"You're in some ways a lucky man," said the Marquis, still in the most sad and tolerant humour. "Did you never have a second's doubt about the right of your side in battle?"

"Here's to the doubt, sir!" said M'Iver. "I'm like yourself and every other man in a quandary of that kind, that thinking on it rarely brought me a better answer to the guess than I got from my instinct to start with."

Argile put his fingers through his hair, clearing the temples, and shutting wearied eyes on a perplexing world.

"I have a good deal of sympathy with John's philosophy," I said, modestly. "I hold with my father that the sword is as much God's scheme as the cassock. What are we in this expedition about to start but the instruments of Heaven's vengeance on murtherers and unbelievers?"

"I could scarcely put it more to the point myself," cried M'Iver. "A soldier's singular and essential duty is to do the task set him with such art and accomplishment as he can—in approach, siege, trench, or stronghold."

"Ay, ay! here we are into our dialectics again," said his lordship, laughing, with no particular surrender in his merriment. "You gentlemen make no allowance for the likelihood that James Grahame, too, may be swearing himself Heaven's chosen weapon. 'Who gave Jacob to the spoil and Israel to the robbers—did not I, the Lord?' Oh, it's a confusing world!"

"Even so, MacCailein; I'm a plain man," said M'Iver, "though of a good family, brought up roughly among men, with more regard to my strength and skill of arm than to book-learning; but I think I can say that here and in this crisis I am a man more fit, express, and appropriate than yourself. In the common passions of life, in hate, in love, it is the simple and confident act that quicker achieves its purpose than the cunning ingenuity. A man in a swither is a man half absent, as poor a fighter as he is indifferent a lover; the enemy and the girl will escape him ere he has throttled the doubt at his heart There's one test to my mind for all the enterprises of man—are they well contrived and carried to a good conclusion? There may be some unco quirks to be performed, and some sore hearts to confer at the doing of them, but Heaven itself, for all its puissance, must shorten the pigeon's wing that the gled of the wood may have food to live on."

"Upon my word, M'Iver," said Argile, "you beat me at my own trade of debate, and—have you ever heard of a fellow Machiavelli?"

"I kent a man of that name in a corps we forgathered with at Mentz—a 'provient schriever,' as they called him. A rogue, with a hand in the sporran of every soldier he helped pay wage to."

"This was a different person; but no matter. Let us back to the beginning of our argument—why did you favour my leaving for Dunbarton when Montrose came down the Glen?"

The blood swept to M'Iver's face, and his eye quailed.

"I favoured no such impolitic act," said he, slowly. "I saw you were bent on going, and I but backed you up, to leave you some rags of illusion to cover your naked sin."

"I thought no less," said Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder. You made mention of my family's safety, and it was the last straw that broke the back of my resolution. One word of honest duty from you at that time had kept me in Inner-aora though Abijah's array and Jeroboam's horse and foot were coming down the glens."

For a little M'Iver gave no answer, but sat in a chair of torture.

"I am sorry for it," he said at last, in a voice that was scarce his own; "I'm in an agony for it now; and your horse was not round Strone before I could have bit out the tongue that flattered your folly."

MacCailein smiled with a solemn pity that sat oddly on the sinister face that was a mask to a complex and pliable soul.

"I have no doubt," said he, "and that's why I said you were a devil's counsellor. Man, cousin! have we not played together as boys on the shore, and looked at each other on many a night across a candid bowl? I know you like the open book; you and your kind are the weak, strong men of our Highland race. The soft tongue and the dour heart; the good man at most things but at your word!"



CHAPTER XVI.—OUR MARCH FOR LOCHABER.

The essence of all human melancholy is in the sentiment of farewells. There are people roving about the world, to-day here, to-morrow afar, who cheat fate and avoid the most poignant wrench of this common experience by letting no root of their affection strike into a home or a heart Self-contained, aloof, unloved, and unloving, they make their campaign through life in movable tents that they strike as gaily as they pitch, and, beholding them thus evade the one touch of sorrow that is most inevitable and bitter to every sensitive soul, I have sometimes felt an envy of their fortune. To me the world was almost mirthful if its good-byes came less frequent. Cold and heat, the contumely of the slanderer, the insult of the tyrant, the agues and fevers of the flesh, the upheavals of personal fortune, were events a robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding notion of life's brevity.

Thus my leaving town Inneraora—its frozen hearths, its smokeless vents, its desecrated doorways, and the few of my friends who were back to it—was a stupendous grief. My father and my kinspeople were safe—we had heard of them by the returners from Lennox; but a girl with dark tresses gave me a closer passion for my native burgh than ever I felt for the same before. If love of his lady had been Argile's reason for retreat (thought I), there was no great mystery in his act.

What enhanced my trouble was that Clan MacLachlan—as Catholics always safe to a degree from the meddling of the invaders—had re-established themselves some weeks before in their own territory down the loch, and that young Lachlan, as his father's proxy, was already manifesting a guardian's interest in his cousin. The fact came to my knowledge in a way rather odd, but characteristic of John Splendid's anxiety to save his friends the faintest breeze of ill-tidings.

We were up early betimes in the morning of our departure for Lorn, though our march was fixed for the afternoon, as we had to await the arrival of some officers from Ceanntyre; and John and I, preparing our accoutrements, began to talk of the business that lay heaviest at my heart—the leaving of the girl we had found in Strongara wood.

"The oddest thing that ever happened to me," he said, after a while, "is that in the matter of this child she mothers so finely she should be under the delusion that I have the closest of all interests in its paternity. Did you catch her meaning when she spoke of its antecedents as we sat, the four of us, behind the fir-roots?"

"No, I can't say that I did," said I, wonderingly.

"You're not very gleg at some things, Elrigmore," he said, smiling. "Your Latin gave you no clue, did it, to the fact that she thought John M'Iver a vagabond of the deepest dye?"

"If she thought that," I cried, "she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her perilously near angry."

John with pursed lips stroked his chin, musing on my words. I was afraid for a little he resented my indiscretion, but resentment was apparently not in his mind, for his speech found no fault with me.

"Man, Colin," he said, "you could scarcely have played a more cunning card if you had had myself to advise you. But no matter about that."

"If she thinks so badly of you, then," I said, "why not clear yourself from her suspicions, that I am willing to swear (less because of your general character than because of your conduct since she and you and the child met) are without foundation?"

"I could scarcely meet her womanly innuendo with a coarse and abrupt denial," said he. "There are some shreds of common decency left in me yet."

"And you prefer to let her think the worst?"

He looked at me with a heightened colour, and he laughed shortly.

"You'll be no loser by that, perhaps," he said; and before I could answer he added, "Pardon a foolish speech, Colin; I learned the trick of fanfaron among foreign gentry who claimed a conquete d'amour for every woman who dropped an eye to their bold scrutiny. Do not give me any share of your jealousy for Lachlan MacLachlan of that ilk—I'm not deserving the honour. And that reminds me——"

He checked himself abruptly.

"Come, come," said I, "finish your story; what about MacLachlan and the lady?"

"The lady's out of the tale this time," he said, shortly. "I met him stravaiging the vacant street last night; that was all."

"Then I can guess his mission without another word from you," I cried, after a little dumfounderment. "He would be on the track of his cousin."

"Not at all," said John, with a bland front; "he told me he was looking for a boatman to ferry him over the loch."

This story was so plainly fabricated to ease my apprehension that down I went, incontinent, and sought the right tale in the burgh.

Indeed it was not difficult to learn the true particulars, for the place rang all the worse for its comparative emptiness with the scandal of M'Iver's encounter with Mac-Lachlan, whom, it appeared, he had found laying a gallant's siege to the upper window of Askaig's house, whose almost unharmed condition had made it a convenient temporary shelter for such as had returned to the town. In the chamber behind the window that Mac-Lachlan threw his peebles at, were his cousin and the child, as M'Iver speedily learned, and he trounced him from the neighbourhood with indignities.

"What set you on the man?" I asked John when I came back after learning this.

"What do you think?" said he.

"You could have done no more if you had an eye on the girl yourself," I said, "and that, you assure me, is out of the question."

"The reason was very simple," he answered. "I have a sort of elder man's mischievous pleasure in spoiling a young buck's ploy, and—and—there might be an extra interest in my entertainment in remembering that you had some jealous regard for the lady."

All I had that was precious to take with me when we left Inneraora to follow the track of Montrose was the friendly wave of Mistress Betty's hand as we marched out below the Arches on our way to the North.

