Weel, aweel, sirs,' said Jabos, whose hard-headed and
uncultivated shrewdness seemed sometimes to start the game when
others beat the bush--'weel, weel, ye may be a' mista'en yet; I'll
never believe that a man would lay a plan to shoot another wi' his
ain gun. Lord help ye, I was the keeper's assistant down at the
Isle mysell, and I'll uphaud it the biggest man in Scotland
shouldna take a gun frae me or I had weized the slugs through him,
though I'm but sic a little feckless body, fit for naething but
the outside o' a saddle and the fore-end o' a poschay; na, na, nae
living man wad venture on that. I'll wad my best buckskins, and
they were new coft at Kirkcudbright Fair, it's been a chance job
after a'. But if ye hae naething mair to say to me, I am thinking
I maun gang and see my beasts fed'; and he departed accordingly.

The hostler, who had accompanied him, gave evidence to the same
purpose. He and Mrs. Mac-Candlish were then reinterrogated whether
Brown had no arms with him on that unhappy morning. 'None,' they
said, 'but an ordinary bit cutlass or hanger by his side.'

'Now,' said the Deacon, taking Glossin by the button (for, in
considering this intricate subject, he had forgot Glossin's new
accession of rank),'this is but doubtfu' after a', Maister
Gilbert; for it was not sae dooms likely that he would go down
into battle wi' sic sma' means.'

Glossin extricated himself from the Deacon's grasp and from the
discussion, though not with rudeness; for it was his present