THROUGH   THE   ISLE   OF   MULL.                    145
don't know which of us did best. This pleasant  rivalry
put us at once upon friendly terms ; and I sat up and
drank punch with him (or to be more correct, sat up and
watched him drink it) until he was so tipsy that he wept
upon my shoulder.
I tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of Alan's
button; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of
it. Indeed, he bore some grudge against the family and
friends of Ardshiel, and before he was drunk he read me
a lampoon, in very good Latin, but with a very ill
meaning, which he had made in elegiac verses upon a
person of that house.
When I told him of my catechist, he shook his head,
and said I was lucky to have got clear off. " That is a
very dangerous man," he said; "Duncan Mackiegh is
his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and
has been often accused of highway robberies, and once of
murder."
"The cream of it is," says I, "that he called him-
self a catechist."
"And why should he not?" says he, "when that is
what he is ? It was Maclean of Duart gave it to him
because he was blind. But, perhaps, it was a peety," says
my host, "for he is always on the road, going from one
place to another to hear the young folk say their re-
ligion; and doubtless, that is a great temptation to the
poor man."
At last, when my landlord could drink no more, he
showed me to a bed, and I lay down in very good spirits;
K