and Rittmaster under that invincible monarch, the bulwark of the
Protestant faith, Gustavus the Victorious; conceive, I say, Dugald
Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket that should be, in Paris, concerned with
a matter of weight and moment not necessary to be mooted or minted
of. As I am sitting at my tavern ordinary, for I consider that an
experienced cavalier should ever lay in provenant as occasion
serveth, comes in to me a stipendiary of my Lord Winter, bidding me
know that his master would speak to me: and that not coram populo,
as I doubt not your lordship said at St. Leonard's College in St.
Andrews, but privily. Thereon I rise and wait on him; to be brief-
-brevis esse laboro, as we said lang syne--his lordship would have
me to be of his backers in private rencontre with four gentlemen of
the King's Musketeers.

Concerning the cause of this duello, I may well say teterrima
causa. His lordship's own sister Milady Clarik was in question;
she being, I fear me, rather akin in her way of life to Jean
Drocheils (whom your lordship may remember; for, the Baillies
expulsing her from Aberdeen, she migrated to St. Andrews, ad
eundem, as the saying is) than like, in her walk and conduct, to a
virtuous lady of a noble family. She was, indeed, as current
rumour had it, the light o'love or belle amie of Monsieur
d'Artagnan, his lordship's adversary.

But of siclike least said soonest mended. I take cloak and sword,
and follow with his lordship and two other experienced cavaliers
unto the place of rencontre, being a waste croft whereon a loon was
herding goats, behind the Palace of the Luxembourg. Here we find
waiting us four soldados, proper tall men of their hands, who
receive us courteously. He that first gave cause of quarrel to my