^(5^^^

 
 JOHN SPLENDID
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 THE TALE OF A POOR GENTLEMAN 
 
 AND THE 
 
 LITTLE WARS OF LORN 
 
 BY 
 
 NEIL MUNRO 
 
 t 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1898 
 
 t^
 
 Copyright, 1S97, 
 By Neil Munro. 
 
 5Enii3crsttg ?|3«ss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Many a time, in college or in camp, I had planned 
 the style of my home-coming. Master Webster, 
 in the Humanities, droning away like a Boreraig 
 bagpipe, would be sending my mind back to Shira 
 Glen, its braes and corries and singing waters, 
 and Ben Bhuidhe over all, and with my chin on 
 a hand I would ponder on how I should go home 
 again when this weary scholarship was over, I 
 had always a ready fancy and some of the natural 
 vanity of youth, so I could see myself landing off 
 the lugger at the quay of Inneraora town, three 
 inches more of a man than when I left with a 
 firkin of herring and a few bolls of meal for my 
 winter's provand ; thicker too at the chest, and 
 with a jacket of London green cloth with brass 
 buttons. Would the fishermen about the quay- 
 head not lean over the gun'les of their skiffs and 
 say, ** There goes young Elrigmore from Colleg- 
 ing, well-knit in troth, and a pretty lad!" I 
 could hear (all in my day dream in yon place of 
 dingy benches) the old women about the well at 
 the town Cross say, " Oh locliain! thou art come 
 I
 
 2 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 back from the Galldach, and Glascow College, 
 what a thousand curious things thou must know, 
 and what wisdom thou must have, but never a 
 change on thy affability to the old and to the 
 poor ! " But it was not till I had run away from 
 Glascow College and shut the boards for good 
 and all, as I thought, on my humane letters and 
 history, and gone with Cousin Gavin to the Ger- 
 man wars in Munro's Corps of true Highlanders 
 that I added a manlier thought to my thinking of 
 the day when I should come home to my native 
 place. I 've seen me in the camp at night, dog- 
 wearied after stoury marching on their cursed 
 foreign roads, keeping my eyes open and the sleep 
 at an arm's-length, that I might think of Shira 
 Glen. Whatever they may say of me or mine, 
 they can never deny but I had the right fond heart 
 for my own country-side, and I have fought men 
 for speaking of its pride and poverty — their igno- 
 rance, their folly! — for what did they ken of the 
 Highland spirit.'' I would be lying in the lap of 
 the night, and my Ferrara sword rolled in my 
 plaid as a pillow for my head, fancying myself 
 — all those long wars over, march, siege, and 
 sack — • riding on a good horse down the pass of 
 Aora and through the arches into the old town. 
 Then, it was not the fishermen or the old women 
 I thought of, but the girls, and the winking stars 
 above me were their eyes, glinting merrily and 
 kindly on a stout young gentleman soldier with 
 jack and morion, sword at haunch, spur at heel, 
 and a name for bravado, never a home-biding
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 3 
 
 laird in our parish had, burgh or land-ward. I 
 would sit on my horse so, the chest well out, the 
 back curved, the knees straight, one gauntlet off 
 to let my white hand wave a salute when needed, 
 and none of all the pretty ones would be able to 
 say Elrigmore thought another one the sweetest. 
 Oh! I tell you we learnt many arts in the Low- 
 land wars, more than they teach Master of Art in 
 the old biggin' in the Hie Street of Glascow. 
 
 One day, at a place called Nordlingen in the 
 Mid Franken, binding a wound Gavin got in the 
 sword-arm, I said, "What's your wish at this 
 moment, cousin.''" 
 
 He looked at me with a melting eye, and the 
 flush hove to his face. 
 
 "'Fore God, Colin," said he, "I would give 
 my twelve months' wage to stand below the lintel 
 of my mother's door and hear her say ' Darling 
 scamp ! ' " 
 
 " If you had your wish, Gavin, when and how 
 would you go into Inncraora town after those 
 weary years away?" 
 
 "Man, I 've made that up long syne," said he, 
 and the tear was at his cheek. " Let me go into 
 it cannily at night-fall from the Cromalt end, 
 when the boys and girls were dancing on the 
 green to the pipes at the end of a harvest-day. 
 Them in a reel, with none of the abulziements of 
 war about me, but a plain civil lad like the rest, 
 I would join in the strathspey and kiss two or 
 three of the girls ere ever they jaloused a stranger 
 was among them."
 
 4 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Poor Gavin, good Gavin ! he came home no way 
 at all to his mother and his mountains, but here 
 was I, with some of his wish for my fortune, rid- 
 ing cannily into Inneraora town in the dark. 
 
 It is wonderful how travel, even in a marching 
 company of cavaliers of fortune, gives scope to the 
 mind. When I set foot, twelve years before this 
 night I speak of, on the gabbard that carried me 
 down to Dunbarton on my way to the Humani- 
 ties classes, I could have sworn I was leaving 
 a burgh most large and wonderful. The town 
 houses of old Stonefield, Craignish, Craignure, 
 Askaig, and the other cadets of Clan Campbell, 
 had such a strong and genteel look ; the windows, 
 all but a very few, had glass in every lozen, every 
 shutter had a hole to let in the morning light, 
 and each door had its little ford of stones running 
 across the gutter that sped down the street, smell- 
 ing fishily a bit, on its way to the shore. For 
 me, in those days, each close that pierced the 
 tall lands was as wide and high as a mountain 
 eas, the street itself seemed broad and substan- 
 tial, crowded with people worth kenning for their 
 graces and the many things they knew. 
 
 I came home now on this night of nights with 
 Munchen and Augsburg, and the fine cities of all 
 the France, in my mind, and I tell you I could 
 think shame of this mean rickle of stones I had 
 thought a town, were it not for the good hearts and 
 kind I knew were under every roof. The broad 
 street crowded with people, did I say.'* A little 
 lane rather; and Elrigmore, with schooling and the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 5 
 
 wisdom of travel, felt he could see into the heart's 
 core of the cunningest merchant in the place. 
 
 But anyway, here I was, riding into town from 
 the Cromalt end on a night in autumn. It was 
 after ten — between the twenty and the half-past 
 by my Paris watch — when I got the length of 
 the Crcags, and I knew that there was nothing 
 but a sleeping town before me, for our folks were 
 always early bedders when the fishing season was 
 on. The night hung thick with stars, but there 
 was no moon; a stiff wind from the east prinked 
 at my right ear and cooled my horse's skin, as he 
 slowed down after a canter of a mile or two on 
 this side of Pennymore. Out on the loch I could 
 see the lights of a few herring-boats lift and fall 
 at the end of their trail of nets. 
 
 " Too few of you there for the town to be busy 
 and cheerful," said I to myself; "no doubt the 
 bulk of the boats are down at Otter, damming the 
 fish in the narrow gut, and keeping them from 
 searching up to our own good townsmen." 
 
 I pressed my brute to a trot, and turned round 
 into the nether part of the town. It was what I 
 expected — the place was dark, black out. The 
 people were sleeping; the salt air of Loch Finne 
 went sighing through the place in a way that 
 made me dowie for old days. We went over the 
 causeway-stones with a clatter that might have 
 wakened the dead, but no one put a head out, and 
 I thought of the notion of a cheery home-coming 
 I^oor Gavin had — my dear cousin, stroked out 
 and cold under foreign clods at Velshiem, two
 
 6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 leagues below the field of Worms of Hessen, on 
 the banks of the Rhine, in Low German ie. 
 
 It 's a curious business this riding into a town 
 in the dark waste of night ; curious even in a 
 strange town when all are the same for you that 
 sleep behind those shutters and those doors, but 
 doubly curious when you know that behind the 
 dark fronts are lying folks that you know well, 
 that have been thinking, and drinking, and thriv- 
 ing when you were far away. As I went clatter- 
 ing slowly by, I would say at one house front, 
 "Yonder 's my old comrade, Tearlach, that taught 
 me my one tune on the pipe-chanter ; is his beard 
 grown yet, I wonder?" At another, "There is 
 the garret window of the schoolmaster's daughter 
 — does she sing so sweetly nowadays in the old 
 kirk?" 
 
 In the dead middle of the street I pulled my 
 horse up, just to study the full quietness of the 
 hour. Leaning over, I put a hand on his nos- 
 trils and whispered in his ear for a silence, as we 
 do abroad in ambuscade. Town Inneraora slept 
 sound, sure enough ! All to hear was the spill- 
 ing of the river at the cascade under the bridge 
 and the plopping of the waves against the wall 
 we call the ramparts, that keeps the sea from 
 thrashing on the Tolbooth. And then over all I 
 could hear a most strange moaning sound, such 
 as we boys used to make with a piece of lath 
 nicked at the edges and swung hurriedly round 
 the head by a string. It was made by the wind, 
 I knew, for it came loudest in the gusty bits of
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 7 
 
 the night and from the east, and when there was 
 a lull I could hear it soften away and end for a 
 second or two with a dunt, as if some heavy, soft 
 thing struck against wood. 
 
 Whatever it was, the burghers of Inneraora 
 paid no heed, but slept, stark and sound, behind 
 their steeked shutters. 
 
 The solemnity of the place, that I knew so 
 much better in a natural lively mood, annoyed 
 me, and I played there and then a prank more 
 becoming a boy in his first kilt than a gentle- 
 man of education and travel and some repute for 
 sobriety. I noticed I was opposite the house of 
 a poor old woman they called Kate Dubh, whose 
 door was ever the target in my young days for 
 every lad that could brag of a boot-toe, and I saw 
 that the shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was 
 thrown open against the harled wall of the house. 
 In my doublet-pocket there were some carabeen 
 bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old 
 woman's little lozens. There was a splinter of 
 glass, and I waited to see if any one should come 
 out to see who was up to such damage. My trick 
 was in vain ; no one came. Old Kate, as I found 
 next day, was dead since Martinmas, and her 
 house was empty. 
 
 Still the moaning sound came from the town- 
 head, and I went slowly riding in its direction. 
 It grew clearer and yet uncannier as I sped on, 
 and mixed with the sough of it I could at last 
 hear the clink of chains. 
 
 "What in God's name have I hcre.^ " said I to
 
 8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 myself, turning round Islay Campbell's corner, 
 and yonder was my answer ! 
 
 The town gibbets were throng indeed ! Two 
 corpses swung in the wind, like net bows on a 
 drying-pole, going from side to side, making the 
 woeful sough and clink of chains, and the dunt I 
 had heard when the wind dropped. 
 
 I grued more at the sound of the soughing than 
 at the sight of the hanged fellows, for I 've seen 
 the Fell Sergeant in too many ugly fashions to 
 be much put about at a hanging match. But it 
 was such a poor home-coming! It told me as 
 plain as could be, what I had heard rumours of 
 in the low country riding round from the port of 
 Leith, that the land was uneasy, and that pit and 
 gallows were bye-ordinar busy at the gates of our 
 castle. When I left for my last session at Glas- 
 cow College, the countryside was quiet as a vil- 
 lage green, never a raider nor a reiver in the land, 
 and so poor the Doomster's trade (Black George), 
 that he took to the shoeing of horses. 
 
 "There must be something wicked in the times, 
 and cheatery rampant indeed," I thought, "when 
 the common gibbet of Inneraora has a drunkard's 
 convoy on either hand to prop it up." 
 
 But it was no time for meditation. Through 
 the rags of plaiding on the chains went the wind 
 again so eerily that I bound to be off, and I put 
 my horse to it, bye the town-head and up the two 
 miles to Glen Shira. I was sore and galled sit- 
 ting on the saddle; my weariness hung at the 
 back of my legs and shoulders like an ague, and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 9 
 
 there was never a man in this world came home 
 to his native place so eager for taking supper and 
 sleep as young Elrigmore. 
 
 What I expected at my father's door I am not 
 going to set down here. I went from it a fool, 
 with not one grace about me but the love of my 
 good mother, and the punishment I had for my 
 hot and foolish cantrip was many a wae night on 
 foreign fields, vexed to the core for the sore heart 
 I had left at home. 
 
 My mind, for all my weariness, was full of 
 many things, and shame above all, as I made for 
 my father's house. The horse had never seen 
 Glen Shira, but it smelt the comfort of the stable 
 and whinnied cheerfully as I pulled up at the 
 gate. There was but one window to the gable- 
 end of Elrigmore, and it was something of a sur- 
 prise to me to find a light in it, for our people 
 were not overly rich in these days, and candle or 
 cruisie was wont to be doused at bedtime. More 
 was my surprise, when leading my horse round to 
 the front, feeling my way in the dark by memory, 
 I found the oak door open and my father, dressed, 
 standing in the light of it. 
 
 A young sqalag came running to the reins, and 
 handing them to him, I stepped into the light of 
 the door, my bonnet in my hand. 
 
 "Step in, sir, caird or gentleman," said my 
 father — looking a little more bent at the shoulder 
 than twelve years before. 
 
 I went under the door-lintel, and stood a little 
 abashed before him.
 
 lo JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Colin ! Colin ! " he cried in the Gaelic. " Did 
 
 I not ken it was you? " and he put his two hands 
 on my shoulders. 
 
 "It is Colin sure enough, father dear," I said, 
 slipping readily enough into the mother tongue 
 they did their best to get out of me at Glascow 
 College. "Is he welcome in this door.'"' and 
 the weariness weighed me down at the hip and 
 bowed my very legs. 
 
 He gripped me tight at the elbows, and looked 
 me hungrily in the face. 
 
 "If you had a murdered man's head in your 
 oxter, Colin," said he, "you were still my son. 
 Colin, Colin ! come ben and put off your boots ' " 
 
 "Mother," I said, but he broke in on my 
 question. 
 
 " Come in, lad, and sit down. You are back 
 from the brave wars you never went to with my 
 will, and you '11 find stirring times here at your 
 own parish. It 's the way of the Sennachies' 
 stories. " 
 
 "How is that, sir?" 
 
 "They tell, you know, that people wander far 
 on the going foot for adventure, and' adventure is 
 in the first turning of their native lane." 
 
 I was putting my boots off before a fire of hiss- 
 ing logs that filled the big room with a fir-wood 
 smell right homely and comforting to my heart, 
 and my father was doing what I should have 
 known was my mother's oiSce if weariness had 
 not left me in a sort of stupor — he was laying on 
 the Spanish mahogany board with carved legs a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID ii 
 
 stout and soldierly supper and a tankard of the 
 red Bordeaux wine the French traffickers bring 
 to Loch Finne to trade for cured herring. He 
 would come up now and then where I sat fumbling 
 sleepily at my laces, and put a hand on my head, 
 a curious unmanly sort of thing I never knew my 
 father do before, and I felt put -about at this pet- 
 ting, which would have been more like my sister 
 if ever I had had the luck to have one. 
 
 "You are tired, Colin, my boy? " he said. 
 
