第128章

Dare you compare your psalms, You son of a--``Son of a what?'' exclaimed Oldbuck.

``It means, I think,'' said the young soldier, with some reluctance, ``son of a female dog:

Do you compare your psalms, To the tales of the bare-arm'd Fenians''

``Are you sure you are translating that last epithet correctly, Hector?''

``Quite sure, sir,'' answered Hector, doggedly.

``Because I should have thought the nudity might have been quoted as existing in a different part of the body.''

Disdaining to reply to this insinuation, Hector proceeded in his recitation:

``I shall think it no great harm To wring your bald head from your shoulders--But what is that yonder?'' exclaimed Hector, interrupting himself.

``One of the herd of Proteus,'' said the Antiquary--``a _phoca,_ or seal, lying asleep on the beach.''

Upon which M`Intyre, with the eagerness of a young sportsman, totally forgot both Ossian, Patrick, his uncle, and his wound, and exclaiming--``I shall have her! I shall have her!''

snatched the walking-stick out of the hand of the astonished Antiquary, at some risk of throwing him down, and set off at full speed to get between the animal and the sea, to which element, having caught the alarm, she was rapidly retreating.

Not Sancho, when his master interrupted his account of the combatants of Pentapolin with the naked arm, to advance in person to the charge of the flock of sheep, stood more confounded than Oldbuck at this sudden escapade of his nephew.

``Is the devil in him,'' was his first exclamation, ``to go to disturb the brute that was never thinking of him!''--Then elevating his voice, ``Hector--nephew--fool--let alone the _Phoca_--let alone the _Phoca_!--they bite, I tell you, like furies.

He minds me no more than a post.There--there they are at it--Gad, the _Phoca_ has the best of it! I am glad to see it,''

said he, in the bitterness of his heart, though really alarmed for his nephew's safety--``I am glad to see it, with all my heart and spirit.''

In truth, the seal, finding her retreat intercepted by the light-footed soldier, confronted him manfully, and having sustained a heavy blow without injury, she knitted her brows, as is the fashion of the animal when incensed, and making use at once of her fore-paws and her unwieldy strength, wrenched the weapon out of the assailant's hand, overturned him on the sands, and scuttled away into the sea, without doing him any farther injury.Captain M`Intyre, a good deal out of countenance at the issue of his exploit, just rose in time to receive the ironical congratulations of his uncle, upon a single combat worthy to be commemorated by Ossian himself, ``since,'' said the Antiquary, ``your magnanimous opponent has fled, though not upon eagle's wings, from the foe that was low--Egad, she walloped away with all the grace of triumph, and has carried my stick off also, by way of _spolia opima._''

M`Intyre had little to answer for himself, except that a Highlander could never pass a deer, a seal, or a salmon, where there was a possibility of having a trial of skill with them, and that he had forgot one of his arms was in a sling.He also made his fall an apology for returning back to Monkbarns, and thus escape the farther raillery of his uncle, as well as his lamentations for his walking-stick.

``I cut it,'' he said, ``in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did not expect always to have been a bachelor--I would not have given it for an ocean of seals--O Hector! Hector!--thy namesake was born to be the prop of Troy, and thou to be the plague of Monkbarns!''