Argile and Auchinbreac rode at our head—his lordship on a black horse called Lepanto, a spirited beast that had been trained to active exercises and field-practice; Auchinbreac on a smaller animal, but of great spirit and beauty. M'Iver and I walked, as did all the officers. We had for every one of our corps twelve shot apiece, and in the rear a sufficiency of centners of powder, with ball and match. But we depended more on the prick of pike and the slash of sword than on our culverins. Our Lowland levies looked fairly well disciplined and smart, but there was apparent among them no great gusto about our expedition, and we had more hope of our vengeance at the hands of our uncouth but eager clansmen who panted to be at the necks of their spoilers and old enemies.

M'Iver confided to me more than once his own doubts about the mettle of the companies from Dumbarton.

"I could do well with them on a foreign strand," he said, "fighting for the bawbees against half-hearted soldiery like themselves, but I have my doubts about their valour or their stomach for this broil with a kind of enemy who's like to surprise them terribly when the time comes. This affair's decision must depend, I'm afraid, for the most part on our own lads, and I wish there were more of them."

We went up the Glen at a good pace, an east wind behind us, and the road made a little easier for us since the snow had been trodden by the folks we were after. To-day you will find Aora Glen smiling—happy with crop and herd on either hand and houses at every turn of the road, with children playing below the mountain-ash that stands before each door. You cannot go a step but human life's in sight Our march was in a desolate valley—the winds with the cold odour (one might almost think) of ruin and death.

Beyond Lecknamban, where the time by the shadow on Tom-an-Uarader was three hours of the afternoon, a crazy old cailleach, spared by some miracle from starvation and doom, ran out before us wringing her hands, and crying a sort of coronach for a family of sons of whom not one had been spared to her. A gaunt, dark woman, with a frenzied eye, her cheeks collapsed, her neck and temples like crinkled parchment, her clothes dropping off her in strips, and her bare feet bleeding in the snow.

Argile scoffed at the superstition, as he called it, and the Lowland levies looked on it as a jocular game, when we took a few drops of her blood from her forehead for luck—a piece of chirurgy that was perhaps favourable to her fever, and one that, knowing the ancient custom, and respecting it, she made no fraca about.

She followed us in the snow to the ruins of Camus, pouring out her curses upon Athole and the men who had made her home desolate and her widowhood worse than the grave, and calling on us a thousand blessings.

Lochow—a white, vast meadow, still bound in frost—we found was able to bear our army and save us the toilsome bend round Stronmealchan. We put out on its surface fearlessly. The horses pranced between the isles; our cannon trundled on over the deeps; our feet made a muffled thunder, and that was the only sound in all the void. For Cruachan had looked down on the devastation of the enemy. And at the falling of the night we camped at the foot of Glen Noe.

It was a night of exceeding clearness, with a moon almost at the full, sailing between us and the south. A certain jollity was shed by it upon our tired brigade, though all but the leaders (who slept in a tent) were resting in the snow on the banks of the river, with not even a saugh-tree to give the illusion of a shelter. There was but one fire in the bivouac, for there was no fuel at hand, and we had to depend upon a small stock of peats that came with us in the stores-sledge.

Deer came to the hill and belled mournfully, while we ate a frugal meal of oat-bannock and wort. The Low-landers—raw lads—became boisterous; our Gaels, stern with remembrance and eagerness for the coming business, thawed to their geniality, and soon the laugh and song went round our camp. Argile himself for a time joined in our diversion. He came out of his tent and lay in his plaid among his more immediate followers, and gave his quota to the story or the guess. In the deportment of his lordship now there was none of the vexatious hesitancy that helped him to a part so poor as he played in his frowning tower at home among the soothing and softening effects of his family's domestic affairs. He was true Diarmaid the bold, with a calm eye and steadfast, a worthy general for us his children, who sat round in the light of the cheerful fire. So sat his forebears and ours on the close of many a weary march, on the eve of many a perilous enterprise. That cold pride that cocked his head so high on the causeway-stones of Inneraora relinquished to a mien generous, even affectionate, and he brought out, as only affection may, the best that was of accomplishment and grace in his officers around.

"Craignure," he would say, "I remember your story of the young King of Easaidh Ruadh; might we have it anew?" Or, "Donald, is the Glassary song of the Target in your mind? It haunts me like a charm."

And the stories came free, and in the owercome of the songs the dark of Glen Noe joined most lustily.

Songs will be failing from the memory in the ranging of the years, the passions that rose to them of old burned low in the ash, so that many of the sweetest ditties I heard on that night in Glen Noe have long syne left me for ever—all but one that yet I hum to the children at my knee. It was one of John Splendid's; the words and air were his as well as the performance of them, and though the English is a poor language wherein to render any fine Gaelic sentiment, I cannot forbear to give something of its semblance here. He called it in the Gaelic "The Sergeant of Pikes," and a few of its verses as I mind them might be Scotticed so—

When I sat in the service o' foreign commanders, Selling a sword for a beggar man's fee, Learning the trade o' the warrior who wanders, To mak' ilka stranger a sworn enemie; There was ae thought that nerved roe, and brawly it served me. With pith to the claymore wherever I won,— 'Twas the auld sodger's story, that, gallows or glory, The Hielan's, the Hielan's were crying me on!

I tossed upon swinging seas, splashed to my kilted knees, Ocean or ditch, it was ever the same; In leaguer or sally, tattoo or revally, The message on every pibroch that came, Was "Cruachan, Cruachan, O son remember us, Think o' your fathers and never be slack!" Blade and buckler together, though far off the heather, The Hielan's, the Hielan's were all at my back!

The ram to the gate-way, the torch to the tower, We rifled the kist, and the cattle we maimed; Our dirks stabbed at guess through the leaves o' the bower, And crimes we committed that needna be named: Moonlight or dawning grey, Lammas or Lady-day, Donald maun dabble his plaid in the gore; He maun hough and maun harry, or should he miscarry, The Hielan's, the Hielan's will own him no more!

And still, O strange Providence! mirk is your mystery, Whatever the country that chartered our steel Because o' the valiant repute o' our history, The love o' our ain land we maistly did feel; Many a misty glen, many a sheiling pen, Rose to our vision when slogans rang high; And this was the solace bright came to our starkest fight, A' for the Hielan's, the Hielan's we die!

A Sergeant o' Pikes, I have pushed and have parried O (My heart still at tether in bonny Glenshee); Weary the marches made, sad the towns harried O, But in fancy the heather was aye at my knee: The hill-berry mellowing, stag o' ten bellowing, The song o' the fold and the tale by the hearth, Bairns at the crying and auld folks a-dying, The Hielan's sent wi' me to fight round the earth!

O the Hielan's, the Hielan's, praise God for His favour, That ane sae unworthy should heir sic estate, That gi'ed me the zest o the sword, and the savour That lies in the loving as well as the hate. Auld age may subdue me, a grim death be due me, For even a Sergeant o' Pikes maun depart, But I'll never complain o't, whatever the pain o't, The Hielan's, the Hielan's were aye at my heart!

We closed in our night's diversion with the exercise of prayer, wherein two clerics led our devotion, one Master Mungo Law, a Lowlander, and the other his lordship's chaplain—Master Alexander Gordon, who had come on this expedition with some fire of war in his face, and never so much as a stiletto at his waist.

They prayed a trifle long and drearily the pair of them, and both in the English that most of our clansmen but indifferently understood. They prayed as prayed David, that the counsel of Ahithophel might be turned to foolishness; and "Lo," they said, "be strong and courageous; fear not, neither be afraid of the King of Ashur, neither for all the multitude that is with him; for there be more with us than with him," and John Splendid turned to me at this with a dry laugh.

"Colin, my dear," said he, "thus the hawk upon the mountain-side, and the death of the winged eagle to work up a valour for! 'There be more with us than with him.' I never heard it so bluntly put before. But perhaps Heaven will forgive us the sin of our caution, seeing that half our superior number are but Lowland levies."

And all night long deer belled to deer on the braes of Glen Noe.



CHAPTER XVII.—IN THE LAND OF LORN.

We might well be at our prayers. Appin paid dearly for its merriment in the land of Cailein Mor, and the MacDonalds were mulct most generously for our every hoof and horn. For when we crossed Loch Etive there came behind us from the ruined glens of Lower Lorn hordes of shepherds, hunters, small men of small families, who left their famished dens and holes, hunger sharping them at the nose, the dead bracken of concealment in their hair, to join in the vengeance on the cause of their distress. Without chieftains or authority, they came in savage bands, affronting the sea with their shouts as they swam or ferried; they made up with the wildest of our troops, and ho, ro! for the plaids far and wide on the errands of Hell. In that clear, cold, white weather—the weather of the badger's dream, as our proverb calls it—we brought these glens unfriendly, death in the black draught and the red wine of fire. A madness of hate seized on us; we glutted our appetites to the very gorge. I must give Argile the credit of giving no licence to our on-goings. He rode after us with his Lowlanders, protesting, threatening, cajoling in vain. Many a remonstrance, too, made Gordon, many an opening fire he stamped out in cot and bam. But the black smoke of the granary belching against the white hills, or the kyloe, houghed and maimed, roaring in its agony, or the fugitive brought bloody on his knees among the rocks—God's mercy!