 "A bit, father, a bit," I answered, "tough roads 
 you know. I was landed at break of day at 
 Skipness and — Is mother " 
 
 " Sit in, lochain ! Did you meet many folks on 
 the road >. " 
 
 "No, sir; a pestilent barren journey as ever I 
 trotted on, and the people seemingly on the hill, 
 for their crops are unco late in the field." 
 
 "Ay, ay, lad, so they are," said my father, pull- 
 ing back his shoulders a bit — a fairly straight 
 wiry old man, with a name for good swordsman- 
 ship in his younger days. 
 
 I was busy at a cold partridge, and hard at it, 
 when I thought again how curious it was that my 
 father should be afoot in the house at such time 
 of night and no one else about, he so early a 
 bedder for ordinary and never the last to sneck 
 the outer door. 
 
 "Did you expect any one, father.?" I asked, 
 "that you should be waiting up with the colla- 
 tion, and the outer door unsnccked } " 
 
 " There was never an outer door snecked since
 
 12 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 you left, Colin," said he, turning awkwardly away 
 and looking hard into the loof of his hand like a 
 wife spacing fortunes — for sheer want, I could 
 see, of some engagement for his eyes. " I could 
 never get away with the notion that some way 
 like this at night would ye come back to 
 Elrigmore. " 
 
 " Mother would miss me ? " 
 
 "She did, Colin, she did; I 'm not denying." 
 
 "She'll be bedded long syne, no doubt, 
 father.?" 
 
 My father looked at me and gulped at the 
 throat. 
 
 "Bedded indeed, poor Colin," said he, "this 
 very day in the clods of Kilmalieu ! " 
 
 And that was my melancholy home-coming to 
 my father's house of Elrigmore, in the parish of 
 Glenaora, in the shire of Argile.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 13 
 
 CHAPTER 11 
 
 Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, 
 has its own peculiar air or atmosphere that one 
 familiar with the same may never puzzle about in 
 his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at 
 odd moments like the scent of bog-myrtle and 
 tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in 
 Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encour- 
 aging to me. Even when a young lad, coming 
 back from the low country or the scaling of school, 
 the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the 
 riper airs of the late afternoon went to my head 
 like a mild white wine; very heartsome too, rous- 
 ing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, 
 before, over-apt to sit and dream of the doing of 
 grand things instead of putting out a hand to do 
 them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to 
 grumble most about next to the dreary hours of 
 schooling was the clammy airs of street and close; 
 in Germanic it was worse, a moist weakening 
 "windiness full of foreign smells, and I 've seen 
 me that I could gaily march a handful of leagues 
 to get a sniff of the spirity salt sea. Not that I 
 was one who craves for wrack and bilge at my 
 nose all the time. What I think best is a stance 
 inland from the salt water, where the mountain
 
 14 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 air, brushing over gall and heather, takes the 
 sting from the sea air, and the two blended give 
 a notion of the fine variousness of life. We had 
 a herdsman once in Elrigmore, who could tell five 
 miles up the glen when the tide was out on Loch 
 Finne. I was never so keen-scented as that; but 
 when I awakened next day in a camceiled room 
 in Elrigmore, and put my head out at the window 
 to look around, I smelt the heather for a second 
 like an escapade in a dream. 
 
 Down to Ealan Eagal I went for a plunge in 
 the linn in the old style, and the airs of Shira 
 Glen hung about me like friends and lovers, so 
 well acquaint and jovial. 
 
 Shira Glen, Shira Glen ! if I was bard I 'd have 
 songs to sing to it, and all I know is one scul- 
 duddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam ! 
 There at the foot of my father's house, were the 
 winding river, and north and south the brown 
 hills, split asunder by God's goodness, to give a 
 sample of His bounty. Maam, Elrigmore and 
 Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and Ben Bhuidhe — their steep 
 sides hung with cattle, and below crowded the 
 reeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the burns 
 poured hurriedly to the flat beneath their borders 
 of hazel and ash ; to the south, the fresh water we 
 call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed 
 with shelistcrs or water-flags and bulrush, and 
 further off the Cowal hills ; to the north, the wood 
 of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregors 
 sometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds 
 in cloud of nieht and darkness. Down on it all
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 15 
 
 poured the polished and hearty sun, birds chirmed 
 on every tree, though it was late in the year; 
 blackcock whirred across the alders, and sturdy 
 heifers bellowed tunefully, knee-deep at the ford. 
 
 "Far have I wandered," thinks I to myself, 
 "warring other folks' wars for the humour of it 
 and small wages, but here 's the one place I 've 
 seen yet that was worth hacking good steel for in 
 earnest ! " 
 
 But still my heart was sore for mother, and 
 sore, too, for the tale of changed times in Camp- 
 bell country my father told me over a breakfast of 
 braddan fresh caught in a creel from the Garron 
 River, oaten bannock, and cream. 
 
 After breakfast I got me into my kilt for town. 
 There are many costumes going about the world, 
 but, with allowance for one and all, I make bold 
 to think our own tartan duds the gallantest of 
 them all. The kilt was my wear when first I 
 went to Glascow College, and many a St. Mungo 
 keelie, no better than myself at classes or at 
 English language, made fun of my brown knees, 
 sometimes not to the advantage of his headpiece 
 when it came to argument and neifs on the 
 Fleshers Haugh. Pulling on my old brcacan this 
 morning in Elrigmore was like donning a fairy 
 garb, and getting back ten years of youth. We 
 have a way of belting on the kilt in real Argile 
 I have seen nowhere else. Ordinarily, our lads 
 take the whole web of tartan cloth, of twenty ells 
 or more, and coil it once round their middle, 
 there belting it, and bring the free end up on the
 
 i6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 shoulder to pin with a dcalg, not a bad fashion 
 for display and long marches and for sleeping out 
 on the hill with, but sometimes discommodious 
 for warm weather. It was our plan sometimes to 
 make what we called a philabeg, or little kilt, 
 maybe eight yards long, gathered in at the haunch 
 and hung in many pleats behind, the plain brat 
 part in front decked off with a leather sporran, 
 tagged with thong points tied in knots, and with 
 no plaid on the shoulder. I 've never seen a more 
 jaunty and suitable garb for campaigning, better 
 by far for short sharp tulzies with an enemy than 
 the philamore or the big kilt our people some- 
 times throw off them in a skirmish, and fight 
 (the coarsest of them) in their gartered hose and 
 scrugged bonnets. 
 
 With my kilt and the memory of old times 
 about me, I went walking down to Inneraora in 
 the middle of the day. I was prepared for change 
 from the complaints of my father, but never for 
 half the change I found in the burgh town of 
 MacCailein Mor. In my twelve foreign years the 
 place was swamped by incomers, black unwel- 
 come Covenanters from the shires of Air and 
 Lanrick — Brices, Yuilles, Rodgers, and Richies 
 — all brought up here by Gillesbeg Gruamach, 
 Marquis of Argile, to teach his clans the art of 
 peace and merchandise. Half the folk I met be- 
 tween the arches and the Big Barns were strangers 
 that seemingly never had tartan on their hurdies, 
 but settled down with a firm foot in the place, I 
 could see by the bold look of them as I passed on
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 17 
 
 the plain-stanes of the street. A queer town this 
 on the edge of Loch Finne, and far in the High- 
 lands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in 
 them, and over the doors signboards telling of 
 the most curious trades for a Campbell burgh 
 — horologers, cordiners, baxters, and suchlike 
 mechanicks that I felt sure poor Donald had 
 small call for. They might be incomers, but 
 they were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I 
 found later on. 
 
 It was the court day, and his lordship was sit- 
 ting in judgment on two Strathlachlan fellows, 
 who had been brawling at the Cross the week 
 before and came to knives, more in a frolic than in 
 hot blood, with some of the town lads. With two 
 or three old friends I went into the Tolbooth to 
 see the play — for play it was, I must confess — 
 in town Inneraora, when justice was due to a 
 man whose name by ill-luck was not Campbell, 
 or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem. 
 
 The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a 
 spacious high-ceiled room, well lighted from the 
 bay-side. It was crowded soon after we got in, 
 with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the 
 one way or the other, for or against the poor lads 
 in bilboes, who sat, simple-looking enough, be- 
 tween the town officers, a pair of old bodacJis in 
 long scarlet coats and carrying titaghs, Lochaber 
 axes, or halberds that never smelt blood since they 
 came from the smith. 
 
 It was the first time ever I saw Gillesbeg Grua- 
 mach sitting on the bench, and I was startled at 
 
 2
 
 1 8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the look of the man. I 've seen some sour clogs 
 in my clay — few worse than Ruthven's rittmasters 
 we met in Swabia, but I never saw a man who, at 
 the first vizzy, had the dour sour countenance of 
 Archibald, Marquis of Argileand Lord of Lochow. 
 Gruamach, or grim-faced, our good Gaels called 
 him in a bye-name, and well he owned it, for over 
 necklace or gorget, I 've seldom seen a sterner 
 jowl or a more sinister eye. And yet, to be fair 
 and honest, this was but the notion one got at a 
 first glint; in a while I thought little was amiss 
 with his looks as he leaned on the table and 
 cracked in a humoursome laughing way with the 
 panelled jury. 
 
 He might have been a plain cottar in Glen Aora 
 side rather than King of the Highlands for all the 
 airs he assumed, and when he saw me, better put- 
 on in costume than my neighbours in court, he 
 seemingly asked my name in a whisper from the 
 clerk beside him, and finding who I was, cried 
 out in St. Andrew's English — 
 
 "What! Young Elrigmore back to the Glens! 
 I give you welcome, sir, to Baile Inneraora! " 
 
 I but bowed, and in a fashion saluted, saying 
 nothing in answer, for the whole company glowered 
 at me, all except the home-bred ones, who had 
 better manners. 
 
 The two MacLachlans denied in the Gaelic the 
 charge the sheriff clerk read to them in a long 
 farrago of English with more foreign words to it 
 than ever I learned the sense of in College. 
 
 His lordship paid small liecd to the witnesses
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 19 
 
 who came forward to swear to the unruliness of 
 the Strathlachlan men, and the jury talked heed- 
 lessly with one another in a fashion scandalous to 
 see. The man who had been stabbed — it was 
 but a jag at the shoulder, where the dirk had gone 
 through from front to back with only some loss of 
 blood — was averse to being hard on the panels. 
 He was a jocular fellow with the right heart for 
 a duello; and in his nipped burgh Gaelic he made 
 light of the disturbance and his injury. 
 
 "Nothing but a bit play, my jurymen — Mac- 
 Cailein — my lordship — a bit play. If the poor 
 lad did n't happen to have his dirk out and I to 
 run on it, nobody was a bodle the worse." 
 
 " But the law, man " — started the clerk to say. 
 
 "No case for law at all," said the witness. 
 "It 's an honest brawl among friends, and I could 
 settle the account with them at the next market- 
 day, when my shoulder's mended." 
 
 "Better if you would settle my account for your 
 last pair of brogues, Alasdair M'lver," said a 
 black-avised juryman. 
 
 "What's your trade.!*" asked the Marquis of 
 the witness. 
 
 "I'm at the Coillebhraid silver-mines," said 
 he. "We had a little too much drink, or these 
 MacLachlan gentlemen and I had never come to 
 variance." 
 
 The Marquis gloomed at the speaker and brought 
 down his fist with a bang on the table before 
 him. 
 
 "Damn those silver-mines!" said he, "they
 
 20 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 breed more trouble in this town of mine than I 'm 
 willing to thole. If they put a penny in my 
 purse it might not be so irksome, but they plague 
 me sleeping and waking, and I 'm not a plack the 
 richer. If it were not to give my poor cousin, 
 John Splendid, a chance of a living and occupa- 
 tion for his wits, I would drown them out with 
 the water of Cromalt Burn." 
 
 The witness gave a little laugh, and ducking 
 his head oddly like one taking liberties with a 
 master, said, "We're a drouthy set, my lord, at 
 the mines, and I wouldn't be saying but what we 
 might drink them dry again of a morning, if we 
 had been into town the night before," 
 
 His lordship cut short his sour smile at the 
 man's fancy, and bade the officers on with the 
 case. 
 
 "You have heard the proof," he said to the 
 jury when it came to his turn to charge them. 
 "Are they guilty, or not.-' If the question was 
 put to me I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, 
 arrant Papist ! should keep his men at home to 
 Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loos- 
 ing them on honest, or middling honest Camp- 
 bells, for the strict virtue of these Coillebhraid 
 miners is what I am not going to guarantee." 
 
 Of course the fellows were found guilty — one 
 of stabbing, the other of art and part, for Mac- 
 Lachlan was no friend of MacCailein Mor, and 
 as little friend to the merchant burghers of Inne- 
 raora, for he had the poor taste to buy his shop 
 provand from the Lament towns of Low Cowal.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 21 
 
 "A more unfriendly man to the Laird of Mac- 
 Lachlan might be for hanging you on the gibbet 
 at the town-head," said his lordship to the pris- 
 oners, spraying ink-sand idly on the clean page of 
 a statute-book as bespoke; "but our three trees 
 upbye are leased just now to other tenants, — 
 Badenoch hawks a trifle worse than yourselves, 
 and more deserving." 
 
 The men looked stupidly about them, knowing 
 not one word of his lordship's English, and he 
 was always a man who disdained to converse much 
 in Erse. He looked a little cruelly at them and 
 went on. 
 
 "Perhaps clipping your lugs might be the bon- 
 niest way of showing you what we think of such 
 on-goings in honest Inneraora; or getting the 
 Doomster to bastinado you up and down the 
 street. But we '11 try what a fortnight in the Tol- 
 booth may do to amend your visiting manners. 
 Take them away, officers." 
 
 " Aberidh moran taing — say * many thanks ' to 
 his lordship," whispered one of the red-coat hal- 
 berdiers in the ear of the bigger of the two pris- 
 oners. I could hear the command distinctly where 
 I sat, well back in the court, and so no doubt 
 could Gillesbeg Gruamach, but he was used to 
 such obsequious foolishness and he made no dis- 
 sent or comment. 
 
 ^^ Taing ! taing!'" said one spokesman of the 
 two MacLachlans in his hurried Cowal Gaelic, 
 and his neighbour, echoing him word for word 
 in the comic fashion they have in these parts;
 
 22 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Taijig ! taing ! I never louted to the horseman 
 that rode over me yet, and I would be ill-advised 
 to start with the Gruamach one ! " 
 
 The man's face flushed up as he spoke. It 's 
 a thing I 've noticed about our own poor Gaelic 
 men; speaking before them in English or Scots, 
 their hollow look and aloofness would give one 
 the notion that they lacked sense and sparkle; 
 take the muddiest-looking among them and chal- 
 lenge him in his own tongue, and you '11 find his 
 face fill with wit and understanding. 
 
 I was preparing to leave the court-room, having 
 many people to call on in Inneraora, and had 
 turned with my two friends to the door, when a 
 fellow brushed in past us — a Highlander, I could 
 see, but in trews — and he made to go forward 
 into the body of the court, as if to speak to his 
 lordship, now leaning forward in a cheerful con- 
 versation with the Provost of the burgh, a sonsy 
 gentleman in a peruke and figured waistcoat. 
 
