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And then the mischief began. Sir Gilbert used words which, owing to Timpendean’s noise, Ross did not catch, but he heard Colonel Stewart’s reply: “Pray, Sir Gilbert, you have said a great deal already to provoke me; don’t provoke me further.” Then more hot words from Eliott, and Colonel Stewart threw a glass of wine in the baronet’s face. With that, Eliott started to his feet, drew his sword, and plunged it into Stewart’s stomach before the latter could rise from his chair or defend himself in any way.

Thereupon arose a babel of sound–a shout, the scuffle and tramp of unsteady feet, noise of chairs pushed aside and overturned on the bare boards, servants running to and fro. And Colonel Stewart, with clammy brow and failing limbs, sat silent in his chair, a dying man.

Captain Ross and his brother officer secured the swords of both men–shutting the stable door, indeed, after the steed was stolen; in hot haste doctors were sent for; and ‘mid the bustle and “strow” Eliott stumbled from the room and down the stair, “wanting his wig,” as the landlady, whom he passed on the way, deponed. Sir Gilbert’s old and faithful servant hurried his master out of the inn, and behind a great tombstone in the Abbey churchyard hid him till the cool night air gave him sense to attempt escape.

In a thick wood near the head of Rulewater Sir Gilbert Eliott lay concealed, till his friends succeeded in smuggling him aboard a small craft off the coast of Berwickshire, and an outlaw, with a warrant out against him, he lived an uneasy life in Holland for some years, until influential friends with difficulty got him pardon, and enabled him again to return to the Border.

That is the story as it is usually known. But it is fair to add that the tale is differently told in Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, where it is stated that Colonel Stewart was “a huffing, hectoring person,” and that he had given “great provocation, and gentlemen afterwards admitted that Stobbs was called upon by the laws of honour to take notice of the offence.” Evidence given at the inquiry, however, hardly seems to favour this view. Possibly neither side was quite free from blame; wine has other effects than to make glad the heart of man.