Do you know why those unco spectacles were sometimes almost sweet to me, though I was more often a looker-on than a sharer in their horror? It was because I never saw a barn blaze in Appin or Glencoe but I minded on our own black barns in Shira Glen; nor a beast slashed at the sinew with a wanton knife, but I thought of Moira, the dappled one that was the pride of my mother's byre, made into hasty collops for a Stewart meal. Through this remoter Lorn I went, less conscious of cruelty than when I plied fire and sword with legitimate men of war, for ever in my mind was the picture of real Argile, scorched to the vitals with the invading flame, and a burgh town I cherished reft of its people, and a girl with a child at her neck flying and sobbing among the hills.

Montrose and MacColkitto were far before us, marching up the Great Glen. They had with them the pick of the clans, so we lived, as it were, at free quarters, and made up for weeks of short fare by a time of high feeding.

Over Etive and through the Benderloch, and through Appin and even up to Glencoe, by some strange spasm of physique—for she was frail and famished—the barefooted old cailleach of Carnus came after us, a bird of battle, croaking in a horrible merriment over our operations. The Dark Dame we called her. She would dance round the butchery of the fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way, whose larders in our masculine ignorance we had overlooked.

"I would give thee the choicest of the world," she would say. "What is too good for my heroes, O heroes of the myrtle-badge?"

"Sit down and pick," John Splendid bade her once, putting a roysterer's playful arm round her waist, and drawing her to the fire where a dinner stewed.

Up she threw her claws, and her teeth were at his neck with a weasel's instinct But she drew back at a gleam of reason.

"Oh, darling, darling," she cried, patting him with her foul hands, "did I not fancy for the moment thou wert of the spoilers of my home and honour—thou, the fleet foot, the avenger, the gentleman with an account to pay—on thee this mother's blessing, for thee this widow's prayers!"

M'Iver was more put about at her friendliness than at her ferocity, as he shook his plaiding to order and fell back from her worship.

"I've seldom seen a more wicked cat," said he; "go home, grandam, and leave us to our business. If they find you in Lochaber they will gralloch you like a Yule hind."

She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as she flew.

We left the Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber, and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling, calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald and a blessing on Argile.

His lordship sat at the helm of a barge, his face pallid and drawn with cold, and he sighed heavily as the beldame's cries came after us.

"There's little of God's grace in such an omen," said he, in English, looking at the dim figure on the shore, and addressing Gordon.

"It could happen nowhere else," said the cleric, "but in such a ferocious land. I confess it, my lord—I confess it with the bitter shame of surrender, that I behold generations of superstition and savagery still to beat down ere your people are so amenable to the Gospel as the folks of the Lowland shires. To them such a shrieking harridan would be an object of pity and stern measure; they would call her mad as an etter-cap, and keep her in bounds: here she is made something of a prophetess———"

"How?" asked Argile, shortly, and he was looking wistfully at the hills we were leaving—the hills that lay between him and his books.

"There's not a Highlander in your corps but has bowed his head to her blessing; there's not one but looks upon her curse of the MacDonalds as so much of a gain in this enterprise."

"Oh," said his lordship, "you are a little extravagant We have our foolish ways, Gordon, but we are not altogether heathen; and do you think that after all there might not be something in the portents of a witch like yon in her exaltation?"

"No more than's in the howling of the wind in the chimney," said Gordon, quickly.

"Perhaps not," said Argile, after a little, "perhaps not; but even the piping of the vent has something of prophecy in it, though the wind bloweth where it listeth. I have only a scholar's interest in these things, I give you my word, and——"

He laughed with a little restraint before he went on.

"Do you know, John," he called out to M'Iver—"do you know what our cailleach friend says of our jaunt? She put a head in at my tent last night, and 'Listen, MacCailein,' said she, 'and keep on high roads,' said she, 'and Inverlochy's a perilous place,' said she, 'and I'd be wae to see the heather above the gall.'"

John Splendid's back was to him as he sat at the prow of a boat coming close on our stern, but I saw the skin of his neck flame. He never turned: he made no answer for a moment, and when he spoke it was with a laughing allusion in English to the folly of portents.

This was so odd an attitude for a man usually superstitious to take up, that I engaged him on the point whenever we landed.

"You seem to have no great respect for the Dark Dame's wizardy," said I.

He took me aside from some of the clansmen who could overhear.

"Never let these lads think that you either lightly Dame Dubh or make overmuch of her talk about the heather and gall, for they prize her blessing, strangely enough, and they might lay too great stress on its failure. You catch me?"

I nodded to keep him going, and turned the thing over in my mind.

"What do you think of the prophecy yourself?" he asked; "is it not familiar?"

In a flash it came to my mind that I had half-hinted to him at what the Macaulay woman had said in the fold of Elrigmore.

"I think," said I, "the less the brooding on these things the better."

If we had our own misgivings about the end of this jaunt, our companions had none. They plunged with hearts almost jocular into the woods on Lochaber's edge, in a bright sunshine that glinted on the boss of the target and on the hilt of the knife or sword, and we came by the middle of the day to the plain on which lay the castle of Inverlochy—a staunch quadrangular edifice with round towers at the angles, and surrounded by a moat that smelled anything but freshly. And there we lay for a base, and thence we sent out round Keppoch and Locheil some dashing companies that carried on the work we began in Athole.

Auchinbreac's notion, for he was more than my lord the guide of this enterprise, was to rest a day or two in the castle and then follow on the heels of Montrose, who, going up Loch Ness-side, as we knew he was, would find himself checked in front by Seaforth, and so hemmed between two fires.

It was about three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon when Argile sent for M'Iver and myself to suggest a reconnoitring excursion up the Great Glen by the side of the lochs, to see how far the enemy might have reached before us.

"I'm sorry to lose your company, gentlemen," said he, "even for a day; but this is a delicate embassy, and I can fancy no one better able to carry it through successfully than the two gentlemen who have done more delicate and dangerous work in the ranks of the honourable Scots Brigade."

"I can say for myself," said John, "that there's not a man in Keppoch could guess my nativity or my politics if I had on another tartan than that of the Diarmaid."

"Ah! you have the tongue, no doubt of it," said Argile, smiling; "and if a change of colour would make your task less hazardous, why not effect it? I'm sure we could accommodate you with some neutral fabric for kilt and plaid."

"For the humour of the thing," said John, "I would like to try it; but I have no notion of getting hanged for a spy. James Grahame of Montrose has enough knowledge of the polite arts of war to know the difference between a spy in his camp in a false uniform and a scout taking all the risks of the road by wearing his own colours. In the one case he would hang us offhand, in the other there's a hair's-breadth of chance that he might keep us as hostages."

"But in any tartan, cousin, you're not going to let yourself be caught," said Argile. "We have too much need for you here. Indeed, if I thought you were not certain to get through all right, I would send cheaper men in your place."

John laughed.

"There's no more cure," said he, "for death in a common herd than for the same murrain in an ensign of foot."

"A scholar's sentiment!" cried Argile. "Are you taking to the philosophies?"

"It's the sentiment, or something like it, of your chaplain, Master Gordon," said John; "he reproved me with it on Dunchuach. But to do myself justice, I was never one who would run another into any danger I was unwilling to face myself."

The Marquis said no more, so we set about preparing for the journey.

"Well, Elrigmore, here we are running the loupegarthe with MacDonalds on the one side of us and Camerons on the other," said my comrade, as we set out at the mouth of the evening, after parting from a number of the clan who went up to the right at Spean to do some harrying in Glen Roy.

No gavilliger or provost-marshal ever gave a more hazardous gauntlet to run, thought I, and I said as much; but my musings brought only a good-humoured banter from my friend.

All night we walked on a deserted rocky roadway under moon and star. By the side of Loch Lochy there was not a light to be seen; even the solitary dwellings we crept bye in the early part of our journey were without smoke at the chimney or glimmer at the chink. And on that loch-side, towards the head of it, there were many groups of mean little hovels, black with smoke and rain, with ragged sloven thatch, the midden at the very door and the cattle routing within, but no light, no sign of human occupation.