 "Who is he, this bold fellow.^ " I asked one of 
 my friends, pausing with a foot on the door-step, 
 a little surprised at the want of reverence to Mac- 
 Cailein in the man's bearing. 
 
 " Iain Aluinn — John Splendid, " said my friend. 
 We were talking in the Gaelic, and he made a 
 jocular remark there is no English for. Then lie 
 added, "A poor cousin of the Marquis, a M'lvcr 
 Campbell {on the ivrojig side), with little school- 
 ing but some wit and gentlemanly parts. He 
 has gone through two fortunes in black cattle, 
 fought some fighting here and there, and now he
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 23 
 
 manages the silver-mines so adroitly that Gilles- 
 beg Gruamach is ever on the brink of getting a 
 big fortune, but never done launching out a little 
 one instead to keep the place going. A decent 
 soul the Splendid ! throughither a bit and better 
 at promise than performance, but at the core as 
 good as gold, and a fellow you never weary of 
 though you tramped with him in a thousand 
 glens." 
 
 The object of my friend's description was speak- 
 ing into the ear of MacCailein Mor by this time, 
 and the Marquis's face showed his tale was inter- 
 esting, to say the least of it. 
 
 We waited no more but went out into the street. 
 I was barely two closes off from the Tolbooth 
 when a messenger came running after me, sent by 
 the Marquis, who asked if I would oblige greatly 
 by waiting till he made up on me. I went back 
 and met his lordship with his kinsman and mine- 
 manager coming out of the court-room together 
 into the lobby that divided the place from the 
 street. 
 
 " Oh, Elrigmore ! " said the Marquis, in an off- 
 hand jovial and equal way ; " I thought you would 
 like to meet my cousin here — M'lver Campbell 
 of the Barbreck; something of a soldier like your- 
 self, who has seen service in Lowland wars." 
 
 "In the Scots Brigade, sir.?" I asked M'lver, 
 eyeing him with greater interest than ever. He 
 was my senior by half-a-dozen years seemingly, a 
 neat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over 
 the middle height, carrying a rattan in his hand,
 
 24 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 though he had a small sword tucked under the 
 right skirt of his coat. 
 
 "With Lumsden's regiment," he said. "His 
 lordship here has been telling me you have just 
 come home from the field." 
 
 "But last night. I took the liberty while 
 Inneraora was snoring. You were before my day 
 in foreign service, and yet I thought I knew by 
 repute every Campbell that ever fought for the 
 hard-won dollars of Gustivus even before my day. 
 There were not so many of them from the West 
 Country. " 
 
 "I trailed a pike privately," laughed M'lver, 
 "and for the honour of Clan Diarmaid I took the 
 name Munro. My cousin here cares to have none 
 of his immediate relatives make a living by steel 
 at any rank less than a cornal's, or a major's, at 
 the very lowest. Frankfort, and Landsberg, and 
 the stark field of Leipzig were all I saw of foreign 
 battle, and the God's truth is they were my belly- 
 ful. I like a bit splore, but give it to me in our 
 old style, with the tartan instead of buff, and the 
 target for breastplate and taslets. I came home 
 sick of wars." 
 
 "Our friend docs himself injustice, my dear 
 Elrigmore, " said Gillesbeg, smiling, "he came 
 home against his will, I have no doubt, and I 
 know he brought back with him a musketoon 
 bullet in the hip, that coupcd him by the heels 
 down in Glassary for six months." 
 
 "The result," M'lver hurried to explain, but 
 putting out his breast with a touch of vanity, "of
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 25 
 
 a private rencontre, an affair of my own with a 
 Reay gentleman, and not to be laid to my credit 
 as part of the war's scaith at all." 
 
 "You conducted your duello in odd style under 
 Lumsden, surely," said I, "if you fought with 
 powder and ball instead of steel, which is more 
 of a Highlander's weapon to my way of think- 
 ing. All our affairs in the Reay battalion were 
 with claymore — sometimes with targe, sometimes 
 wanting." 
 
 "This was a particular business of our own," 
 laughed John Splendid (for so I may go on to call 
 M'lver, for it was the name he got oftenest behind 
 and before in Argile). " It was less a trial of 
 valour than a wager about which had the better 
 skill with the musket. If I got the bullet in my 
 groin, I at least showed the Mackay gentleman in 
 question that an Argile man could handle arque- 
 bus as well as arjne blancJie as we said in the 
 France. I felled my man at thirty paces, with 
 six to count from a rittmaster's signal. 'Blow, 
 present, God sain Mackay's soul! ' But I 'm not 
 given to braggadocio." 
 
 "Not a bit, cousin," said the Marquis, looking 
 quizzingly at me. 
 
 " I could not make such good play with 
 the gun against a fort gable at so many feet," 
 said I. 
 
 "You could, sir, you could," said John Splendid 
 in an easy, off-hand, flattering way, that gave me 
 at the start of our acquaintance the whole key to 
 his character. " I 've little doubt you could allow
 
 26 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 me half-a-dozen paces and come closer on the 
 centre of the target." 
 
 By this time we were walking down the left 
 side of the street, the Marquis betwixt the pair of 
 us commoners, and I to the wall side. Low- 
 landcrs and Highlanders quickly got out of the 
 way before us and gave us the crown of the cause- 
 way. The main part of them the Marquis never 
 let his eye light on, he kept his nose cocked in 
 the air in the way I 've since found peculiar to his 
 family. It was odd to me that had in wanderings 
 got to look on all honest men as equal (except 
 Camp-Master Generals and Pike Colonels) to see 
 some of his lordship's poor clansmen cringing 
 before him. Here indeed was the leaven of your 
 low country scum, for in all the broad Highlands 
 wandering before and since I never saw the like ! 
 " Blood of my blood, brother of my name ! " says 
 our good Gaelic old-word : it made no insolcnts 
 in camp or castle, but it kept the poorest clans- 
 men's head up before the highest chief. But 
 there was, even in Baile Inneraora, sinking in 
 the servile ways of the incomer, something too of 
 honest worship in the deportment of the people. 
 It was sure enough in the manner of an old woman 
 with a face peat-tanned to crinkled leather who 
 ran out of the Vennel or lane and bending to the 
 Marquis his lace wrist-bands, kissed them as I 've 
 seen Papists do the holy duds in Notre Dame and 
 Bruges Kirk. 
 
 This display before me, something of a stranger, 
 a little displeased Gillesbeg Gruamach. "Tut,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 27 
 
 tut!" he cried in Gaelic to the cailleack, "thou 
 art a foolish old woman ! " 
 
 " God keep thee, MacCailein!" said she; "thy 
 daddy put his hand on my head like a son when 
 he came back from his banishment in Spain, and 
 I keened over thy mother dear when she died. 
 The hair of Peggy Bheg's head is thy door-mat, 
 and her son's blood is thy will for a foot-bath." 
 
 " Savage old harridan ! " cried the Marquis, 
 jerking away; but I could see he was not now 
 unpleased altogether that a man new from the 
 wide world and its ways should behold how much 
 he was thought of by his people. 
 
 He put his hands in a friendly way on the 
 shoulders of us on either hand of him, and brought 
 us up a bit round turn, facing him at a standstill 
 opposite the door of the English kirk. To this 
 day I mind well the rumour of the sea that came 
 round the corner. 
 
 "I have a very particular business with both 
 you gentlemen," he said. "My friend here, 
 M'lver, has come post-haste to tell me of a 
 rumour that a body of Irish banditti under 
 Alasdair MacDonald, the MacColkitto as we call 
 him, has landed somewhere about Kinlochaline 
 or Knoydart. This portends damnably, if I, an 
 elder ordained of this kirk, may say so. We 
 have enough to do with the Athole gentry and 
 others nearer home. It means that I must on 
 with plate and falchion again, and out on the 
 weary road for war I have little stomach for, to 
 tell the truth."
 
 28 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "You 're able for the best of them, MacCailein, " 
 cried John Splendid in a hot admiration. "For a 
 scholar you have as good judgment on the field 
 and as gallant a seat on the saddle as any man 
 ever I saw in haberschone and morion. With 
 your schooling I could go round the world 
 conquering. " 
 
 "Ah! flatterer, flatterer ! Ye have all the guile 
 of the tongue our enemies give Clan Campbell 
 credit for, and that I wish I had a little more of. 
 Still and on, it 's no time for fair words. Look! 
 Elrigmore. You '11 have heard of our little state 
 in this shire for the past ten years, and not only 
 in this shire but all over the West Highlands. I 
 give you my word I'm no sooner with the belt off 
 me and my chair pulled into my desk and papers 
 than it 's some one beating a point of war or a piper 
 blowing the warning under my window. To look 
 at my history for the past few years any one might 
 think I was Dol' Gorm himself, fight and plot, 
 plot and fight ! How can I help it — thrust into 
 this hornets' nest from the age of sixteen, when 
 my father {bcannacJid Ids!) took me out warring 
 against the islesmen, and I only in the humour 
 for playing at shinty or fishing like the boys on 
 the moorlochs behind the town. I would sooner 
 be a cottar in Auchnagoul down there, with por- 
 ridge for my every meal, than constable, chastiser, 
 what not, or whatever I am, of all these vexed 
 Highlands. Give me my book in my closet, or 
 at worst let me do my country's work in a court- 
 ier's way with brains, and I would ask no more."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 29 
 
 "Except Badenoch and Nether Lochaber — fat 
 land, fine land, MacCailein!" said John Splendid, 
 laughing cunningly. 
 
 The Marquis's face flamed up. 
 
 "You're an ass, John," he said; "picking up 
 the countryside's gossip. I have no love for the 
 Athole and Great Glen folks, as ye ken; but I 
 could long syne have got letters of fire and sword 
 that made Badenoch and Nether Lochaber mine 
 if I had the notion. Don't interrupt me with 
 your nonsense, cousin; I'm telling Elrigmore 
 here, for he 's young and has skill of civilised 
 war, that there may in very few weeks be need 
 of every arm in the parish or shire to baulk 
 Colkitto. The MacDonald and other malignants 
 have been robbing high and low from Lochow to 
 Loch Finne this while back; I have hanged them 
 a score a month at the town-head there, but that 's 
 dealing with small affairs, and I 'm sore mistaken 
 if we have not cruel times to come." 
 
 "Well, sir," I said. "What can I do.? " 
 
 The Marquis bit his moustachio and ran a spur 
 on the ground for a little without answering, as 
 one in a quandary, and then he said, "You 're no 
 vassal of mine. Baron " (as if he were half sorry 
 for it), "but all you Glen Shira folk are well 
 disposed to me and mine, and have good cause, 
 though that MacNaughton fellow 's a Papisher. 
 What I had in my mind was that I might count 
 on you taking a company of our fencible men, as 
 John here is going to do, and going overbye 
 to Lorn with me to cut off those Irish black-
 
 30 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 guards of Alasdair MacDonald's from joining 
 Montrose." 
 
 For some minutes I stood turning the thing 
 over in my mind, being by nature slow to take 
 on any scheme of high emprise without some 
 scrupulous balancing of chances. Half-way up 
 the closes, in the dusk, and in their rooms, well 
 back from the windows, or far up the street, all 
 aloof from his Majesty MacCailein Mor, the good 
 curious people of Inneraora watched us. They 
 could little guess the pregnancy of our affairs. 
 For me, I thought how wearily I had looked for 
 some rest from wars, at home in Glen Shira after 
 my long years of foreign service : now that I was 
 here, and my mother no more, my old father 
 needed me on hill and field; Argile's quarrel was 
 not my quarrel until Argile's enemies were at 
 the foot of Ben Bhuidhe or coming all boden in 
 fier of war up the pass of Shira Glen; I liked 
 adventure, and a captaincy was a captaincy, 
 but 
 
 " Is it boot and saddle at once, my lord ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 "It must be that or nothing. When a viper's 
 head is coming out of a hole, crunch it inconti- 
 nent, or the tail may be more than you can 
 manage. " 
 
 "Then, my lord," said I, "I must cry off. On 
 this jaunt at least. It would be my greatest 
 pleasure to go with you and my friend M'lver, 
 not to mention all the good fellows I 'm bound to 
 know in rank in your regiment, but for my duty
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 31 
 
 to my father and one or two other considerations 
 that need not be named. But — if this be any 
 use — I give my word that should MacDonald 
 or any other force come this side the passes at 
 Accurach Hill, or anywhere east Lochow, my 
 time and steel are yours." 
 
 MacCailein Mor looked a bit annoyed, and led 
 us at a fast pace up to the gate of the castle that 
 stood, high towered and embrasured for heavy 
 pieces, stark and steeve above town Inneraora. 
 A most curious, dour, and moody man, with a 
 mind roving from key to key. Every now and 
 then he would stop and think a little without a 
 word, then on, and run his fingers through his 
 hair or fumble nervously at his leathern buttons, 
 paying small heed to the Splendid and I, who 
 convoyed him, so we got into a crack about the 
 foreign field of war. 
 
 "Quite right, Elrigmore, quite right," at last 
 cried the Marquis, pulling up short, and looked 
 me plumb in the eyes. "Bide at hame while bide 
 ye may. I would never go on this affair myself 
 if by God's grace I was not Marquis of Argile and 
 son of a house with many bitter foes. But, hark 
 ye! a black day looms for these over home-lands 
 if ever Montrose and those Irish dogs get through 
 our passes. For twenty thousand pounds Saxon 
 I would not have the bars off the two roads of 
 Accurach ! And I thank you, Elrigmore, that at 
 the worst I can count on your service at home. 
 We may need good men here on Loch Finneside 
 as well as further afield, overrun as we are by
 
 32 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the blackguardism of the North and the Papist 
 clans around us. Come in, friends, and have your 
 meridian. I have a flagon of French brown brandy 
 you never tasted the equal of in any town you 
 sacked in all Low Germanic."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 33 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 John Splendid looked at me from the corner of 
 an eye as we came out again and daundered slowly 
 down the town. 
 
 "A queer one yon ! " said he, as it were feeling 
 his way with a rapier-point at my mind about his 
 Marquis. 
 
 "Imph'm," I muttered, giving him parry of 
 low quarte like a good swordsman, and he came 
 to the recover with a laugh. 
 
 " Foil, Elrigmore ! " he cried. " But we 're 
 soldiers and lads of the world, and you need 
 hardly be so canny. You see MacCailein's points 
 as well as I do. His one weakness is the old one 
 — books, books, — the curse of the Highlands and 
 every man of spirit, say I ! He has the stuff in 
 him by nature, for none can deny Clan Diarmaid 
 courage and knightliness; but for four generations 
 court, closet, and college have been taking the 
 heart out of our chiefs. Had our lordship in-bye 
 been sent a fostering in the old style, brought up 
 to the chase and the sword and manly comport- 
 ment, he would not have that wan cheek this day, 
 and that swithering about what he must be at 
 next ! " 
 
 "You forget that I have had the same ill- 
 training," I said (in no bad humour, for I fol- 
 
 3
 
 34 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 lowed his mind). "I had a touch of Glascow 
 College myself." 
 
