“I—I—I had not just heard distinctly,” said Bryce, evidently unwilling to offend either party.
“Come, come,” said the Udaller, “we will have no quarrelling about baubles; we shall be summoned presently to the rigging-loft,”—so he used to call the apartment used as a ball-room,—“and we must all go in good-humour. The things shall remain with Bryce for to-night, and to-morrow I will myself settle whom they shall belong to.”
The laws of the Udaller in his own house were absolute as those of the Medes. The two young men, regarding each other with looks of sullen displeasure, drew off in different directions.
It is seldom that the second day of a prolonged festival equals the first. The spirits, as well as the limbs, are jaded, and unequal to the renewed expenditure of animation and exertion; and the dance at Burgh-Westra was sustained with much less mirth than on the preceding evening. It was yet an hour from midnight, when even the reluctant Magnus Troil, after regretting the degeneracy of the times, and wishing he could transfuse into the modern Hialtlanders some of the vigour which still animated his own frame, found himself compelled to give the signal for general retreat.
Just as this took place, Halcro, leading Mordaunt Mertoun a little aside, said he had a message to him from Captain Cleveland.
“A message!” said Mordaunt, his heart beating somewhat thick as he spoke—“A challenge, I suppose?”
“A challenge!” repeated Halcro; “who ever heard of a challenge in our quiet islands? Do you think that I look like a carrier of challenges, and to you of all men living?—I am none of those fighting fools, as glorious John calls them; and it was not quite a message I had to deliver—only thus far—this Captain Cleveland, I find, hath set his heart upon having these articles you looked at.”
“He shall not have them, I swear to you,” replied Mordaunt Mertoun.
“Nay, but hear me,” said Halcro; “it seems that, by the marks or arms that are upon them, he knows that they were formerly his property. Now, were you to give me the box, as you promised, I fairly tell you, I should give the man back his own.”
“And Brenda might do the like,” thought Mordaunt to himself, and instantly replied aloud, “I have thought better of it, my friend. Captain Cleveland shall have the toys he sets such store by, but it is on one sole condition.”
“Nay, you will spoil all with your conditions,” said Halcro; “for, as glorious John says, conditions are but”——
“Hear me, I say, with patience.—My condition is, that he keeps the toys in exchange for the rifle-gun I accepted from him, which will leave no obligation between us on either side.”
“I see where you would be—this is Sebastian and Dorax all over. Well, you may let the jagger know he is to deliver the things to Cleveland—I think he is mad to have them—and I will let Cleveland know the conditions annexed, otherwise honest Bryce might come by two payments instead of one; and I believe his conscience would not choke upon it.”
With these words, Halcro went to seek out Cleveland, while Mordaunt, observing Snailsfoot, who, as a sort of privileged person, had thrust himself into the crowd at the bottom of the dancing-room, went up to him, and gave him directions to deliver the disputed articles to Cleveland as soon as he had an opportunity.
“Ye are in the right, Maister Mordaunt,” said the jagger; “ye are a prudent and a sensible lad—a calm answer turneth away wrath—and mysell, I sall be willing to please you in ony trifling matters in my sma’ way; for, between the Udaller of Burgh-Westra and Captain Cleveland, a man is, as it were, atween the deil and the deep sea; and it was like that the Udaller, in the end, would have taken your part in the dispute, for he is a man that loves justice.”
“Which apparently you care very little about, Master Snailsfoot,” said Mordaunt, “otherwise there could have been no dispute whatever, the right being so clearly on my side, if you had pleased to bear witness according to the dictates of truth.”
“Maister Mordaunt,” said the jagger, “I must own there was, as it were, a colouring or shadow of justice on your side; but then, the justice that I meddle with, is only justice in the way of trade, to have an ellwand of due length, if it be not something worn out with leaning on it in my lang and painful journeys, and to buy and sell by just weight and measure, twenty-four merks to the lispund; but I have nothing to do, to do justice betwixt man and man, like a Fowd or a Lawright-man at a lawting lang syne.”
“No one asked you to do so, but only to give evidence according to your conscience,” replied Mordaunt, not greatly pleased either with the part the jagger had acted during the dispute, or the construction which he seemed to put on his own motives for yielding up the point.
But Bryce Snailsfoot wanted not his answer; “My conscience,” he said, “Maister Mordaunt, is as tender as ony man’s in my degree; but she is something of a timorsome nature, cannot abide angry folk, and can never speak above her breath, when there is aught of a fray going forward. Indeed, she hath at all times a small and low voice.”
“Which you are not much in the habit of listening to,” said Mordaunt.
“There is that on your ain breast that proves the contrary,” said Bryce, resolutely.
“In my breast?” said Mordaunt, somewhat angrily,—“what know I of you?”
“I said on your breast, Maister Mordaunt, and not in it. I am sure nae eye that looks on that waistcoat upon your own gallant brisket, but will say, that the merchant who sold such a piece for four dollars had justice and conscience, and a kind heart to a customer to the boot of a’ that; sae ye shouldna be sae thrawart wi’ me for having spared the breath of my mouth in a fool’s quarrel.”
“I thrawart!” said Mordaunt; “pooh, you silly man! I have no quarrel with you.”
“I am glad of it,” said the travelling merchant; “I will quarrel with no man, with my will—least of all with an old customer; and if you will walk by my advice, you will quarrel nane with Captain Cleveland. He is like one of yon cutters and slashers that have come into Kirkwall, that think as little of slicing a man, as we do of flinching a whale—it’s their trade to fight, and they live by it; and they have the advantage of the like of you, that only take it up at your own hand, and in the way of pastime, when you hae nothing better to do.”
The company had now almost all dispersed; and Mordaunt, laughing at the jagger’s caution, bade him good-night, and went to his own place of repose, which had been assigned to him by Eric Scambester, (who acted the part of chamberlain as well as butler,) in a small room, or rather closet, in one of the outhouses, furnished for the occasion with the hammock of a sailor.
CHAPTER XIX.
The daughters of Magnus Troil shared the same bed, in a chamber which had been that of their parents before the death of their mother. Magnus, who suffered grievously under that dispensation of Providence, had become disgusted with the apartment. The nuptial chamber was abandoned to the pledges of his bereaved affection, of whom the eldest was at that period only four years old, or thereabouts; and, having been their nursery in infancy, continued, though now tricked and adorned according to the best fashion of the islands, and the taste of the lovely sisters themselves, to be their sleeping-room, or, in the old Norse dialect, their bower.