It was the dawning of the day, a fine day as it proved and propitious to its close, that we ventured to enter one such hut or bothy at the foot of another loch that lay before us. Auchinbreac's last order to us had been to turn wherever we had indication of the enemy's whereabouts, and to turn in any case by morning. Before we could go back, however, we must have some sleep and food, so we went into this hut to rest us. It stood alone in a hollow by a burn at the foot of a very high hill, and was tenanted by a buxom, well-featured woman with a herd of duddy children. There was no man about the place; we had the delicacy not to ask the reason, and she had the caution not to offer any. As we rapped at her door we put our arms well out of sight below our neutral plaids, but I daresay our trade was plain enough to the woman when she came out and gave us the Gael's welcome somewhat grudgingly, with an eye on our apparel to look for the tartan.

"Housewife," said John M'Iver, blandly, "we're a bit off our way here by no fault of our own, and we have been on the hillside all night, and——"

"Come in," she said, shortly, still scrutinising us very closely, till I felt myself flushing wildly. She gave us the only two stools in her dwelling, and broke the peats that smouldered on the middle of her floor. The chamber—a mean and contracted interior—was lit mainly from the door and the smoke-vent, that gave a narrow glimpse of heaven through the black cabar and thatch. Round about the woman gathered her children, clinging at her gown, and their eyes stared large and round in the gloom at the two of us who came so appallingly into their nest.

We sat for a little with our plaids about us, revelling in the solace of the hearty fire that sent wafts of odorous reek round the dwelling; and to our dry rations the woman added whey, that we drank from birch cogies.

"I am sorry I have no milk just now," she said. "I had a cow till the day before yesterday; now she's a cow no more, but pith in Colkitto's heroes."

"They lifted her?" asked John.

"I would not say they lifted her," said the woman, readily, "for who would be more welcome to my all than the gentlemen of Keppoch and Seumais Grahame of Montrose?" And again she looked narrowly at our close-drawn plaids.

I stood up, pulled out my plaid-pin, and let the folds off my shoulder, and stood revealed to her in a Diarmaid tartan.

"You see we make no pretence at being other than what we are," I said, softly; "are we welcome to your whey and to your fire-end?"

She showed no sign of astonishment or alarm, and she answered with great deliberation, choosing her Gaelic, and uttering it with an air to impress us.

"I dare grudge no one at my door," said she, "the warmth of a peat and what refreshment my poor dwelling can give; but I've seen more welcome guests than the spoilers of Appin and Glencoe. I knew you for Campbells when you knocked."

"Well, mistress," said M'Iver, briskly, "you might know us for Campbells, and might think the worse of us for that same fact (which we cannot help), but it is to be hoped you will know us for gentlemen too. If you rue the letting of us in, we can just go out again. But we are weary and cold and sleepy, for we have been on foot since yesterday, and an hour among bracken or white hay would be welcome."

"And when you were sleeping," said the woman; "what if I went out and fetched in some men of a clan who would be glad to mar your slumber?"

John studied her face for a moment It was a sonsy and simple face, and her eyes were not unkindly.

"Well," he said, "you might have some excuse for a deed so unhospitable, and a deed so different from the spirit of the Highlands as I know them. Your clan would be little the better for the deaths of two gentlemen whose fighting has been in other lands than this, and a wife with a child at her breast would miss me, and a girl with her wedding-gown at the making would miss my friend here. These are wild times, good wife, wild and cruel times, and a widow more or less is scarcely worth troubling over. I think we'll just risk you calling in your men, for, God knows, I'm wearied enough to sleep on the verge of the Pit itself."

The woman manifestly surrendered her last scruple at his deliverance. She prepared to lay out a rough bedding of the bleached bog-grass our people gather in the dry days of spring.

"You may rest you a while, then," said she. "I have a husband with Keppoch, and he might be needing a bed among strangers himself."

"We are much in your reverence, housewife," said John, nudging me so that I felt ashamed of his double-dealing. "That's a bonny bairn," he continued, lifting one of the children in his arms; "the rogue has your own good looks in every lineament."

"Aye, aye," said the woman, drily, spreading her blankets; "I would need no sight of tartan to guess your clan, master. Your flattery goes wrong this time, for by ill-luck you have the only bairn that does not belong to me of all the brood."

"Now that I look closer," he laughed, "I see a difference; but I'll take back no jot of my compliment to yourself."

"I was caught yonder," said he to me a little later in a whisper in English, as we lay down in our corner. "A man of my ordinary acuteness should have seen that the brat was the only unspoiled member of all the flock."

We slept, it might be a couple of hours, and wakened together at the sound of a man's voice speaking with the woman outside the door. Up we sat, and John damned the woman for her treachery.

"Wait a bit," I said. "I would charge her with no treachery till I had good proofs for it I'm mistaken if your lie about your wife and weans has not left her a more honest spirit towards us."

The man outside was talking in a shrill, high voice, and the woman in a softer voice was making excuses for not asking him to go in. One of her little ones was ill of a fever, she said, and sleeping, and her house, too, was in confusion, and could she hand him out something to eat?

"A poor place Badenoch nowadays!" said the man, petulantly. "I've seen the day a bard would be free of the best and an honour to have by any one's fire. But out with the bannocks and I'll be going. I must be at Kilcumin with as much speed as my legs will lend me."

He got his bannocks and he went, and we lay back a while on our bedding and pretended to have heard none of the incident It was a pleasant feature of the good woman's character that she said never a word of her tactics in our interest.

"So you did not bring in your gentlemen?" said John, as we were preparing to go. "I was half afraid some one might find his way unbidden, and then it was all bye with two poor soldiers of fortune."

"John MacDonald the bard, John Lorn, as we call him, went bye a while ago," she answered simply, "on his way to the clan at Kilcumin."

"I have never seen the bard yet that did not demand his bardic right to kail-pot and spoon at every passing door."

"This one was in a hurry," said the woman, reddening a little in confusion.

"Just so," said M'Iver, fumbling in his hand some coin he had taken from his sporran; "have you heard of the gold touch for fever? A child has been brought from the edge of the grave by the virtue of a dollar rubbed on its brow. I think I heard you say some neighbour's child was ill? I'm no physician, but if my coin could—what?"

The woman flushed deeper than ever, an angered pride this time in her heat.

"There's no child ill that I know of," said she; "if there was, we have gold of our own."

She bustled about the house and put past her blankets, and out with a spinning-wheel and into a whirr of it, with a hummed song of the country at her lips—all in a mild temper, or to keep her confusion from showing itself undignified.

"Come away," I said to my comrade in English; "you'll make her bitterly angry if you persist in your purpose."

He paid no heed to me, but addressed the woman again with a most ingenious story, apparently contrived, with his usual wit, as he went on with it.

"Your pardon, goodwife," said he, "but I see you are too sharp for my small deceit I daresay I might have guessed there was no child ill; but for reasons of my own I'm anxious to leave a little money with you till I come back this road again. We trusted you with our lives for a couple of hours there, and surely, thinks I, we can trust you with a couple of yellow pieces."

The woman stopped her wheel and resumed her good-humour. "I thought," said she,—"I thought you meant payment for——"

"You're a bit hard on my manners, goodwife," said John. "Of course I have been a soldier, and might have done the trick of paying forage with a sergeant's blunt-ness, but I think I know a Gaelic woman's spirit better."

"But are you likely to be passing here again at any time?" cried the woman, doubt again darkening her face, and by this time she had the money in her hand. "I thought you were going back by the Glen?"

"That was our notion," said my comrade, marvellously ready, "but to tell the truth we are curious to see this Keppoch bard, whose songs we know very well in real Argile, and we take a bit of the road to Kilcumin after him."

The weakness of this tale was not apparent to the woman, who I daresay had no practice of such trickery as my friend was the master of, and she put the money carefully in a napkin and in a recess beneath one of the roof-joists. Our thanks she took carelessly, no doubt, because we were Campbells.

I was starting on the way to Inverlochy when M'Iver protested we must certainly go a bit of the way to Kilcumin.

"I'm far from sure," said he, "that that very particular bit of MacDonald woman is quite confident of the truth of my story. At any rate, she's no woman if she's not turning it over in her mind by now, and she'll be out to look the road we take before very long or I'm mistaken."

We turned up the Kilcumin road, which soon led us out of sight of the hut, and, as my friend said, a glance behind us showed us the woman in our rear, looking after us.

"Well, there's no turning so long as she's there," said I. "I wish your generosity had shown itself in a manner more convenient for us. There's another example of the error of your polite and truthless tongue! When you knew the woman was not wanting the money, you should have put it in your sporran again, and——"

"Man, Elrigmore," he cried, "you have surely studied me poorly if you would think me the man to insult the woman—and show my own stupidity at the same time—by exposing my strategy when a bit fancy tale and a short daunder on a pleasant morning would save the feelings of both the lady and myself."