 "Yes, yes," he answered quickly; "you had 
 that, but by all accounts it did you no harm. 
 You learned little of what they teach there." 
 
 This annoyed me, I confess, and John Splendid 
 was gleg enough to see it. 
 
 "I mean," he added, "you caught no fever for 
 paper and ink, though you may have learned many 
 a quirk I was the better of myself. I could never 
 even write my name; and I 've kept compt of 
 wages at the mines with a pickle chuckie-stones. " 
 
 "That 's a pity," says I, drily. 
 
 "Oh, never a bit," says he gaily, or at any rate 
 with a way as if to carry it off vauntingly. " I 
 can do many things as well as most, and a few 
 others colleges never learned me. I know many 
 sgenlacJidan, from ' Minochag and Morag ' to * The 
 Shifty Lad ' ; I can make passable poetry by word 
 of mouth ; I can speak the English and the French ; 
 and I have seen enough of courtiers to know that 
 half their canons are to please and witch the eye 
 of women in a way that I could undertake to do 
 by my looks alone and some good-humour. Show 
 me a beast on hill or in glen I have not the his- 
 tory of; and if dancing, singing, the sword, the 
 gun, the pipes — ah, not the pipes, — it 's my one 
 envy in the world to play the bagpipes with some 
 show of art and delicacy, and I cannot. Queer is 
 that, indeed, and I so keen on them ! I would 
 tramp right gaily a night and a day on end to 
 hear a scholar fingering * The Glen is Mine.' "
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 35 
 
 There was a witless vanity about my friend that 
 sat on him ahnost like a virtue. He made parade 
 of his crafts less, I could see, because he thought 
 much of them than because he wanted to keep 
 himself on an equality with me. In the same 
 way, as I hinted before, he never, in all the time 
 of our wanderings after, did a thing well before 
 me but he bode to keep up my self-respect by 
 maintaining that I could do better or at least as 
 good. 
 
 "Books, I say,'' he went on, as we clinked heels 
 on the causeway-stones, and between my little bit 
 cracks with old friends in the by-going, — " books, 
 I say, have spoiled MacCailein's stomach. Ken 
 ye what he told me once.-* That a man might 
 readily show more valour in a conclusion come to 
 in the privacy of his bed-closet than in a victory 
 won on the field. That 's what they teach by way 
 of manly doctrine down there in the new English 
 church, under the pastorage of Maistcr Alexander 
 Gordon, chaplain to his lordship and minister to 
 his lordship's people ! It must be the old Cavalier 
 in me, but somehow (in your lug) I have no broo 
 of those Covenanting cattle from the low country; 
 though Gordon 's a good soul, there 's no denying." 
 
 "Are you Catholic? " I said, in a surprise. 
 
 "What are you yourself.''" he asked, more 
 Scotticb (as we say in the Humanities), and then 
 he flushed, for he saw a little smile in my face at 
 the transparency of his endeavour to be always on 
 the pleasing side. 
 
 "To tell the truth," he said, "I 'm depending
 
 36 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 on salvation by reason of a fairly good heart, and 
 an eagerness to wrong no man, gentle or semple. 
 I love my fellows, one and all, not offhand as the 
 Catechism enjoins, but heartily, and I never saw 
 the fellow, carl or king, who, if ordinary honest 
 and cheerful, I could not lie heads and thraws 
 with at a camp-fire. In matters of strict ritual, 
 now, — ha — um ! " 
 
 "Out with it, man!" I cried, laughing. 
 
 "I'm like Parson Kilmalieu upbye. You've 
 heard of him — easy-going soul, and God sain 
 him ! When it came to the bit, he turned the 
 holy-water font of Kilachatrine blue-stone upside- 
 down, scooped a hole in the bottom, and used 
 the new hollow for Protestant baptism. ' There 's 
 such a throng about heaven's gate,' said he, ' that 
 it 's only a mercy to open two; ' and he was a 
 good and humoursome Protestant-Papist till the 
 day he went under the flagstones of his chapel 
 upbye." 
 
 Now here was not a philosophy to my mind. I 
 fought in the German wars less for the kreutzers 
 than for a belief (never much studied out, but 
 fervent) that Protestantism was the one good 
 faith, and that her ladyshi^^ of Babylon, that 's 
 ever on the ran-dan, cannot have her downfall one 
 day too soon. You dare not be playing corners- 
 change-corners with religion as you can with the 
 sword of what the ill-bred have called a mercenary 
 (when you come to ponder on 't, the swords of 
 patriot or paid man are both for selfish ends un- 
 sheathed), and if I set down here word for word
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 37 
 
 what John Splendid said, it must not be thought 
 to be in homologation on my part of such lati- 
 tudinarianism. 
 
 I let him run on in this key till we came to the 
 change -house of a widow — one Fraser — and as 
 she curtsied at the door, and asked if the braw 
 gentlemen would favour her poor parlour, we went 
 in and tossed a quaich or two of aqua, to which 
 end she set before us a little brown bottle and two 
 most cunningly contrived and carven cups made 
 of the Coillebhraid silver. 
 
 The houses in Inneraora were, and are, built all 
 very much alike, on a plan I thought somewhat 
 cosy and genteel, ere ever I went abroad and 
 learned better. I do not even now deny the cosie- 
 ness of them, but of the genteelity it were well to 
 say little. They were tall lands or tenements, 
 three storeys high, with through-going closes, or 
 what the English might nominate passages, run- 
 ning from front to back, and leading at their 
 midst to stairs, whereby the occupants got to 
 their domiciles in the flats above. Curved stairs 
 they were, of the same blue stone the castle is 
 built of, and on their landings at each storey they 
 branched right and left to give access to the single 
 apartments or rooms and kitchens of the resi- 
 denters. Throng tenements they are these, even 
 yet, giving, as I write, clever children to the 
 world. His Grace nowadays might be granting 
 the poor people a little more room to grow in, 
 some soil for their kail, and a better prospect 
 from their windows than the whitewashed wall of
 
 38 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the opposite land ; but in the matter of air there 
 was and is no complaint. The sea in stormy days 
 came bellowing to the very doors, salt and sting- 
 ing, tremendous blue and cold. Staying in town 
 of a night, I used to lie awake in my relative's, 
 listening to the spit of the waves on the window- 
 panes and the grumble of the tide, that rocked 
 the land I lay in till I could well fancy it was a 
 ship. Through the closes of a night the wind 
 ever stalked like something fierce and blooded, 
 rattling the iron snecks with an angry finger, 
 breathing beastily at the hinge, and running back 
 a bit once in a while to leap all the harder against 
 groaning lintel and post. 
 
 The change-house of the widow was on the 
 ground-flat, a but and ben, the ceilings arched 
 with stone — a strange device in masonry you '11 
 find seldom elsewhere. Highland or Lowland. 
 But she had a garret-room up two stairs where 
 properly she abode, the close flat being reserved 
 for trade of vending iiisgebaigJi and ale. I describe 
 all this old place so fully because it bears on a 
 little affair that happened therein on that day 
 John Splendid and I went in to clink glasses. 
 
 The widow had seen that neither of us was very 
 keen on her aqua, which, as it happened, was raw 
 new stuff brewed over at Kames, Lochow, and 
 she asked would we prefer some of her brandy. 
 
 "After his lordship's it might be something of 
 a downcome," said John Splendid, half to me and 
 half to the woman. 
 
 She caught his meaning, though he spoke in
 
 .JOHN SPLENDID 39 
 
 the English, and in our own tongue, laughing 
 toothlessly, she said, — 
 
 "The same stilling, Barbreck, the same stilling 
 I make no doubt. MacCailein gets his brown 
 brandy by my brother's cart from French F^ore- 
 land ; it's a rough road, and sometimes a bottle 
 or two spills on the way. I 've a flagon up in a 
 cupboard in my little garret, and I '11 go fetch it." 
 
 She was over-old a woman to climb three steep 
 stairs for the sake of two young men's drought, 
 and I (having always some regard for the frail) 
 took the key from her hand and went, as was com- 
 mon enough with her younger customers, seeking 
 my own liquor up the stair. 
 
 In those windy flights in the fishing season 
 there is often the close smell of herring-scale, of 
 bow tar and the bark-tan of the fishing nets ; but 
 this stair I climbed for the wherewithal was un- 
 usually sweet odoured and clean, because on the 
 first floor was the house of Provost Brown — a 
 Campbell and a Gael, but burdened by accident 
 with a Lowland-sounding cognomen. He had the 
 whole flat to himself — half a dozen snug apart- 
 ments with windows facing the street or the sea 
 as he wanted. I was just at the head of the first 
 flight when out of a door came a girl, and I 
 clean forgot all about the widow's flask of French 
 brandy. 
 
 Little more than twelve years syne the Provost's 
 daughter had been a child at the grammar school, 
 whose one annoyance in life was that the dominie 
 called her Betsy instead of Betty, her real own
 
 40 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 name; here she was, in the flat of her father's 
 house in Inneraora town, a full-grown woman, 
 who gave me check in my stride and set my face 
 flaming. I took in her whole appearance at one 
 glance — a way we have in foreign armies. Be- 
 tween my toe on the last step of the stair and the 
 landing I read the picture : a well-bred woman, 
 from her carriage, the neatness of her apparel, the 
 composure of her pause to let me bye in the nar- 
 row passage to the next stair; not very tall (I 
 have ever had a preference for such as come no 
 higher than neck and oxter) ; very dark brown 
 hair, eyes sparkling, a face rather pale than ruddy, 
 soft skinned, full of a keen nervousness. 
 
 In this matter of a woman's eyes — if I may 
 quit the thread of my history — I am a trifle fas- 
 tidious, and I make bold to say that the finest 
 eyes in the world are those of the Highland girls 
 of Argile — burgh or landward — the best bred 
 and gentlest of them I mean. There is in them 
 a full and melting friendliness, a mixture to 
 my sometimes notion of poetry and of calm — a 
 memory, as I 've thought before, of the deep 
 misty glens and their sights and secrets. I have 
 seen more of the warm heart and merriment in a 
 simple Loch Finne girl's eyes than in all the 
 faces of all the grand dames ever I looked on, 
 Lowland or foreign. 
 
 What pleased me first and foremost about this 
 girl Betty, daughter of Provost Brown, were her 
 eyes, then, that showed, even in yon dusky pas- 
 sage, a humoursomc interest in young Elrigmore
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 41 
 
 in a kilt coming up-stairs swinging on a finger 
 the key of Lucky Fraser's garret. She hung back 
 doubtfully, though she knew me (I could see) for 
 her old school-fellow and sometime boy-lover, 
 but I saw something of a welcome in the blush 
 at her face, and I gave her no time to chill 
 to me. 
 
 "Betty lass, 'tis you," said I, putting out a 
 hand and shaking her soft fingers. "What think 
 you of my ceremony in calling at the earliest 
 chance to pay my devoirs to the Provost of this 
 burgh and his daughter } " 
 
 I put the key behind my back to give colour a 
 little to my words ; but my lady saw it and jumped 
 at my real errand on the stair, with that quick- 
 ness ever accompanying eyes of the kind I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 "Ceremony here, devoir there ! " said she, smil- 
 ing, " there was surely no need for a key to our 
 door, Elrigmore " 
 
 "Colin, Mistress Brown, plain Colin, if you 
 please." 
 
 "Colin, if you will, though it seems daftlike to 
 be so free with a soldier of twelve years' fortune. 
 You were for the widow's garret. Does some one 
 wait on you below } " 
 
 "John Splendid." 
 
 "My mother 's in-bye. She will be pleased to 
 see you back again if you and your friend call. 
 After you 've paid the lawing," she added, smiling 
 like a rogue. 
 
 "That will we," said I; but I hung on the stair-
 
 42 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 head, and she leaned on the inner sill of the stair 
 window. 
 
 We got into a discourse upon old days, that 
 brought a glow to my heart the brandy I forgot 
 had never brought to my head. We talked of 
 school, and the gay days in wood and field, of our 
 childish wanderings on the shore, making sand- 
 keps and stone houses, herding the crabs of God 
 — so little that bairns dare not be killing them, 
 of venturings to sea many ells out in tow-caulked 
 herring-boxes, of journeys into the brave deep 
 woods that lie far and wide round Inneraora, seek- 
 ing the spruce branch for the Beltane fire; of 
 nutting in the hazels of the glens, and feasts upon 
 the berry on the brae. Later, the harvest -home 
 and the dance in green or barn when I was at 
 almost my man's height, with the pluck to put a 
 bare lip to its apprenticeship on a woman's cheek; 
 the songs at ceilidh fires, the telling of sgculacJuian 
 and fairy tales up on the mountain shelling 
 
 "Let me see," said I; "when I went abroad, 
 were not you and one of the Glenaora Campbells 
 chief.?" 
 
 I said it as if the recollection had but sprung to 
 me, while the truth is I had thought on it often 
 in camp and field, with a regret that the girl 
 should throw herself off on so poor a partner. 
 
 She laughed merrily with her whole soul in the 
 business, and her face without art or pretence — a 
 fashion most wholesome to behold. 
 
 " He married someone nearer him in years long 
 syne," said she. "You forget I was but a bairn
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 43 
 
 when we romped in the hay-dash." And we 
 buckled to the crack again, I more keen on it 
 than ever. She was a most marvellous fine girl, 
 and I thought her {well I mind me now) like the 
 blue harebell that nods upon our heather hills. 
 
 We might, for all I dreamt of the widow's 
 brandy, have been conversing on the stair-head 
 yet, and my story had a different conclusion, had 
 not a step sounded on the stair, and up banged 
 John Splendid, his sword-scabbard clinking against 
 the wall of the stair with the haste of him. 
 
 " Set a Cavalier at the side of an anker of 
 brandy," he cried, "and " 
 
 Then he saw he was in company. He took 
 off his bonnet with a sweep I '11 warrant he never 
 learned anywhere out of France, and plunged into 
 the thick of our discourse with a query. 
 
 "At your service. Mistress Brown," said he. 
 " Half my errand to town to-day was to find if 
 young MacLachlan, your relative, is to be at the 
 market here to-morrow. If so " 
 
 " He is," said Betty. 
 
 " Will he be intending to put up here all night, 
 then .? " 
 
 "He comes to supper at least," said she, "and 
 his biding overnight is yet to be settled." 
 
 John Splendid toyed with the switch in his 
 hand in seeming abstraction, and yet as who was 
 pondering on how to put an unwelcome message 
 in plausible language. 
 
