Draw! you bloody dog! Draw!" shouted the now thoroughly roused
Borderer, snatching from its scabbard the sabre of a dragoon who stood
close at hand.
It was no great fight. The cavalryman had doubtless by far the greater
skill with the sabre; but drink muddled his brain and hampered his
movements, and the whirlwind attack of the younger man gave no rest to
his opponent nor opportunity to steady himself. In little more than a
minute the dragoon lay gasping out his life.
"Had ye rued what ye did, ye should hae been dealt wi' only by your
Maker," muttered the Borderer as the dead man's comrades bore away the
body. "Little did I look to see _you_ this day after a' they years, or
to have _your_ bluid on my hands. It was an ill chance that brought us
thegither again, and an ill day for me an' mine that lang syne brought
you into our quiet glen."
But the incident did not end here. The private soldier had slain his
superior in rank, and but for the strenuous representations of his
company commander and sure friend, a native of his own part of the
Border, it had gone hard with Private Maxwell.
The story, as told to his captain, was this. Maxwell, then a half-grown
boy, lived with his mother in a lonely cottage in a quiet Dumfriesshire
glen.
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