"You go through life on a zigzag," I protested, "aiming for some goal that another would cut straight across for, making deviations of an hour to save you a second's unpleasantness. I wish I could show you the diplomacy of straightforwardness: the honest word, though hard to say sometimes, is a man's duty as much as the honest deed of hand."

"Am I not as honest of my word as any in a matter of honour? I but gloze sometimes for the sake of the affection I have for all God's creatures."

I was losing patience of his attitude and speaking perhaps with bitterness, for here were his foolish ideas of punctilio bringing us a mile or two off our road and into a part of the country where we were more certain of being observed by enemies than in the way behind us.

"You jink from ambuscade to ambuscade of phrase like a fox," I cried.

"Call it like a good soldier, and I'll never quarrel with your compliment," he said, good-humouredly. "I had the second excuse for the woman in my mind before the first one missed fire."

"Worse and worse!"

"Not a bit of it: it is but applying a rule of fortification to a peaceful palaver. Have bastion and ravelin as sure as may be, but safer still the sally-port of retreat."

I stood on the road and looked at him, smiling very smug and self-complacent before me, and though I loved the man I felt bound to prick a hole in his conceit.

But at that moment a dead branch snapped in a little plantation that lay by the way, and we turned quickly to see come to us a tall lean man in MacDonald clothing.



CHAPTER XVIII.—BARD OF KEPPOCH.

He was a lantern-jawed, sallow-faced, high-browed fellow in his prime, with the merest hint of a hirple or halt in his walk, very shabby in his dress, wearing no sporran, but with a dagger bobbing about at his groin. I have never seen a man with surprise more sharply stamped on his visage than was betrayed by this one when he got close upon us and found two of a clan so unlikely to have stray members out for a careless airing on a forenoon in Badenoch.

"You're taking your walk?" he said, with a bantering tone, after a moment's pause.

"You couldn't have guessed better," said John. "We are taking all we're likely to get in so barren a country."

The stranger chuckled sourly as the three of us stood in a group surveying each other. "My name," said he, in his odd north Gaelic, and throwing out his narrow chest, "is John MacDonad I'm Keppoch's bard, and I've no doubt you have heard many of my songs. I'm namely in the world for the best songs wit ever strung together. Are you for war? I can stir you with a stave to set your sinews straining. Are you for the music of the wood? The thrush itself would be jealous of my note. Are you for the ditty of the lover? Here's the songster to break hearts. Since the start of time there have been 'prentices at my trade: I have challenged North and East, South and the isle-flecked sea, and they cry me back their master."

M'Iver put a toe on one of mine, and said he, "Amn't I the unlucky man, for I never heard of you?"

"Tut, tut," cried the bard in a fret, "perhaps you think so much in Argile of your hedge-chanters that you give the lark of the air no ear."

"We have so many poets between Knapdale and Cruachan," said John, "that the business is fallen out of repute, and men brag when they can make an honest living at prose."

"Honest living," said the bard, "would be the last thing I would expect Clan Campbell to brag of."

He was still in an annoyance at the set-back to his vanity, shuffling his feet restlessly on the ground, and ill at ease about the mouth, that I've noticed is the first feature to show a wound to the conceit.

"Come, come," he went on, "will you dare tell me that the sheiling singers on Loch Finneside have never heard my 'Harp of the Trees'? If there's a finer song of its kind in all Albainn I've yet to learn it."

"If I heard it," said John, "I've forgotten it."

"Name of God!" cried the bard in amaze, "you couldn't; it goes so"—and he hummed the tune that every one in Argile and the west had been singing some years before.

We pretended to listen with eagerness to recall a single strain of it, and affected to find no familiar note. He tried others of his budget—some rare and beautiful songs, I must frankly own: some we knew by fragments; some we had sung in the wood of Creag Dubh—but to each and all John Splendid raised a vacant face and denied acquaintance.

"No doubt," said he, "they are esteemed in the glens of Keppoch, but Argile is fairly happy without them. Do you do anything else for a living but string rhymes?"

The bard was in a sweat of vexation. "I've wandered far," said he, "and you beat all I met in a multitude of people. Do you think the stringing of rhymes so easy that a man should be digging and toiling in the field and the wood between his duans?"

"I think," said Splendid (and it was the only time a note of earnestness was in his utterance)—"I think his songs would be all the better for some such manly interregnum. You sing of battles: have you felt the blood rush behind the eyes and the void of courageous alarm at the pit of the stomach? You hum of grief: have you known the horror of a desolate home? Love,—sir, you are young, young———"

"Thanks be with you," said the bard; "your last word gives me the clue to my answer to your first I have neither fought nor sorrowed in the actual fact; but I have loved, not a maid (perhaps), nor in errant freaks of the mind, but a something unnameable and remote, with a bounteous overflowing of the spirit. And that way I learned the splendour of war as I sat by the fire; and the widows of my fancy wring my heart with a sorrow as deep as the ruined homes your clan have made in my country could confer."

I'm afraid I but half comprehended his meaning, but the rapture of his eye infected me like a glisk of the sun. He was a plain, gawky, nervous man, very freckled at the hands, and as poor a leg in the kilt as well could be. He was fronting us with the unspoken superiority of the fowl on its own midden, but he had a most heart-some and invigorating glow.

"John Lorn, John Lom!" I cried, "I heard a soldier sing your songs in the ship Archangel of Leith that took us to Elsinore."

He turned with a grateful eye from M'Iver to me, and I felt that I had one friend now in Badenoch.

"Do you tell me?" he asked, a very child in his pleasure, that John Splendid told me after he had not the heart to mar. "Which one did they sing—'The Harp of the Trees' or 'Macrannul Og's Lament'? I am sure it would be the Lament: it is touched with the sorrow of the starless night on a rain-drummed, wailing sea. Or perhaps they knew—the gentle hearts—my 'Farewell to the Fisher.' I made it with yon tremor of joy, and it is telling of the far isles beyond Uist and Barra, and the Seven Hunters, and the white sands of Colomkill."

M'Iver sat down on the wayside and whittled a stick with a pretence at patience I knew he could scarcely feel, for we were fools to be dallying thus on the way in broad morning when we should be harking back to our friends as secretly as the fox.

"Were you on the ocean?" he asked the bard, whose rapture was not abated.

"Never," said he, "but I know Linnhe and Loch Eil and the fringe of Morar."

"Mere dubs," said M'Iver, pleasantly—"mere dubs or ditches. Now I, Barbreck, have been upon the deeps, tossed for days at hazard without a headland to the view. I may have made verse on the experience,—I'll not say yea or nay to that,—but I never gave a lochan credit for washing the bulged sides of the world."

"You hadn't fancy for it, my good fellow," said the bard, angry again. "I forgot to say that I saw Loch Finne too, and the Galley of Lorn taking MacCailein off from his castle. I'm making a song on that now."

"Touched!" thinks I, for it was a rapier-point at my comrade's very marrow. He reddened at once, pulled down his brows, and scanned the bard of Keppoch, who showed his knowledge of his advantage.

"If I were you," said John in a little, "I would not put the finish on that ditty till I learned the end of the transaction. Perhaps MacCailein (and God bless my chief!) is closer on Lochiel and Lochaber to-day than you give him credit for."

"Say nothing about that," said I warningly in English to my friend, never knowing (what I learned on a later occasion) that John Lorn had the language as well as myself.

"When MacCailein comes here," said the bard, "he'll get a Badenoch welcome."

"And that is the thief's welcome, the shirt off his very back," cried M'Iver.

"Off his back very likely," said the bard; "it's the back we see oftenest of the bonny gentleman."

M'Iver grew livid to the very lip, and sprang to his feet, dutching with great menace the black knife he had been whittling with. Not a bit abashed, the bard pulled out his dirk, and there was like to be a pretty to-do when I put between them.

The issue of the quarrel that thus I retarded was postponed altogether by a circumstance that changed the whole course of our adventure in this wild country,—severed us at a sharp wrench from the Campbell regiments, and gave us the chance—very unwelcome it was—of beholding the manner of war followed by Alasdair MacDonald's savage tribes. It happened in a flash, without warning. No blow had been struck by the two gentlemen at variance, when we were all three thrown to the ground, and the bound prisoners of a squad of Macgregors who had got out of the thicket and round us unobserved in the heat of the argument.

They treated us all alike—the bard as curt as the Campbells, in spite of his tartan,—and without exchanging any words with us marched us before them on a journey of several hours to Kilcumin.