 "Do you know," said he at last to the girl, in 
 a low voice, for fear his words should reach the
 
 44 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 ears of her mother in-bye, " I would as well see 
 MacLachlan out of town the morn's night. 
 There 's a waft of cold airs about this place not 
 particularly wholesome for any of his clan -or 
 name. So much I would hardly care to say to 
 himself; but he might take it from you, madam, 
 that the other side of the loch is the safest place 
 for sound sleep for some time to come." 
 
 "Is it the MacNicolls you're thinking of.-*" 
 asked the girl. 
 
 "That same, my dear." 
 
 "You ken," he went on, turning fuller round 
 to me, to tell a story he guessed a new-comer was 
 unlikely to know the ins and outs of — " You ken 
 that one of the MacLachlans, a cousin-german of 
 old Lachie the chief, cam' over in a boat to 
 Braleckan a few weeks syne on an old feud, and 
 put a bullet into a MacNicoll, a peaceable lad 
 who was at work in a field. Gay times, gay 
 times, aren't they? From behind a dyke wall 
 too — a far from gentlemanly escapade even in a 
 MacLa Pardon, mistress, I forgot your rela- 
 tionship, but this was surely a very low dog of 
 his kind. Now from that day to this the mur- 
 thcrer is to find ; there are some to say old Lachie 
 could put his hand on him at an hour's notice if 
 he had the notion. But his lordship, Justiciar- 
 General, upbye, has sent his provost-marshal with 
 letters of arrest to the place in vain. Now here 's 
 my story. The MacNicolls of Elrig have joined 
 cause with their cousins and namesakes of Bra- 
 leckan ; there 's a wheen of both to be in the town
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 45 
 
 at the market to-morrow, and if young MacLach- 
 lan bides in this house of yours overnight, Mis- 
 tress Betty Brown, you 'II maybe hae broken delf 
 and worse ere the day daw." 
 
 Mistress Brown took it very coolly, and as for 
 me, I was thinkhig of a tiny brown mole-spot she 
 used to have low on the white of her neck when I 
 put daisy-links on her on the summers wc played 
 on the green, and wondering if it was still to the 
 fore and hid below her collar. In by the window 
 came the saucy breeze and kissed her on a curl 
 that danced above her ear. 
 
 " I hope there will be no lawlessness here," said 
 she : " if the gentleman zvilL go, he will go home ; 
 if he bides, he bides, and surely the burghers of 
 Inneraora will not quietly see their Provost's dom- 
 icile invaded by brawlers." 
 
 "Exactly so," said John Splendid, drily. 
 " Nothing may come of it, but you might mention 
 the affair to MacLachlan if you have the chance. 
 For me to tell him would be to put him in the 
 humour for staying — dour fool that he is — out 
 of pure bravado and defiance. To tell the truth, 
 I would bide myself in such a case. ' Thole feud ' 
 is my motto. My grand-dad writ it on the butt of 
 his sword-blade in clear round print letters, I 've 
 often marvelled at the skill of If it's your will, 
 Elrigmore. we may be doing without the brandy, 
 and give the house-dame a call now," 
 
 We went in and paid our duties to the good wife, 
 — a silver-haired dame with a wonderful number of 
 Betty's turns in her voice, and ready sober smile.
 
 46 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Writing all this old ancient history down, I find 
 it hard to riddle out in my mind the things that 
 have really direct and pregnant bearing on the 
 matter in hand. I am tempted to say a word or 
 two anent my Lord Marquis's visit to my father, 
 and his vain trial to get me enlisted into his corps 
 for Lorn. Something seems due, also, to be said 
 about the kindness I found from all the old folks 
 of Inneraora, ever proud to see a lad of their own 
 of some repute come back among them ; and of 
 my father's grieving about his wae widowerhood ; 
 but these things must stand by while I narrate 
 how there arose a wild night in town Inneraora, 
 with the Highlandmcn from the glens into it with 
 dirlc and sword and steel Doune pistols, the flam- 
 beaux flaring against the tall lands, and the Low- 
 land burghers of the place standing up for peace 
 and tranquil sleep. 
 
 The market day came on the morning after the 
 day John Splendid and I foregathered with my 
 Lord Archibald. It was a smaller market than 
 usual, by reason of the troublous times; but a few 
 black and red cattle came from the landward part 
 of the parish and Knapdale side, while Lochow 
 and Brcadaibane sent hoof nor horn. There was 
 never a blacker sien of the times' unrest. But
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 47 
 
 men came from many parts of the sliire, with their 
 chieftains or lairds, and there they went clamping 
 about this Lowland-looking town like foreigners. 
 I counted ten tartans in as many minutes between 
 the Cross and the kirk, most of them friendly with 
 MacCailein Mor, but a few, like that of Mac- 
 Lachlan of that ilk, at variance, and the wearers 
 with ugly whingers or claymores at their belts. 
 Than those MacLachlans one never saw a more 
 barbarous-looking set. There were a dozen of 
 them in the tail or retinue of old Lachie's son, — 
 a henchman, piper, piper's valet, gillc-niorc, gillc- 
 cas-flcuch or running footman, and such others as 
 the more vain of our Highland gentry at the time 
 ever insisted on travelling about with, all stout 
 junky men of middle size, bearded to the brows, 
 wearing flat blue bonnets with a pervenke plant 
 for badge on the sides of them, on their feet deer- 
 skin brogues with the hair out, the rest of their 
 costume all belted tartan, and with arms clattering 
 about them. With that proud pretence which is 
 common in our people when in strange, unfamiliar 
 occasions, — and I would be the last to dispraise 
 it, — they went about by no means braggardly but 
 with the aspect of men who had better streets and 
 more shops to show at home; surprised at nothing 
 in their alert moments, but now and again for- 
 getting their dignity and looking into little shop- 
 windows with the wonder of bairns, and great 
 gabbling together till MacLachlan fluted on his 
 whistle, and they came, like good hounds, to 
 heel.
 
 48 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 All day the town hummed with Gaelic and the 
 round bellowing of cattle. It was clear warm 
 weather, never a breath of wind to stir the gilding 
 trees behind the burgh. At ebb-tide the sea-beach 
 whitened and smoked in the sun, and the hot air 
 quivered over the stones and the crisping wrack. 
 In such a season the bustling town in the heart of 
 the stern Highlands seemed a fever spot. Children 
 came boldly up to us for fairings or gifts, and they 
 strayed — the scamps ! — behind the droves and 
 thumped manfully on the buttocks of the cattle. 
 A constant stream of men passed in and out at the 
 change-house closes and about the Fisherland ten- 
 ements, where seafarers and drovers together sang 
 the maddest love-ditties in the voices of roaring 
 bulls ; beating the while with their feet on the 
 floor in our foolish Gaelic fashion, or, as one could 
 see through open windows, rugging and riving at 
 the corners of a plaid spread between them, a 
 trick, I daresay, picked up from women, who at 
 the waulking or washing of woollen cloth new spun, 
 pull out the fabric to tunes suited to such occasions. 
 
 I spent most of the day with John Splendid and 
 one Tearlach (or Charles) Fraser, an old comrade, 
 and as luck, good or ill, would have it, the small 
 hours of morning were on me before I thought of 
 going home. By dusk the bulk of the strangers 
 left the town by the highroads, among them the 
 MacNicolls, who had only by the cunning of 
 mutual friends (Splendid as busy as any), been 
 kept from coming to blows with the MacLachlan 
 tail. Earlier in the day, by a galley or wherry,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 49 
 
 the MacLachlans also had left, but not the young 
 laird, who put up for the night at the house of 
 Provost Brown. 
 
 The three of us I have mentioned sat at last 
 playing cartes in the ferry-house, where a good 
 glass could be had and more tidiness than most of 
 the hostelries in the place could boast of. By the 
 stroke of midnight we were the only customers 
 left in the house, and when, an hour after, I made 
 the move to set out for Glen Shira, John Splendid 
 yoked on me as if my sobriety were a crime. 
 
 " Wait, man, wait, and I '11 give you a convoy 
 up the way," he would say, never thinking of the 
 road he had himself to go down to Coillebhraid. 
 
 And aye it grew late and the night more still. 
 There would be a foot going by at first at short 
 intervals, sometimes a staggering one and a voice 
 growling to itself in Gaelic ; and anon the way- 
 farers were no more, the world outside in a 
 black and solemn silence. The man who kept the 
 ferry-house was often enough in the custom of 
 staying up all night to meet belated boats from 
 Kilcatrine ; we were gcntrice and good customers, 
 so he composed himself in a lug chair and dovered 
 in a little room opening off ours ; while we sat 
 fingering the book. Our voices as we called the 
 cartes seemed now and then to me like a discourtesy 
 to the peace and order of the night. 
 
 " I must go," said I a second time. 
 
 " Another one game," cried John Splendid. 
 He had been winning every bout, but with a re- 
 luctance that shone honestly on his face ; and I 
 
 4
 
 50 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 knew it was to give Tearlach and me a chance to 
 better our reputation that he would have us hang 
 on. 
 
 " You have hard luck indeed," he would say. 
 Or, " You played that trick as few could do it." 
 Or, "Am not I in the key to-night? there's less 
 craft than luck here." And he played slovenly 
 even once or twice, flushing, we could read, lest 
 we could see the stratagem. At these times, by 
 the curious way of chance, he won more surely 
 than ever. 
 
 " I must be going," I said again. And this time 
 I put the cartes bye, firmly determined that my 
 usual easy and pliant mood in fair company would 
 be my own enemy no more. 
 
 " Another chappin of ale," said he. " Tearlach, 
 get Elrigmore to bide another bit. Tuts, the 
 night's but young, the chap of two and a fine 
 clear clean air with a wind behind you for Shira 
 Glen." 
 
 " Wheest ! " said Tearlach of a sudden, and he 
 put up a hand. 
 
 There was a skliffing of feet on the road outside 
 — many feet and wary, with men's voices in a 
 whisper caught at the teeth — a sound at that 
 hour full of menace. Only a moment and then 
 all was by. 
 
 "There's something strange here!" said John 
 Splendid, "let's out and see." He put round his 
 rapier more on the groin, and gave a jerk at the 
 narrow belt creasing his fair-day crimson vest. 
 For me I had only the dirk to speak of, for the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 51 
 
 sgenn dubh at my waist was a silver toy, and Tear- 
 lach, being a burgh man, had no arm at all. He 
 lay hold on an oaken shinty stick that hung on 
 the wall, property of the ferry-house landlord's 
 son. 
 
 Out we went in the direction of the footsteps, 
 round Gillemor's corner and the jail, past the 
 Fencibles' arm-room and into the main street of 
 the town, that held no light in door or window. 
 There would have been moon, but a black wrack 
 of clouds filled the heavens. From the kirk cor- 
 ner we could hear a hushed tumult down at the 
 Provost's close-mouth. 
 
 "Pikes and pistols!" cried Splendid. "Is it 
 not as I said? yonder 's your MacNicolls for you." 
 
 In a flash I thought of Mistress Betty with her 
 hair down, roused by the marauding crew, and I 
 ran hurriedly down the street shouting the burgh's 
 slogan, " Slochd ! " 
 
 " Damn the man's hurry ! " said John Splendid, 
 trotting at my heels, and with Tearlach too he 
 gave lungs to the shout. 
 
 " Slochd ! " I cried, and " Slochd ! " they cried, 
 and the whole town clanged like a bell. Windows 
 open here and there, and out popped heads, and 
 then — 
 
 " Murder and thieves ! " we cried stoutly again. 
 
 " Is't the Athole dogs? " asked some one in bad 
 English from a window, but we did not bide to 
 tell him. 
 
 " Slochd ! slochd ! club and steel ! " more nim- 
 ble burghers cried, jumping out at closes in our
 
 52 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 rear, and following with neither hose nor bropjue, 
 but the kilt thrown at one toss on the haunch and 
 some weapon in hand. And the whole wide street 
 was stark awake. 
 
 The MacNicolls must have numbered fully 
 threescore. They had only made a pretence (we 
 learned again) of leaving the town, and had hung 
 on the river-side till they fancied their attempt at 
 seizing MacLachlan was secure from the interfer- 
 ence of the town-folk. They were packed in a 
 mass in the close and on the stair, and the fore- 
 most were solemnly battering at the night door at 
 the top of the first flight of stairs, crying, " Fuil, 
 airson fuil! — blood for blood, out with young 
 Lachie!" 
 
 We fell to on the rearmost with a will, first of 
 all with the bare fist, for half of this midnight 
 army were my own neighbours in Glen Shira, 
 peaceable men in ordinary affairs, kirk-goers, law- 
 abiders, though maybe a little common in the 
 quality, and between them and the mustering 
 burghers there was no feud. For a while we 
 fought it dourly in the darkness with the fingers at 
 the throat or the fist in the face, or wrestled 
 warmly on the plain-stones, or laid out, such as 
 had staves, with good vigour on the bonneted 
 heads. Into the close we could not — soon I saw 
 it — push our way, for the enemy filled it — a 
 dense mass of tartan, stinking with peat and ooz- 
 ing with the day's debauchery. 
 
 "We'll have him out, if it's in bits," they said, 
 and aye upon the stair-head banged the door.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 53 
 
 " No remedy in this way for the folks besieged," 
 thinks I, and stepping aside I began to wonder 
 how best to aid our friends by strategy rather than 
 force of arms. All at once I had mind that at the 
 back of the land facing the shore an outhouse with 
 a thatched roof ran at a high pitch well up against 
 the kitchen window, and I stepped through a close 
 further up and set, at this outhouse, to the climb- 
 ing, leaving my friends fighting out in the dark- 
 ness in a town tumultuous. To get up over the 
 eaves of the outhouse was no easy task, and I 
 would have failed without a doubt had not the 
 stratagem of John Splendid come to his aid a little 
 later than my own and sent him after me. He 
 helped me first on the roof, and I had him soon 
 beside me. The window lay unguarded (all the 
 inmates of the house being at the front), and we 
 stepped in and found ourselves soon in a house- 
 hold vastly calm considering the rabble dunting in 
 its doors. 
 
 " A pot of scalding water and a servant wench 
 at that back-window we came in by would be a 
 good sneck against all that think of coming after 
 us," said John Splendid, stepping into the passage 
 where we met Mistress Betty the day before — 
 now with the stairhead door stoutly barred and 
 barricaded up with heavy chests and napery- 
 aumries. 
 
 " God ! I 'm glad to see you, sir ! " cried the 
 Provost," and you, Elrigmorc ! " He came for- 
 ward in a trepidation which was shared by few of 
 the people about him.
 
 54 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Young MacLachlan stood up against the wall 
 facing the barricaded door, a lad little over twenty, 
 with a steel-grey quarrelsome eye, and there was 
 more bravado than music in a pipe-tune he was 
 humming in a low key to himself. A little beyond, 
 at the door of the best room, half in and half out, 
 stood the good wife Brown and her daughter. A 
 son of the house, of about eighteen, with a brog or 
 awl was teasing out the end of a flambeau in prep- 
 aration to light for some purpose not to be guessed 
 at, and a servant lass, pock-marked, with one eye 
 on the pot and the other up the lum, as we say of 
 a glee or cast, made a storm of lamentation, cry- 
 ing in Gaelic, — 
 
 "My grief! my grief! what's to come of poor 
 P^ggy?" (Peggy being herself.) "Nothing for 
 it but the wood and cave and the ravishing of the 
 Ben Bhuidhe wolves." 
 
