The cast with his eyes, which had procured him in the Highlands the nickname of Gillespie Grumach (or the grim), was less perceptible when he looked downward, which perhaps was one cause of his having adopted that habit.  In person, he was tall and thin, but not without that dignity of deportment and manners, which became his high rank.  Something there was cold in his address, and sinister in his look, although he spoke and behaved with the usual grace of a man of such quality.  He was adored by his own clan, whose advancement he had greatly studied, although he was in proportion disliked by the Highlanders of other septs, some of whom he had already stripped of their possessions, while others conceived themselves in danger from his future schemes, and all dreaded the height to which he was elevated.

We have already noticed, that in displaying himself amidst his councillors, his officers of the household, and his train of vassals, allies, and dependents, the Marquis of Argyle probably wished to make an impression on the nervous system of Captain Dugald Dalgetty.  But that doughty person had fought his way, in one department or another, through the greater part of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, a period when a brave and successful soldier was a companion for princes.  The King of Sweden, and, after his example, even the haughty Princes of the Empire, had found themselves fain, frequently to compound with their dignity, and silence, when they could not satisfy the pecuniary claims of their soldiers, by admitting them to unusual privileges and familiarity.  Captain Dugald Dalgetty had it to boast, that he had sate with princes at feasts made for monarchs, and therefore was not a person to be brow-beat even by the dignity which surrounded M’Callum More.  Indeed, he was naturally by no means the most modest man in the world, but, on the contrary, had so good an opinion of himself, that into whatever company he chanced to be thrown, he was always proportionally elevated in his own conceit; so that he felt as much at ease in the most exalted society as among his own ordinary companions.  In this high opinion of his own rank, he was greatly fortified by his ideas of the military profession, which, in his phrase, made a valiant cavalier a camarade to an emperor.

When introduced, therefore, into the Marquis’s presence-chamber, he advanced to the upper end with an air of more confidence than grace, and would have gone close up to Argyle’s person before speaking, had not the latter waved his hand, as a signal to him to stop short.  Captain Dalgetty did so accordingly, and having made his military congee with easy confidence, he thus accosted the Marquis:  “Give you good morrow, my lord—­or rather I should say, good even; BESO A USTED Los Manos, as the Spaniard says.”

“Who are you, sir, and what is your business?” demanded the Marquis, in a tone which was intended to interrupt the offensive familiarity of the soldier.