Long or ever we reached Kilcumin we were manifestly in the neighbourhood of Montrose's force. His pickets held the road; the hillsides moved with his scouts. On a plain called Leiter-nan-lub the battalion lay camped, a mere fragment of the force that brought ruin to Argile: Athol men under the Tutor of Struan, Stewarts of Appin, Maclans of Glencoe, a few of the more sedate men of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Maclean, as well as a handful of the Gregaraich who had captured us. It was the nightfall when we were turned into the presence of Sir Alasdair, who was sitting under a few ells of canvas playing cartes with some chieftains by the light of a fir-root fire.

"Whom have we here?" said he, never stopping for more than a glimpse of us.

"Two Campbells and a man who says he's bard of Keppoch," he was told.

"A spy in an honest tartan, no doubt," said Sir Alas-dair; "but well put it to the test with Keppoch himself: tell him to come over and throw an eye on the fellow."

Keppoch was sent for, and came across from a fire at another part of the field, a hiccough at his throat and a blear look in his eye as one that has been overly brisk with the bottle, but still and on the gentleman and in a very good humour.

"Here's my bard sure enough!" he cried. "John, John, what do you seek in Kilcumin, and in Campbell company too?"

"The company is none of my seeking," said John Lorn, very short and blunt "And we're like to have a good deal more of the same clan's company than we want before long, for Argile and his clan to three times your number are at Inverlochy. I have tramped a weary day to tell you the tale, and I get but a spy's reception."

The tale went round the camp in the time a man would whistle an air. Up came Montrose on the instant, and he was the first to give us a civil look. But for him we had no doubt got a short quittance from MacColkitto, who was for the tow gravatte on the spot Instead we were put on parole when his lordship learned we had been Cavaliers of fortune. The moon rose with every sign of storm, the mountains lay about white to their foundations, and ardent winds belched from the glens, but by mountain and glen Mac Donald determined to get round on the flank of Argile.



CHAPTER XIX.—THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY.

The month of January, as our old Gaelic notion has it, borrows three days from July for a bribe of three young lambs. Those three days we call Faoilteaeh, and often they are very genial and cheerful days, with a sun that in warmth is a sample of the mellow season at hand. But this year, as my history has shown, we had no sign of a good Faoilteach, and on the morning of the last day of January, when Alasdair MacDonald's army set over the hills, it was wild, tempestuous weather. A wind rose in the dawning and increased in vehemence as the day aged, and with it came a storm of snow—the small bitter sifting snow that, encountered on the hill, stings like the ant and drifts in monstrous and impassable wreaths. Round about us yawned the glens, to me nameless, mysterious, choked to the throat with snow-mist that flapped and shook like grey rags. The fields were bleak and empty; the few houses that lay in the melancholy plain were on no particularly friendly terms with this convocation of Erse-men and wild kerns: they shut their doors steadfastly on our doings, and gave us not even the compliment of looking on at our strange manoeuvres. There was but one exception, in a staunch and massive dwelling,—a manifest baron keep or stout domicile of that nature, just on the border of the Meld in which the camp was pitched: it was apparently in the charge of two old spinster sisters whose men-folk were afield somewhere else, for they had shuttered the windows, barricaded the gates, and ever and anon would they show blanched faces as the tumult of our preparation disturbed them, and they came to the door and cunningly pulled it open a little and looked out on this warlike array. If a soldier made a step in their direction they fled inside with terror, and their cries rang in the interior.

Those two spinsters—very white, very thin clad for a morn so rigorous, and with a trepidation writ on every feature—were all that saw us off on our march to the south-east They came out and stood hand in hand on the door-stoop, and I have little doubt the honest bodies thanked the God of Israel that the spoilers were departed furth their neighbourhood.

The country we now plunged into, as may be guessed, was a terra incognita to me. Beyond that it was Bade-noch and an unhealthy clime for all that wear the Campbell tartan, I could guess no more. It was after these little wars were over I discovered the names of the localities—the glens, mounts, passes, streams, and drove-roads—over which we passed in a march that Gustavus never faced the like of.

With good judgment enough our captors put a small advance-guard ahead, a score of Airlie's troopers, swanky blaspheming persons, whose horses pranced very gaily up Glen Tarf, guided by John Lom. M'Iver and I walked together with the main body, quite free and unfettered, sometimes talking with affability to our captors. The Irish were in good humour; they cracked jokes with us in their peculiar Gaelic that at first is ill for a decent Gael of Albion to follow, if uttered rapidly, but soon becomes as familiar as the less foreign language of the Athole men, whose tongue we Argiles find some strange conceits in. If the Irish were affable, the men of our own side of the ocean were most singularly morose—small wonder, perhaps, for we have little reason to love each other. Sour dogs! they gloomed at us under their bonnets and swore in their beards. I have no doubt but for their gentry there had been dirks in us before we reached Corryarick.

It was with the repartee of the Irish and the scowls of the Gaels we went up the rough valley of the Tarf, where the wind moaned most drearily and drove the thin fine snow like a smoke of burning heather. But when we got to the pass of Corryarick our trials began, and then such spirit did M'Iver put in the struggle with the task before us, such snatches of song, sharp saying and old story,—such commradary as it might be named,—that we were on good terms with all. For your man of family the Gael has ever some regard. M'Iver (not to speak of myself) was so manifestly the duine-uasail that the coarsest of the company fell into a polite tone, helped to their manners to some degree no doubt by the example of Montrose and Airlie, who at the earliest moments of our progress walked beside us and discoursed on letters and hunting, and soldiering in the foreign wars.

The pass of Corryarick met us with a girning face and white fangs. On Tarf-side there was a rough bridle-path that the wind swept the snow from, and our progress was fairly easy. Here the drifts lay waist high, the horses plunged to the belly-bands, the footmen pushed through in a sweat. It was like some Hyperborean hell, and we the doomed wretches sentenced to our eternity of toil. We had to climb up the shoulder of the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now upon wind-swept ice, but the snow—the snow—the heartless snow was our constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joints was unmarred.

It was long beyond noon when we reached the head of the pass, and saw before us the dip of the valley of the Spey. We were lost in a wilderness of mountain-peaks; the bens started about us on every hand like the horrors of a nightmare, every ben with its death-sheet, menacing us, poor insects, crawling in our pain across the landscape.

I thought we had earned a halt and a bite of meat by this forenoon of labour; and Montrose himself, who had walked the pass on foot like his fellows, seemed anxious to rest, but Sir Alasdair pushed us on like a fate relentless.

"On, on," he cried, waving his long arms to the prospect before; "here's but the start of our journey; far is the way before; strike fast, strike hot! Would ye eat a meal with appetite while the Diarmaids wait in the way?"

M'iver, who was plodding beside MacDonald when he said these words, gave a laugh. "Take your time, Sir Sandy," said he; "you'll need a bowl or two of brose ere you come to grips with MacCailein."

"Well never come to grips with MacCailein," said MacDonald, taking the badinage in good part, "so long as he has a back-gate to go out at or a barge to sail off in."

"I could correct you on that point in a little affair of arms as between gentlemen—if the time and place were more suitable," said M'Iver, warmly.

"Let your chief defend himself, friend," said MacDonald. "Man, I'll wager we never see the colour of his face when it comes to close quarters."

"I wouldn't wonder," I ventured. "He is in no great trim for fighting, for his arm is——"

Sir Alasdair gave a gesture of contempt and cried, "Faugh! we've heard of the raxed arm: he took care when he was making his tale that he never made it a raxed leg."

Montrose edged up at this, with a red face and a somewhat annoyed expression. He put his gloved hand lightly on MacDonald's shoulder and chided him for debate with a prisoner of war.

"Let our friends be, Alasdair," he said, quietly. "They are, in a way, our guests: they would perhaps be more welcome if their tartan was a different hue, but in any case we must not be insulting them. Doubtless they have their own ideas of his lordship of Argile——"

"I never ask to serve a nobler or a more generous chief," said M'Iver, firmly.

"I would expect no other sentiment from a gentleman of Argile's clan. He has ever done honestly enough by his own people. But have we not had enough of this? We are wasting our wind that should be more precious, considering the toils before us."

We found the descent of Corryarick even more ill than its climbing. The wind from the east had driven the snow into the mouth of it like a wedge. The horses, stepping ahead, more than once slipped into drifts that rose to their necks. Then they became wild with terror, dashed with frantic hooves into deeper trouble, or ran back, quivering in every sinew and snorting with affright till the troopers behove to dismount and lead them. When we in the van reached the foot of the come we looked back on a spectacle that fills me with new wonder to this day when I think of it,—a stream of black specks in the distance dropping, as it were, down the sheer face of white; nearer, the broken bands of different clansmen winding noiselessly and painfully among the drifts, their kilts pinned between their thighs, their plaids crossed on their chests—all their weapons a weariness to them.