 Mistress Betty laughed at her notion, a sign of 
 humour and courage in her (considering the plight) 
 that fairly took me. 
 
 " I daresay, Peggy, they '11 let us be," she said, 
 coming forward to shake Splendid and me by the 
 hand. " To keep me in braws and you in ashets 
 to break would be more than the poor creatures 
 would face, I 'm thinking. You are late in the 
 town, Elrigmore." 
 
 " Colin." I corrected her, and she bit the inside 
 of her nether lip in a style that means temper. 
 
 " It's no time for dalliance, I think. I thought 
 you had been up the glen long syne, but we are 
 glad to have your service in this trouble. Master —
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 55 
 
 Colin " (with a little laugh and a flush at the 
 cheek), " also Mr. Campbell. Do you think they 
 mean seriously ill by MacLachlan? " 
 
 " 111 enough, I have little doubt," briskly replied 
 Splendid. " A corps of MacNicolls, arrant knaves 
 from all airts, worse than the Macaulays or the 
 Gregarach themselves, do not come banging at the 
 burgh door of Inneraora at this uncanny hour for 
 a child's play. Sir" (he went on, to MacLachlan), 
 " I mind you said last market-day at Kilmichael, 
 with no truth to back it, that you could run, shoot, 
 or sing any Campbell ever put on hose ; let a 
 Campbell show you the way out of a bees'-bike. 
 Take the back-window for it, and out the way we 
 came in. I '11 warrant there 's not a wise enough 
 (let alone a sober enough) man among all the idiots 
 battering there who '11 think of watching for your 
 retreat." 
 
 MacLachlan, a most extraordinary vain and 
 pompous little fellow, put his bonnet suddenly on 
 his head, scrugged it down vauntingly on one side 
 over the right eye, and stared at John Splendid 
 with a good deal of choler or hurt vanity. 
 
 " Sir," said he, " this was our affair till you put a 
 finger into it. You might know me well enough 
 to understand that none of our breed ever took 
 a back door if a front offered." 
 
 " Whilk it does not in this case," said John 
 Splendid, seemingly in a mood to humour the man. 
 " But I '11 allow there 's the right spirit in the ob- 
 jection — to begin with in a young lad. When I 
 was your age I had the same good Highland notion
 
 56 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 that the hardest way to face the foe was the hand- 
 somest. 'Pallas Arniata ' (is 't that you call the 
 book of arms, Elrigmore?) tells different; but 
 ' Pallas Armata' (or whatever it is) is for old men 
 with cool blood." 
 
 Of a sudden MacLachlan made dart at the chests 
 and pulled them back from the door with a most 
 surprising vigour of arm before any one could pre- 
 vent him. The Provost vainly tried to make him 
 desist; John Splendid said in English, " He that 
 maun to Cupar maun to Cupar," and in a jiffy 
 the last of the barricade was down, but the door 
 was still on two wooden bars slipping into stout 
 staples. Betty in a low whisper asked me to save 
 the poor fellow from his own hot temper. 
 
 At the minute I grudged him the lady's con- 
 sideration — too warm, I thought, even in a far- 
 out relative, but a look at her face showed she was 
 only in the alarm of a woman at the thought of 
 any one's danger. 
 
 I caught MacLachlan by the sleeve of his shirt 
 — he had on but that and a kilt and vest — and 
 jerked him back from his fool's employment; but 
 I was a shave late. He ran back both wooden 
 bars before I let him. 
 
 With a roar and a display of teeth and steel the 
 MacNicolls came into the lobby from the crowded 
 stair, and we were driven to the far parlour end. 
 In the forefront of them was Nicol Beg MacNicoll, 
 the nearest kinsman of the murdered Braleckan lad. 
 He had a targe on his left arm — a round buckler 
 of daracJi or oak-wood covered with dun cow-hide,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 57 
 
 hair out, and studded in a pleasing pattern with 
 iron bosses — a prong several inches long in the 
 middle of it. Like every other scamp in the pack, 
 he had dirk out. Beg or little he was in the 
 countryside's byename, but in truth he was a fel- 
 low of six feet, as hairy as a brock and in the same 
 straight bristly fashion. He put out his arms at 
 full reach to keep back his clansmen, who were 
 stretching necks at poor MacLachlan like weasels, 
 him with his nostrils swelling and his teeth biting 
 his bad temper. 
 
 "Wait a bit, lads," said Nicol Beg; "perhaps 
 we may get our friend here to come peaceably 
 with us. I'm sorry" (he went on, addressing the 
 Provost) " to put an honest house to rabble at 
 any time, and the Provost of Inneraora specially, 
 for I 'm sure there 's kin's blood by my mother's 
 side between us ; but there was no other way to 
 get MacLachlan once his tail was gone." 
 
 " You '11 rue this, MacNicoll," fumed the Provost 
 — as red as a bubblyjock at the face — mopping 
 with a napkin at his neck in a sweat of annoy- 
 ance; " you '11 rue it, rue it, rue it! " and he went 
 into a coil of lawyer's threats against the invaders, 
 talking of brandcr-irons and gallows, hamesucken 
 and housebreaking. 
 
 We were a daft-like lot in that long lobby in a 
 wan candle-light. Over mc came that wonder- 
 ment that falls on one upon stormy occasions (I 
 mind it at the sally of Lecheim), when the whirl 
 of life seems to come to a sudden stop, all 's but 
 wooden dummies and a scene empty of atmos-
 
 58 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 pliere, and between your hand on the basket- 
 hilt and the drawing of the sword is a hfctinie. 
 We could hear at the close- mouth and far up and 
 down the street the shouting of the burghers, and 
 knew that at the stair-foot they were trying to pull 
 out the bottom-most of the marauders like tods 
 from a hole. For a second or two nobody said 
 a word to Nicol MacNicoU's remark, for he put 
 the issue so cool (like an invitation to saunter 
 along the road) that all at once it seemed a matter 
 between him and MacLachlan alone. I stood 
 between the house-breakers and the women-folk 
 beside me — John Splendid looking wonderfully 
 ugly for a man fairly clean fashioned at the face 
 by nature. We left the issue to MacLachlan, and 
 I must say he came up to the demands of the 
 moment with gentlcmanliness, minding he was in 
 another's house than his own. 
 
 "What is it ye want?" he asked MacNicoll, 
 burring out his Gaelic r's with punctilio. 
 
 " We want you in room of a murderer your 
 father owes us," said MacNicoll. 
 
 "You would slaughter me, then?" said Mac- 
 Lachlan, amazingly undisturbed, but bringing again 
 to the front, by a motion of the haunch accidental 
 to look at, the sword he leaned on. 
 
 " Full airson fuil ! " cried the rabble on the 
 stairs, and it seemed ghastly like an answer to the 
 young laird's question ; but Nicol Beg demanded 
 peace, and assured MacLachlan he was only 
 sought for a hostage. 
 
 " We but want your red-handed friend Dark
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 59 
 
 Neil," said he ; " your father kens his lair, and the 
 hour he puts him in our hands for justice, you '11 
 have freedom." 
 
 " Do you warrant me free of scaith ? " asked the 
 young laird. 
 
 " I '11 warrant not a hair of your head 's touched," 
 answered Nicol Beg; no very sound warranty I 
 thought from a man who, as he gave it, had to 
 put his weight back on the eager crew that pushed 
 at his shoulders, ready to spring like weasels at 
 the throat of the gentleman in the red tartan. 
 
 He was young, MacLachlan, as I said; for him 
 this was a delicate situation, and we about him 
 were in no less a quandary than himself. If he 
 defied the Glen Shira men, he brought bloodshed 
 on a peaceable house, and ran the same risk of 
 bodily harm that lay in the alternative of his going 
 with them that wanted him. 
 
 Round he turned and looked for guidance, — 
 broken just a little at the pride, you could see by 
 the lower lip. The Provost was the first to meet 
 him eye for eye. 
 
 " I have no opinion, Lachie," said the old man, 
 snuffing rapce with the butt of an egg-spoon and 
 spilling the brown dust in sheer nervousness over 
 the night-shirt bulging above the band of his 
 breeks. " I 'm wae to see your father's son in such 
 a corner, and all my comfort is that every tenant 
 in Elrig and Braleckan pays for this night's frolic 
 at the Tolbooth or gallows of Inncraora town." 
 
 "A great consolation to think of," said John 
 Splendid.
 
 6o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 The goodwife, a nervous body at her best, 
 sobbed away with her pock-marked hussy in the 
 parlour, but Bett}' was to the fore in a passion of 
 vexation. To her the lad made next his appeal. 
 
 "Should I go?" he asked ; and I thought he 
 said it more like one who almost craved to stay. 
 I never saw a woman in such a coil. She looked 
 at the dark MacNicolls, and syne she looked at 
 the fair-haired )-oung fellow, and her eyes were 
 swimming, her bosom heaving imder her screen of 
 Campbell tartan, her fingers twisting at the pleated 
 hair that fell in sheeny cables to her waist. 
 
 "If I were a man I would stay, and yet — if 
 
 you stay Oh, poor Lachlan ! I 'm no judge," 
 
 she cried ; " my cousin, my dear cousin ! " and 
 over brimmed her tears. 
 
 All this took less time to happen than it takes 
 to tell with pen and ink, and though there may 
 seem in reading it to be too much palaver on this 
 stair-head, it was but a minute or two, after the 
 bar was off the door, that John Splendid took me 
 by the coat-lapel and back a bit to whisper in my 
 car, — 
 
 " If he goes quietly or goes gaffed like a grilse, 
 it's all one on the street. Out-bye the place is 
 botching with the town-people. Do you think the 
 MacNicolls could take a prisoner by the Cross ? " 
 
 "It'll be cracked crowns on the causcwa)-," 
 said I. 
 
 " Cracked crowns any way }'ou take it," said he, 
 " and better on the causeway than on Madame 
 Brown's parlour floor. It's a gentleman's policy,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 6i 
 
 I would think, to have the squabble in the open 
 air, and save the women the likely sight of bloody- 
 gashes." 
 
 " What do you think, Elrigmore?" Betty cried 
 to me the next moment, and I said it were better 
 the gentleman should go. The reason seemed to 
 flash on her there and then, and she backed m\' 
 counsel ; but the lad was not the shrewdest I 've 
 seen, even for a Cowal man, and he seemed vexed 
 that she should seek to get rid of him, glancing 
 at me with a scornful eye as if I were to blame. 
 
 "Just so," he said, a little bitterly; " the advice 
 is well meant," and on went his jacket that had 
 hung on a peg behind him, and his bonnet played 
 scrug on his forehead. A wiry young scamp, 
 spirited too ! He was putting his sword into its 
 scabbard, but MacNicoU stopped him, and he 
 went without it. 
 
 Now it was not the first time " Slochd a Chu- 
 bair" was cried as slogan in Baile Inneraora in the 
 memory of the youngest lad out that early morning 
 with a cudgel. The burgh settled to its Lowland- 
 ishness with something of a grudge. For long the 
 landward clans looked upon the incomers to it as 
 foreign and unfriendly. More than once in fierce 
 or drunken escapades they came into the place in 
 their mogans at night, quiet as ghosts, mischievous 
 as the winds, and set fire to wooden booths, or 
 shot in wantonness at any mischancy unkilted cit- 
 izen late returning from the change-house. The 
 tartan was at those times the only passport to 
 their good favour; to them the black cloth knee-
 
 62 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 breeches were red rags to a bull, and ill-luck to 
 the lad that wore the same anywhere outside the 
 Crooked Dyke that marks the town and policies 
 of his lordship. If he fared no worse, he came 
 home with his coat-skirts scantily filling an office 
 unusual. JNIany a time " Slochd ! " rang through 
 the night on the Athole winter when I dosed far 
 off on the fields of Low Germanic, or sweated in 
 sallies from leaguered towns. And experience 
 made the burghers mighty tactical on such occa- 
 sions. Old Leslie or " Pallas Armata " itself con- 
 ferred no better notion of strategic sally than the 
 simple one they used when the MacNicolls came 
 down the stair with their prisoner; for they had 
 dispersed themselves in little companies up the 
 closes on either side the street, and past the close 
 the invaders bound to go. 
 
 They might have known, the MacNicolls, that 
 mischief was forward in that black silence, but 
 they were, like all Glen men, unacquaint with the 
 quirks of urban war. For them the fight in car- 
 nest was only fair that was fought on the heather 
 and the brae ; and that was always my shame of 
 my countrymen, that a half company of hagbuti- 
 ers, with wall cover to depend on, could worst 
 the most chivalrous clan that ever carried triumph 
 at a rush. 
 
 For the middle of the street the invaders made 
 at once, half ready for attack from before or be- 
 hind, but ill prepared to meet it from all airts as 
 attack came. They were not ten yards on their 
 way when Splendid and I, emerging behind them,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 63 
 
 found them pricked in the rear by one company, 
 brought up short by another in front at Askaig's 
 land, and harassed on the flanks by the lads from 
 the closes. They were caught in a ring. 
 
 Lowland and Highland, they roared lustily as 
 they came to blows, and the street boiled like a 
 pot of herring; in the heart of the commotion 
 young MacLachlan tossed hither and yond — a 
 stick in a linn. A half-score more of MacNicolls 
 might have made all the difference in the end of 
 the story, for they struck desperately ; better men 
 by far as weight and agility went than the burgh 
 half-breds, but (to their credit) so unwilling to 
 shed blood, that they used the flat of the clay- 
 more instead of the wedge. 
 
 Young Brown flung up a window and lit the 
 street with the flare of the flambeau he had been 
 teasing out so earnestly, and dunt, dunt went the 
 oaken rungs on the bonnets of Glen Shira, till 
 Glen Shira smelt defeat and fell slowly back. 
 
 In all this horoyally I took but an onlooker's 
 part. MacLachlan's quarrel was not mine, the 
 burgh was none of my blood, and the Glen Shira 
 men were my father's friends and neighbours. 
 Splendid, too, cannily kept out of the turmoil 
 when he saw that young MacLachlan was safely 
 free of his warders, and that what had been a 
 cause militant was now only a Highland diversion. 
 