In the afternoon the snow ceased to fall, but the dusk came on early notwithstanding, for the sky was blotted over with driving clouds.

At the head of Glen Roy the MacDonalds, who had lost their bauchles of brogues in the pass, started to a trot, and as the necessity was we had to take up the pace too. Long lank hounds, they took the road like deer, their limbs purple with the cold, their faces pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. "There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat," the Major-General had said. It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile below them.

But the Campbells were not in Glen Roy. They had been there and skirmished for a day among their old foes and had gone back to Lochyside, little thinking the fires they left in the Cameron barns at morning would light the enemy on ere night The roofs still smouldered, and a granary here and there on the sides of the valley sent up its flames,—at once a spur to the spirit of the MacDonalds and a light to their vengeance.

We halted for the night in Glen Spean, with Ben Chlin-aig looming high to the south, and the river gulping in ice beside our camp. Around was plenty of wood: we built fires and ate as poor a meal as the Highlands ever granted in a bad year, though it was the first break in our fast for the day. Gentle and simple, all fared alike—a whang of barley bannock, a stirabout of oat-and-water, without salt, a quaich of spirits from some kegs the troopers carried, that ran done before the half of the corps had been served. Sentinels were posted, and we slept till the morning pipe with sweet weariness in our bones.

Our second day was a repetition of the first. We left without even a breakfast whenever the pipers set up the Cameron rant, "Sons of the dogs, O come and get flesh!" The Campbells had spoiled the bridge with a charge of powder, so we had to ford the river among the ice-lumps, MacDonald showing the way with his kilt-tail about his waist A hunter from a hamlet at the glen foot gladly left the smoking ruin of his home and guided us on a drove-road into the wilds of Lochaber, among mountains more stupendous than those we had left behind. These relentless peaks were clad with blinding snow. The same choking drifts that met us in Corryarick filled the passes between Stob Choire and Easan Mor and Stob Ban, that cherish the snow in their crannies in the depths of midsummer. Hunger was eating at our hearts when we got to Glen Nevis, but the glen was empty of people, and the second night fell ere we broke fast.

I have hungered many times on weary marches, but yon was the most cruel hunger of my life. And though the pain of the starving could be dulled a little by draughts of water from the wayside springs, what there was no remede for was the weakness that turned the flesh in every part of me to a nerveless pulp. I went down Nevis Glen a man in a delirium. My head swam with vapours, so that the hillside seemed to dance round and before me. If I had fallen in the snow I should assuredly have lain there and died, and the thought of how simple and sweet it would be to stretch out my heavy limbs and sleep the sleep for ever, more than once robbed me of my will. Some of the Stewarts and Camerons, late recruits to the army, and as yet not inured to its toils, fell on the wayside halfway down the glen. Mac Donald was for leaving them—"We have no need for weaklings," he said, cruelly, fuming at the delay; but their lairds gave him a sharp answer, and said they would bide bye them till they had recovered. Thus a third of our force fell behind us in the march, and I would have been behind too, but for M'Iver's encouragement. His songs were long done; his stories chilled on his lip. The hunger had him at the heart, but he had a lion's will and a lion's vigour.

"For the love of God!" he said to me, "do not let them think we are so much of the Covenanter that we cannot keep up! For a Scots Cavalier you are giving in over early."

"Campaigning with Mackay was never like this," I pleaded, wearily; "give me the open road and an enemy before me, and I would tramp gaily to the world's end. Here's but a choked ravine the very deer abhor in such weather, and before us but a battle we must not share in."

He said never a word for a few moments, but trudged on. My low-heeled shoon were less fitted for the excursion than his close-thonged brogues that clung to the feet like a dry glove, and I walked lamely. Ever and anon he would look askance at me, and I was annoyed that he should think me a poorer mountaineer than those unwearied knaves who hurried us. I must have shown my feeling in my face, for in a little he let-on to fall lame too, and made the most grievous complaint of ache and weariness. His pretence deceived me but for a little. He was only at his old quirk of keeping me in good repaie with myself, but he played the part with skill, letting us both fall behind the general company a little, so that the Mac Donalds might not witness the indignity of it.

Glen Nevis, as I saw it that night in the light of the moon, is what comes to me now in my dreams. I smell the odour of the sweat-drenched, uncleanly deeding of those savage clans about us; I see the hills lift on either hand with splintered peaks that prick among the stars—gorge and ravine and the wide ascending passes filled ever with the sound of the river, and the coarse, narrow drove-road leads into despair. That night the moon rode at the full about a vacant sky. There was not even a vapour on the hills; the wind had failed in the afternoon.

At the foot of the hill Cam Dearg (or the Red Mount), that is one of three gallant mountains that keep company for Nevis Ben the biggest of all, the path we followed made a twist to the left into a gully from which a blast of the morning's wind had cleaned out the snow as by a giant's spade.

So much the worse for us, for now the path lay strewn with boulders that the dragoons took long to thread through, and the bare feet of the private soldiers bled redly anew. Some lean high fir-trees threw this part into a shadow, and so it happened that as I felt my way wearily on, I fell over a stone. The fall lost me the last of my senses: I but heard some of the Stewarts curse me for an encumbrance as they stumbled over me and passed on, heedless of my fate, and saw, as in a dwam, one of them who had abraded his knees by his stumble over my body, turn round with a drawn knife that glinted in a shred of moonlight.

I came to, with M'Iver bent over me, and none of our captors at hand.

"I had rather this than a thousand rix-dollars," said he, as I sat up and leaned on my arm.

"Have they left us?" I asked, with no particular interest in the answer. It could work little difference whatever it might be. "I thought I saw one of them turn on me with a knife."

"You did," said M'Iver. "He broke his part of the parole, and is lying on the other side of you, I think with a hole in his breast. An ugly and a treacherous scamp! It's lucky for us that Montrose or MacColkitto never saw the transaction between this clay and John M'Iver, or their clemency had hardly been so great 'You can bide and see to your friend,' was James Grahame's last words, and that's the reason I'm here."

M'Iver lifted me to my feet, and we stood a little to think what we should do. My own mind had no idea save the one that we were bound to keep in touch with the company whose prisoners we were, but M'Iver hinted at an alternative scarce so honest—namely, a desertion and a detour to the left that would maybe lead us to the Campbell army before active hostilities began.

"You would surely not break parole?" said I, surprised, for he was usually as honourable in such matters as any Highlander I ever met.

"Bah!" he cried, pretending contempt at hesitation, though I could perceive by his voice he was somewhat ashamed of the policy he proposed. "Who quitted the contract first? Was it not that Stewart gentleman on your other side who broke it in a most dastardly way by aiming at your life?"

"I'm thankful for the life you saved, John," said I, "little worth though it seems at this time, but Montrose is not to be held responsible for the sudden impulse of a private. We made our pact as between gentleman and gentleman—let us be going."

"Oh, very well!" said he, shortly. "Let us be going. After all, we are in a trap anyway we look at all; for half the Stewarts and Gainerons are behind in the wood there, and our flank retreat among these hills might be a tempting of Providence. But are you thinking of this Athole corp and what his kin will be doing to his slayers?"

"I'll risk it," I said, shortly. "We may be out of their hands one way or the other before they miss him."

On a sudden there rose away before us towards the mouth of the glen the sound of a bagpipe. It came on the tranquil air with no break in its uproar, and after a preparatory tuning it broke into an air called "Cogadh no Sith"—an ancient braggart pibroch made by one Macruimen of the Isle of Skye,—a tune that was commonly used by the Campbells as a night-retreat or tattoo.

My heart filled with the strain. It gave me not only the simple illusion that I saw again the regimentals of my native country—many a friend and comrade among them in the shelter of the Castle of Inverlochy—but it roused in me a spirit very antique, very religious and moving too, as the music of his own land must in every honest Gael.

"Cruachan for ever!" I said lightly to M'Iver, though my heart was full.

He was as much touched by that homely lilt as myself. "The old days, the old styles!" said he. "God! how that pibroch stings me to the core!" And as the tune came more clearly in the second part, or Crunluadh as we call it, and the player maybe came round a bend of the road, my comrade stopped in his pace and added with what in another I might have thought a sob—"I've trudged the world; I have learned many bravadoes, so that my heart never stirred much to the mere trick of an instrument but one, and the piob mhor conquers me. What is it, Colin, that's in us, rich and poor, yon rude cane-reeds speak so human and friendly to?"

"Tis the Gaelic," I said, cheered myself by the air. "Never a roar of the drone or a sob of the chanter but's in the Gaelic tongue."

"Maybe," said he, "maybe: I've heard the scholars like yourself say the sheepskin and the drones were Roman—that or Spanish, it's all one to me. I heard them at Boitzenburg when we gave the butt of the gun to Tilly's soldadoes, they played us into Holstein, and when the ditch of Stralsund was choked with the tartan of Mackay, and our lads were falling like corn before the hook, a Reay piper stood valiantly in front and played a salute. Then and now it's the pipes, my darling!"

"I would as lief have them in a gayer strain. My fondest memories are of reels I've danced to their playing," I said, and by now we were walking down the glen.

"And of one reel you danced," said he, quizzingly, "not more than two months gone in a town that was called Inneraora?"

"Two months!" I cried,—"two months! I could have sworn offhand we have been wandering in Lorn and Badenoch for as many years!"

Such spirit did my native pipes, played by a clansman, put in me that my weariness much abated, and we made great progress down the glen, so that before the tune had ceased we were on the back of Montrose's men as they crept on quietly in the night.

The piper stopped suddenly enough when some shots rang out,—an exchange of compliments between our pickets ahead and some wandering scouts of Argile.

And yonder below us, Loch Linnhe and Locheil glanced in the moonlight, and the strong towers of Inverlochy sat like a scowl on the fringe of the wave!



CHAPTER XX.—INVERLOCHY.

When we came up with the main body of MacDonald's army, the country, as I say, was shining in the light of the moon, with only a camp-fire down in the field beside the castle to show in all the white world a sign of human life. We had got the Campbells in the rear, but they never knew it A few of their scouts came out across the fields and challenged our pickets; there was an exchange of musketry, but, as we found again, we were thought to be some of the Lochaber hunters unworthy of serious engagement.

For the second time in so many days we tasted food, a handful of meal to the quaich of water—no more and no less; and James Grahame, Marquis of Montrose, supped his brose like the rest of us, with the knife from his belt doing the office of a horn-spoon.

Some hours after us came up the Camerons, who had fallen behind, but fresher and more eager for fighting than our own company, for they had fallen on a herd of roe on the slope of Sgur an Iolair, and had supped savagely on the warm raw flesh.

"You might have brought us a gigot off your take," Sir Alasdair said to the leader of them, Dol Ruadh. He was a short-tempered man of no great manners, and he only grunted his response.

"They may well call you Camerons of the soft mouth," said Alasdair, angrily, "that would treat your comrades so."

"You left us to carry our own men," said the chief, shortly; "we left you to find your own deer."

We were perhaps the only ones who slept at the mouth of Glen Nevis that woeful night, and we slept because, as my comrade said, "What cannot be mended may be well slept on; it's an ease to the heart." And the counsel was so wise and our weariness so acute, that we lay on the bare ground till we were roused to the call of a trumpet.

It was St Bridget's Day, and Sunday morning. A myriad bens around gave mists, as smoke from a censer, to the day. The Athole pipers high-breastedly strutted with a vain port up and down their lines and played incessantly. Alasdair laid out the clans with amazing skill, as M'Iver and I were bound to confess to ourselves,—the horse (with Montrose himself on his charger) in the centre, the men of Clanranald, Keppoch, Locheil, Glengarry, and Maclean, and the Stewarts of Appin behind. MacDonald and O'Kyan led the Irish on the wings.

In the plain we could see Argile's forces in a somewhat similar order, with the tartan as it should be in the midst of the bataille and the Lowland levies on the flanks. Over the centre waved the black galley of Lorne on a gold standard.

I expressed some doubt about the steadfastness of the Lowlanders, and M'Iver was in sad agreement with me.

"I said it in Glenaora when we left," said he, "and I say it again. They would be fairly good stuff against foreign troops; but they have no suspicion of the character of Gaelic war. I'm sore feared they'll prove a poor reed to lean on. Why, in heaven's name, does Mac-Cailein take the risk of a battle in such an awkward corner? An old soldier like Auchinbreac should advise him to follow the Kilcumin road and join forces with Seaforth, who must be far down Glen Albyn by now."

As we were standing apart thus, up to us came Ian Lorn, shaking the brogue-money he got from Grahame in his dirty loof. He was very bitter.

"I never earned an honester penny," he said, looking up almost insolently in our faces, so that it was a temptation to give him a clout on the cunning jowl.

"So Judas thought too, I daresay, when he fingered his filthy shekels," said I. "I thought no man from Keppoch would be skulking aside here when his pipers blew the onset."

"Och!" said M'Iver, "what need ye be talking? Bardery and bravery don't very often go together."

Ian Lorn scowled blackly at the taunt, but was equal to answer it.

"If the need arise," said he, "you'll see whether the bard is brave or not There are plenty to fight; there's but one to make the song of the fight, and that's John MacDonald, with your honours' leave."

We would, like enough, have been pestered with the scamp's presence and garrulity a good deal longer; but Montrose came up at that moment and took us aside with a friendly enough beckon of his head.

"Gentlemen," he said in English, "as cavaliers you can guess fairly well already the issue of what's to happen below there, and as Cavaliers who, clansmen or no clansmen of the Campbell chief, have done well for old Scotland's name abroad, I think you deserve a little more consideration at our hands at this juncture than common prisoners of war can lay claim to. If you care you can quit here as soon as the onset begins, abiding of course by your compact to use no arms against my friends. You have no objection?" he added, turning about on his horse and crying to Alasdair.

The Major-General came up and looked at us. "I suppose they may go," said he,—"though, to tell my mind on the matter, I could devise a simpler way of getting rid of them. We have other methods in Erin O, but as your lordship has taken the fancy, they may go, I daresay. Only they must not join their clan or take arms with them until this battle is over. They must be on the Loch Linnhe road before we call the onset."

Montrose flushed at the ill-breeding of his officer, and waved us away to the left on the road that led to Argile by Loch Linnhe side, and took us clear of the coming encounter.

We were neither of us slow to take advantage of the opportunity, but set off at a sharp walk at the moment that O'Kyan on the right flank was slowly moving in the direction of Argile's line.

John broke his sharp walk so quickly into a canter that I wondered what he meant I ran close at his heels, but I forbore to ask, and we had put a good lump of moorland between us and the MacDonalds before he explained.

"You perhaps wondered what my hurry was," he said, with the sweat standing in beads on his face, though the air was full of frost. "It wasn't for exercise, as you might guess at anyrate. The fact is, we were within five minutes of getting a wheen Stewart dirks in our doublets, and if there was no brulzie on foot we were even yet as good as lost on Brae Lochaber."

"How does that happen?" I asked. "They seemed to let us away generously enough and with no great ill-will."

"Just so! But when Montrose gave us the conge, I happened to turn an eye up Glen Nevis and I saw some tardy Stewarts (by their tartan) come running down the road. These were the lads Dol Ruadh left behind last night, and they could scarcely miss in daylight the corpse we left by the road, and their clansmen missed in the mirk. That was my notion at the first glance I got of them, and when we ran they ran too, and what do you make of that?"

"What we should make of it," I said in alarm, "is as good a pace into Lorn as we can: they may be on the heels of us now,"—for we were in a little dip of the ground from which the force we had just parted so gladly were not to be seen.

On that point M'Iver speedily assured me.

"No, no!" he said. "If Seumas Grahame himself were stretched out yonder instead of a Glenart cearnoch of no great importance to any one, Alasdair MacDonald would be scarcely zealous fool enough to spoil his battle order to prosecute a private feud. Look at that," he proceeded, turning round on a little knowe he ran lightly up on and I after him— "Look at that! the battle's begun."

We stood on that knowe of Brae Lochaber, and I saw from thence a spectacle whose like, by the grace of God, I have never seen before nor since in its agony for any eye that was friendly to Diarmaid Clan. I need not here set down the sorry end of that day at Inverlochy. It has been written many times, though I harbour no book on my shelves that tells the story. We saw MacDonald's charge; we saw the wings of Argile's army—the rotten Lowland levies—break off and skurry along the shore; we saw the lads of the Diarmaid tartan hewn down on the edge of the tide till its waves ran red; but we were as helpless as the rush that waved at our feet. Between us and our friends lay the enemy and our parole—I daresay our parole was forgotten in that terrible hour.

John M'Iver laid him down on the tulaich and clawed with his nails the stunted grass that in wind-blown patches came through the snow. None of my words made any difference on his anguish. I was piping to the surrender of sorrow, nigh mad myself.

The horses of Ogilvie—who himself fell in the brulzie—chased the Lowlanders along the side of Loch Linnhe, and so few of the flying had the tartan that we had no great interest in them, till we saw six men with their plaid-ing cast run unobserved up the plain, wade waist-deep through the Nevis, and come somewhat in our direction. We went down to join them, and ran hard and fast and came on them at a place called the Rhu at the water of Kiachnish.