 " Let them play away at it," he said ; " I 'm not 
 keen to have wounds in a burgher's brawl in my 
 own town when there 's promise of braver sport 
 over the hills amone other tartans"
 
 64 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Up the town drifted the little battle, no dead 
 left as luck had it, but many a gout of blood. 
 The white gables clanged back the cries, in claps 
 like summer thunder, the crows in the beech-trees 
 complained in a rasping roupy chorus, and the 
 house-doors banged at the back of men, who, 
 weary or wounded, sought home to bed. And 
 Splendid and I were on the point of parting, secure 
 that the young laird of MacLachlan was at liberty, 
 when that gentleman himself came scouring along, 
 hard pressed by a couple of MacNicolls ready with 
 brands out to cut him down. He was without 
 steel or stick, stumbling on the causeway-stones 
 in a stupor of weariness, his mouth gasping and 
 his coat torn wellnigh off the back of him. He 
 was never in his twenty years of life nearer death 
 than then, and he knew it; but when he found 
 John Splendid and me before him he stopped and 
 turned to face the pair that followed him — a fool's 
 vanity to show fright had not put the heels to his 
 hurry ! We ran out beside him, and the Mac- 
 Nicolls refused the rencontre, left their quarry and 
 fled again to the town-head, where their friends 
 were in a dusk young Brown's flambeau failed to 
 mitigate. 
 
 " I '11 never deny after this that you can't outrun 
 me ! " said John Splendid, putting by his small 
 sword. 
 
 " I would have given them their kail through 
 the reek in a double dose if I had only a simple 
 khife," said the lad angrily, looking up the street, 
 where the fighting was now over. Then he whipped
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 6$ 
 
 into Brown's close and up the stair, leaving us at 
 the gable of Askaig's house. 
 
 John Splendid, ganting sleepily, pointed at the 
 fellow's disappearing skirts. " Do you see yon? " 
 said he, and he broke into a line of a Gaelic air 
 that told his meaning. 
 
 "Lovers? " I asked. 
 
 "What do you think yourself.-* " said he. 
 
 " She is mighty put about at his hazard," I con- 
 fessed, reflecting on her tears. 
 
 " Cousins, ye ken, cousins ! " said Splendid, and 
 he put a finger in my side, laughing meaningly. 
 
 I got home when the day. stirred among the 
 mists over Strone.
 
 66 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 KIRK LAW 
 
 Of course Clan MacNicoll was brought to book 
 for this froHc on Inneraora fair-day, banned by 
 Kirk, and soundly beaten by the Doomster in 
 name of law. To read some books I 've read, one 
 would think our Gaels in the time I speak of, and 
 even now, were, and are, pagan and savage. We 
 are not, I admit it, fashioned on the prim style of 
 London dandies and Italian fops ; we are — the 
 poorest of us — coarse a little at the hide, too 
 quick, perhaps, to slash out with knife or hatchet, 
 and over-ready to carry the most innocent argu- 
 ment the dire length of a thrust with the sword. 
 That 's the blood ; it 's the common understanding 
 among ourselves. But we were never such thieves 
 and maurauders, caterans bloody and unashamed, 
 as the Galloway kerns and the Northmen, and in 
 all my time we had plenty to do to fend our straths 
 against reivers and cattle-drovers from the bad 
 clans round about us. We lift no cattle in all 
 Campbell country. When I was a lad some of the 
 old-fashioned tenants in Glenaora once or twice 
 went over to Glen Nant and Rannoch and bor- 
 rowed a few beasts; but the Earl (as he was then) 
 gave them warning for it that any vassal of his 
 found guilty of such practice again should hang 
 at the town-head as ready as he would hang a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 67 
 
 Cowal man for theftuously awaytaking a board of 
 kipper salmon. My father (peace with him!) 
 never could see the logic of it. " It 's no theft," 
 he would urge, "but war on the parish scale; it 
 needs coolness of the head, some valour, and great 
 genius to take fifty or maybe a hundred head of 
 bestial hot-hoof over hill and moor. I would never 
 blame a man for lifting a spreadh of black cattle 
 any more than for killing a deer; are not both the 
 fcrcB natune of these mountains, prey lawful to the 
 first lad who can tether or paunch them? " 
 
 " Not in the fold, father," I mind of remonstrat- 
 ing once. 
 
 " In the fold too," he said. " Who respects 
 Bredalbane's fenced deer? not the most Christian 
 elders in Glenurchy; they say grace over venison 
 that crossed a high dyke in the dead of night tail 
 first, or game birds that tumbled out of their dream 
 on the bough into the reek of a brimstone fire. A 
 man might as well claim the fish of the sea and the 
 switch of the wood, and refuse the rest of the world 
 a herring or a block of wood, as put black cattle 
 in a fank and complain because he had to keep 
 watch on them ! " 
 
 It was quaint law, but I must admit my father 
 made the practice run with the precept, for more 
 than once he refused to take back cattle lifted by 
 the Macgregors from us, because they had got 
 over his march-stone. 
 
 But so far from permitting this latitude in the 
 parish of Inneraora, Kirk and State frowned it 
 down, and sins far less heinous. The session was
 
 68 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 bitterly keen on Sabbath-breakers, and to start on 
 a Saturday night a kihi-drying of oats that would, 
 claim a peat or two on Sabbath, was accounted 
 immorality of the most gross kind. 
 
 Much of this strict form, it is to be owned, was 
 imported by the Lowland burghers, and set up by 
 the Lowland session of the English kirk, of which 
 his lordship was an elder, and the Highlanders 
 took to it badly for many a day. They were aye, 
 for a time, driving their cattle through the town on 
 the Lord's day or stravaiging about the roads and 
 woods, or drinking and listening to pipers piping 
 in the change-houses at time of sermon, fond, as 
 all our people are by nature, of the hearty open 
 air, and the smell of woods, and lusty soimds like 
 the swing of the seas and pipers playing old 
 tunes. Out would come elders and deacons to 
 scour the streets and change-houses for them, 
 driving them, as if with scourges, into worship. 
 Gaelic sermon (or Irish sermon, as the Scots 
 called it) was but every second Sabbath, and on 
 the blank days the landward Highlanders found 
 in town bound to go to English sermon whether 
 they knew the language or not, a form which 
 it would be difficult nowadays to defend. And it 
 was, in a way, laughable to see the big Gaels 
 driven to chapel like boys by the smug light 
 burghers they could have crushed with a hand. 
 But time told ; there was sown in the landward 
 mind by the blessing of God (and some fear of the 
 Marquis, no doubt) a respect for Christian ordi- 
 nance, and by the time I write of, there were no 
 more devout churchgoers and respecters of the law
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 69 
 
 ecclesiastic than the umquhile pagan small-clans of 
 Loch Finne and the Glens. 
 
 It is true that Nicol Beg threatened the church- 
 officer with his dirk when he came to cite him 
 before the session a few days after the splore in 
 Inneraora, but he stood his trial like a good 
 Christian all the same, he and half a score of his 
 clan, as many as the church court could get the 
 names of. I was a witness against them, much 
 against my will, with John Splendid, the Provost, 
 and some other townsfolk. 
 
 Some other defaulters were dealt with before the 
 MacNicolls, a few throughither women and lads 
 from the back-lanes of the burghs, on the old tale, 
 a shoreside man for houghing a quay, and a girl 
 MacVicar, who had been for a season on a visit 
 to some Catholic relatives in the Isles, and was 
 charged with malignancy and profanity. 
 
 Poor lass ! I was wae for her. She stood 
 bravely beside her father, whose face was as be- 
 grutten as hers was serene, and those who put her 
 through her catechism found to my mind but a 
 good heart and tolerance where they sought 
 treachery and rank heresy. They convicted her 
 notwithstanding. 
 
 "You have stood your trials badly, Jean Mac- 
 Vicar," said Master Gordon. " A backslider and 
 malignant provan ! You may fancy your open 
 profession of piety, your honesty and charity, 
 make dykes to the narrow way. A fond delusion, 
 woman ! There are, sorrow on it ! many lax 
 people of your kind in Scotland this day, hangers-
 
 ^o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 on at the petticoat tails of the whore of Babylon, 
 sitting like yon, as honest worshippers at the 
 tables of the Lord, eating Christian elements that 
 but for His mercy choked them at the thrapple. 
 You are a wicked woman ! " 
 
 " She 's a good daughter," broke in the father 
 through his tears ; but his Gaelic never stopped 
 the minister.- 
 
 " An ignorant besom." 
 
 " She 's leech-wife to half Kenmore," protested 
 the old man. 
 
 " And this court censures you, ordains you to 
 make public confession at both English and Gaelic 
 kirks before the congregations, thereafter to be 
 excommunicate and banished furth and from this 
 parish of hineraora and Glcnaora." 
 
 The girl never winced. 
 
 Her father cried again, " She can't leave me," 
 said he, and he looked to the Marquis, who all the 
 time sat on the hard deal forms, like a plain man. 
 *' Your lordship kens she is motherless and my 
 only kin; that's she true and honest." 
 
 The Marquis said yea nor nay, but had a min- 
 ute's talk with the clergyman, as I thought at the 
 time, to make him modify his ruling. But Master 
 Gordon enforced the finding of the session. 
 
 " Go she must," said he; "we cannot have our 
 young people poisoned at the mind." 
 
 " Then she '11 bide with me," said the father 
 angrily. 
 
 " You dare not, as a Christian professor, keep 
 an excommunicate in your house," said Gordon;
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 71 
 
 " but taking to consideration that excommunica- 
 tion precludes not any company of natural rela- 
 tions, we ordain you never to keep her in your 
 house in this parish any more ; but if you have 
 a mind to do so with her, to follow her wherever 
 she goes." 
 
 And that sorry small family went out at the 
 door, hi tears. 
 
 Some curious trials followed, and the making of 
 quaint bylaws; for now that his lordship, ever a 
 restraining influence on his clans, was bound for 
 new wars elsewhere, a firmer hand was wanted 
 on the people he left behind, and Master Gordon 
 pressed for stricter canons. Notification was made 
 discharging the people of the burgh from holding 
 lyke-wakes in the smaller houses, from unneces- 
 sary travel on the Sabbath, from public flyting and 
 abusing, and from harbouring ne'er-do-weels from 
 other parishes, and seeing it had become a prac- 
 tice of the women attending kirk to keep their 
 plaids upon their heads and faces in time of ser- 
 mon as occasion of sleeping, as also that they who 
 slept could not be distinguished from those who 
 slept not, that they might be wakened, it was or- 
 dained that such be not allowed hereafter, under 
 pain of taking the plaids from them. 
 
 With these enactments too came evidence of 
 the Kirk's paternity. It settled the salary (200 lb. 
 Scots) of a new master for the grammar-school, 
 agreed to pay the fees of divers poor scholars, 
 instructed the administering of the funds in the 
 poor's-box, fixed a levy on the town for the follow-
 
 72 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 ing week to help the poorer wives who would be 
 left by their fencible husbands, and paid ten marks 
 to an elderly widow woman who desired, like a 
 good Gael, to have her burial clothes ready, but 
 had not the wherewithal for linen. 
 
 " We are," said Master Gordon, sharpening a 
 pen in a pause ere the MacNicolls came forward, 
 " the fathers and guardians of this parish 'people 
 high and low. Too long has Loch Finneside been 
 ruled childishly. I have no complaint about its 
 civil rule — his lordship here might well be trusted 
 to that; but its religion was a thing of rags. They 
 tell me old Campbell in the Gaelic end of the 
 church (peace with him !) used to come to the 
 pulpit with a broadsword belted below his Geneva 
 gown. Savagery, savagery, rank and stinking ! I '11 
 say it to his face in another world, and a poor 
 evangel and ensample truly for the quarrelsome 
 landward folk of this parish, that even now, in the 
 more unctuous times of God's grace, doff steel 
 weapons so reluctantly. I found a man with a 
 dirk at his hip sitting before the Lord's table last 
 Lammas ! " 
 
 " Please God," said the Marquis, '* the world 
 shall come to its sight some day. My people are 
 of an unruly race, I ken; good at the heart, hos- 
 pitable, valorous, even with some Latin chivalry; 
 but, my sorrow! they are sorely unamenable to 
 policies of order and peace." 
 
 *' Deil the hair vexed am I," said John Splendid 
 in my car; "I have a wonderful love for nature 
 that's raw and human, and this session-made
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 73 
 
 morality is but a gloss. They'll be taking the 
 tartan off us next maybe! Some day the old dog 
 at the heart of the Highlands will bark for all his 
 sleek coat. Man ! I hate the very look of those 
 Lowland cattle sitting here making kirk laws for 
 their emperors, and their bad-bred Scots speech 
 jars on my ear like an ill-tuned bagpipe." 
 
 Master Gordon possibly guessed what was the 
 topic of Splendid's confidence, in truth few but 
 knew my hero's mind on these matters, and I have 
 little doubt it was for John's edification he went on 
 to sermonise, still at the shaping of his pen. 
 
 " Your lordship will have the civil chastisement 
 of these MacNicoUs after this session is bye with 
 them. We can but deal with their spiritual error. 
 Nicol Beg and his relatives are on our kirk rolls as 
 members or adherents, and all we can do is to fence 
 the communion-table against them for a period, 
 and bring them to the stool of repentance. Some 
 here may think a night of squabbling and broken 
 heads in a Highland burgh too trifling an affair for 
 the interference of the kirk or the court of law; I 
 am under no such delusion. There is a valour 
 better than the valour of the beast unreasoning. 
 Your lordship has seen it at its proper place in 
 your younger wars ; young Elrigmore, I am sure, 
 has seen it on the Continent, where men live quiet 
 burgh lives while left alone, and yet comport them- 
 selves chivalrously and gallantly on the stricken 
 fields when their country or a cause calls for them 
 so to do. In the heart of man is hell smouldering, 
 always ready to leap out in flames of sharpened
 
 74 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 steel ; it 's a poor philosophy that puffs folly in at 
 the ear to stir the ember, saying, ' Hiss, catch him, 
 dog! ' I 'm for keeping hell (even in a wild High- 
 landman's heart) for its own business of punishing 
 the wicked." 
 
 " Amen to you ! " cried MacCailein, beating his 
 hand on a book-board, and Master Gordon took a 
 snuff Hke a man whose doctrine is laid out plain 
 for the world and who dare dispute it. In came 
 the beadle with the MacNicolls, very much cowed, 
 different men truly from the brave gentlemen who 
 cried blood for blood on Provost Brown's stair. 
 
 They had little to deny, and our evidence was 
 but a word ere the session passed sentence of sus- 
 pension from the kirk tables, as Gordon had said, 
 and a sheriff's officer came to hale them to the 
 Tolbooth for their trial on behalf of the civil law. 
 
 With their appearance there my tale has nothing 
 to do ; the Doomster, as I have said, had the hand- 
 ling of them with birch. What I have described 
 of this kirk-session's cognisance of those rough 
 fellows' ill behaviour is designed ingeniously to 
 convey a notion of its strict ceremony and its wide 
 dominion ; to show that even in the heart of Ar- 
 raghael we were not beasts in that year when the 
 red flash of the sword came on us and the perse- 
 cution of the torch. The MacNicolls night in the 
 Hie Street of MacCailein Mor's town was an ad- 
 venture uncommon enough to be spoken of for 
 years aftef, and otherwise (except for the little 
 feuds between the Glensmcn and the burghers 
 without tartan), our country-side was as safe as the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 75 
 
 heart of France — safer even. You might leave 
 your purse on the open road anywhere within the 
 Crooked Dyke with uncounted gold in it and be 
 no penny the poorer at the week's end ; there was 
 never lock or bar on any door in any of the two 
 glens — locks, indeed, were a contrivance the Low- 
 landers brought for the first time to the town; and 
 the gardens lay open to all who had appetite for 
 kail or berry. There was no man who sat down 
 to dinner (aye in the landward part I speak of; it 
 differed in the town) without first going to the 
 door to look along the highroad to see if wayfarers 
 were there to share the meal with him and his 
 family, " There he goes," was the saying about 
 any one who passed the door at any time without 
 coming in to take a spoon — " there he goes ; I '11 
 warrant he 's a miser at home to be so much of a 
 churl abroad." The very gipsy claimed the clean- 
 est bed in a Glenman's house whenever he came 
 that way, and his gossip paid handsomely for his 
 shelter. 
 
 It was a fine fat land this of ours, mile upon mile 
 thick with herds, rolling in the grassy season like 
 the seas, growing such lush crops as the remoter 
 Highlands never dreamt of. Not a foot of good 
 soil but had its ploughing, or at least gave food to 
 some useful animal, and yet so rocky the hills 
 between us and lower Lochow, so tremendous 
 steep and inaccessible the peaks and corries north 
 of Ben Bhuidhe that they were relegated to the 
 chase. There had the stag his lodging and the 
 huntsman a home almost perpetual. It was cosy,
 
 ^6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 indeed, to sec of an evening the peat-smoke from 
 well-governed and comfortable hearths lingering 
 on the quiet air; to go where you would and find 
 bairns toddling on the braes or singing women 
 bent to the peat-creel and the reaping-hook. 
 
 In that autumn I think nature gave us her big- 
 gest cup brimmingl}', and m}' father, as he watched 
 his servants binding corn head high, said he had 
 never seen the like before. In the hazel-woods the 
 nuts bent the branches, so thick were they, so 
 succulent ; *the hip and the how, the blaeberry and 
 the rowan, swelled grossly in a constant sun; 
 the orchards of the richer folks were in a revelry 
 of fruit. Somehow the winter grudged, as it 
 were, to come. For ordinary, October sees the 
 trees that beard Dunchuach and hang for miles 
 on the side of Creag Dubh searing and falling 
 below the frost ; this season the cold stayed aloof 
 long, and friendly winds roved from the west and 
 south. The forests gleamed in a golden fire that 
 only cooled to darkness when the firs, my proud 
 tall friends, held up their tasselled heads in un- 
 qucnching green. Birds swarmed in the heather, 
 and the sides of the bare hills moved constantly 
 with deer. Never a stream in all real Argile but 
 boiled with fish; you came down to Eas-a-chlcidh 
 on the Aora with a creel and dipped it into the 
 linn to bring out salmon rolling with fat. 
 
 All this I dwell on for a sensible purpose, though 
 it may seem to be but an old fellow's boasting and 
 a childish vanity about my own calf-country. 'T is 
 the picture I would paint — a land laughing and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID yy 
 
 content, well governed by Gillesbeg, though Grua- 
 mach he might be by name and by nature. Four- 
 pence a day was a labourer's wage, but what need 
 had one of even fourpence, with his hut free and 
 the food piling richly at his very door?
 
 78 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MY LADY OF MOODS 
 
 On the 27th of July in this same year 1644, we 
 saw his lordship and his clan march from Tnnera- 
 ora to the dreary north. By all accounts (brought 
 in to the Marquis by foot-runners from the frontier 
 of Lorn), the Irishry of Colkitto numbered no 
 more than 1200, badly armed with old matchlocks 
 and hampered by two or three dozen camp-women 
 bearing the bairns of this dirty regiment at their 
 breasts. Add to this as many Highlanders under 
 Montrose and his cousin Para Dubh of Inch- 
 brackie, and there was but a force of 3 500 men for 
 the good government of Argile to face. But what 
 were they? If the Irish were poorly set up in 
 weapons, the Gaels were worse. On the spring 
 before, Gillesbeg had harried Athole, and was 
 cunning enough to leave its armouries as bare 
 as the fields he burned, so now its clans had but 
 home-made claymores, bows, and arrows, Lochabcr 
 tnagJis and cudgels, with no heavy pieces. The 
 cavalry of this unholy gang was but three garrons, 
 string, and bone — ovinino strigosos ct emaciatos. 
 Worse than their ill-arming, as any soldier of 
 experience will allow, were the jealousies between 
 the two bodies of this scratched-up army. Did 
 ever one see a Gael that nestled to an Irishman?
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 79 
 
 Here 's one who will swear it impossible, though 
 it is said the blood is the same in both races, and 
 we nowadays read the same Gaelic Bible. Col- 
 kitto MacDonald was Gael by birth and young 
 breeding, but Erinach by career, and repugnant 
 to the most malignant of the west clans before they 
 got to learn, as they did later, his quality as a 
 leader. He bore down on Athole, he and his 
 towsy rabble, hoping to get the clans there to join 
 him greedily for the sake of the old feud against 
 MacCailein Mor, but the Stewarts would have 
 nothing to say to him, and blows were not far off 
 when Montrose and his cousin Black Pate came on 
 the scene with his king's licence. 
 
 To meet this array now playing havoc on the 
 edge of Campbell country, rumour said two armies 
 were moving from the north and east; if Argile 
 knew of them he kept his own counsel on the 
 point, but he gave colour to the tale by moving 
 from Inneraora with no more than 2000 foot and 
 a troop of horse. These regimentals had mustered 
 three days previously, camping on the usual camp- 
 ing-ground at the Maltland, where I spent the last 
 day and night with them. They were, for the 
 main part, the Campbells of the shire: of them 
 alone the chief could muster 5000 half-merkland 
 men at a first levy, all capable swordsmen, well 
 drilled and disciplined soldadoes, who had, in addi- 
 tion to the usual schooling in arms of every Gael, 
 been taught many of the niceties of new-fashioned 
 war, countermarch, wheeling, and pike-drill. To 
 hear the old orders, " Pouldron to Pouldron ; keep
 
 8o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 your files ; and middlemen come forth ! " was like 
 an echo from my old days in Germanic. These 
 manoeuvres they were instructed in by hired vet- 
 erans of the Munro and Mackay battalions who 
 fought with Adolphus. Four or five companies 
 of Lowland soldiers from Dunbarton and Stirling 
 eked out the strength ; much was expected from 
 the latter, for they were, unlike our clansmen, never 
 off the parade-ground, and were in receipt of pay 
 for their militant service ; but as events proved, 
 they were MacCailein's poor reed. 
 
 I spent, as I have said, a day and a night in the 
 camp between Aora river and the deep wood of 
 Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little 
 army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied 
 tower, and the yellow bee booming through the 
 solitude ; morning and night the shrill of the piob- 
 mhor rang cheerily to the ear of Dunchuach ; the 
 sharp call of the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp 
 of the brogued feet in their simple evolutions; the 
 clatter of arms, the contention and the laughing, 
 the song, the reprimand, the challenge, the jest — 
 all these were pleasant to me. 
 
 One morning I got up from a bed of gall or 
 bog-myrtle I shared with John Splendid after a 
 late game of chess, and fared out on a little emi- 
 nence looking over the scene. Not a soldier 
 stirred in his plaid ; the army was drugged by 
 the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The 
 light of the morning flowed up wider and whiter 
 from the Cowal hills, the birds woke to a rain of 
 twittering prayer among the bushes ere ever a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 8i 
 
 man stirred more than from side to side to change 
 his dream. It was the most melancholy hour I 
 ever experienced, and I have seen fields in the 
 wan morning before many a throng and bloody 
 day. I felt " fey," as we say at home — a pre- 
 monition that here was no conquering force, a 
 sorrow for the glens raped of their manhood, and 
 hearths to be desolate. By-and-bye the camp 
 moved into life, Dunbarton's drums beat the 
 reveille, the pipers arose, doffed their bonnets to 
 the sun, and played a rouse ; my gloom passed 
 like a mist from the mountains. 
 
 They went north by the Aora passes into the 
 country of Bredalbane, and my story need not 
 follow them beyond. 
 
 Inneraora burghers went back to their com- 
 mercial affairs, and I went to Glen Shira to spend 
 calm days on the river and the hill. My father 
 seemed to age perceptibly, reflecting on his com- 
 panion gone, and he clung to me like the crotal 
 to the stone. Then it was (I think) that some of 
 the sobriety of life first came to me, a more often 
 cogitation and balancing of affairs. I began to 
 see some of the tanglement of nature, and appre- 
 ciate the solemn mystery of our travel across this 
 vexed and care-warped world. Before, I was full 
 of the wine of youth, giving doubt of nothing a 
 lodgment in my mind, acting ever on the impulse, 
 sucking the lemon, seeds and all, and finding it 
 unco sappy and piquant to the palate. To be 
 face to face day after day with this old man's 
 grief, burdened with his most apparent double 
 
 6
 
 82 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 love, conscious that I was his singular bond to 
 the world he would otherwise be keen to be leav- 
 ing, set me to chasten my dalliance with fate. 
 Still and on, our affection and its working on my 
 prentice mind is nothing to dwell on publicly. 
 I 've seen bearded men kiss each other in France, 
 a most scandalous exhibition surely, one at any 
 rate that I never gazed on without some natural 
 Highland shame, and I would as soon kiss m}' 
 father at high noon on the open street as dwell 
 with paper and ink upon my feeling to him. 
 
 We settled down to a few quiet weeks after the 
 troops had gone. Rumours came of skirmishes 
 at Tippermuir and elsewhere. I am aware that 
 the fabulous Wishart makes out that our lads were 
 defeated by Montrose at every turning, claiming 
 even Dundee, Crief, Strathbogie, Methven Wood, 
 Philiphaugh, Inverness, and Dunbeath. Let any 
 one coldly calculate the old rogue's narrative, and 
 it will honestly appear that the winner was more 
 often Argile, though his lordship never followed 
 up his advantage with slaughter and massacre as 
 did his foes at Aberdeen. All these doings We 
 heard of but vaguely, for few came back except 
 an odd lad wounded and cut off in the wilds of 
 Atholc from the main body. 
 
 Constant sentinels watched the land from the 
 fort of Dunchuach, that dominates every pass into 
 our country, and outer guards took day and night 
 about on the remoter alleys of Aora and Shira 
 Glens. South, east, and west, we had friendly 
 frontiers ; only to the north were menace and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 83 
 
 danger, and from the north came our scaith — the 
 savage north and jealous. 
 
 These considerations seemed, on the surface, 
 Httle to affect Inneraora and its adjacent parts. 
 We slept soundly at night, knowing the warders 
 were alert; the women with absent husbands 
 tempered their anxiety with the philosophy that 
 comes to a race ever bound to defend its own 
 doors. 
 
 The common folks had ceilidhs at night, gossip 
 parties in each other's houses, and in our own hall 
 the herds and shepherds often convocate to change 
 stories, the tales of the Fingalians, Ossian and the 
 Finne. The burgh was a great place for suppers 
 too, and never ceilidh nor supper went I to, but 
 the daughter of Provost Brown was there before 
 me. She took a dislike to me, I guessed at last, 
 perhaps thinking I appeared too often, and I was 
 never fully convinced of this till I met her once 
 with some companions walking in the garden of 
 the castle, that always stood open for respectable 
 visitors. 
 
 I was passing up the Dame's Pad, as it was 
 called, a little turfed road, overhung by walnut 
 trees brought by the old Earl from England. I 
 had on a Lowland costume with a velvet coat and 
 buckled shoes, and one or two vanities a young 
 fellow would naturally be set up about, and the 
 consciousness of my trim clothing put me in a 
 very complacent mood as I stopped and spoke 
 with the damsels. 
 
 They were pretty girls all, and I remember
 
 84 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 particularly that Betty had a spray of bog-myrtle 
 and heather fastened at a brooch at her neck. 
 
 She was the only one who received me coldl}', 
 seemed indeed impatient to be off, leaving the 
 conversation to her friends while she toyed with a 
 few late flowers on the bushes beside her. 
 
 " You should never put heather and gall to- 
 gether," I said to her rallyingly. 
 
 " Indeed ! " she said, flushing. " Here 's one 
 who wears what she chooses, regardless of custom 
 or freit." 
 
 " But you know," I said, " the badge of the 
 Campbell goes badly with that of so bitter a foe as 
 the MacDonald. You might as well add the oat- 
 stalk of Montrose, and make the emblem tell the 
 story of those troubles." 
 
 It was meant in good humour, but for some 
 reason it seemed to sting her to the quick. I 
 could see it in the flash of her eyes and the re- 
 newed flush at her temples. 
 
 There was a little mischievous girl in the com- 
 pany, who giggled and said, " Betty 's in a bad key 
 to-day; her sweetheart has vexed her surely." 
 
 It was a trivial remark, but I went off with it in 
 my mind. 
 
 A strange interest in the moods of this old 
 school-friend had begun to stir me. Meeting her 
 on my daily walks to town by the back way 
 through the new avenue, I found her seemingly 
 anxious to avoid me, and difficult to warm to any 
 interest but in the most remote and abstract affairs. 
 Herself she would never speak of, her plans, cares,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 85 
 
 ambitions, preferences, or aversions ; she seemed 
 dour set on aloofness. And though she appeared 
 to hsten to my modestly phrased exploits with 
 attention and respect, and some trepidation at the 
 dangerous portions, she had notably more interest 
 in my talk of others. Ours was the only big house 
 in the glen she never came calling to, though her 
 father was an attentive visitor and supped his 
 curds-and-cream of a Saturday with friendly gusto, 
 apologising for her finding something to amuse 
 and detain her at Roderick's over the way, or the 
 widow's at Gearran Bridge. 
 
 I would go out on these occasions and walk in 
 the open air with a heart uneasy. 
 
 And now it was I came to conclude, after all, 
 that much as a man may learn of many women 
 studied indifferently, there is something magical 
 about his personal regard for one, that sets up a 
 barrier of mystery between them. So long as I 
 in former years went on the gay assumption that 
 every girl's character was on the surface, and I 
 made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confi- 
 dent, the friend, of many a fine woman. They 
 all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end 
 they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness of more 
 handsome men. 
 
 But here was the conclusion of my complacent 
 belief in my knowledge of the sex. The oftener I 
 met her the worse my friendship progressed. She 
 became a problem behind a pretty mask, and I 
 would sit down, as it were, dumb before it and 
 guess at the real woman within. Her step on the
 
 86 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 road as we would come to an unexpected meet- 
 ing, her handling of a flower I might give her in 
 a courtesy, her most indifferent word as we met or 
 parted, became a precious clue I must ponder on 
 for hours. And the more I weighed these things, 
 the more confused thereafter I became in her pres- 
 ence. " If I were in love with the girl," I had to 
 say to myself at last, " I could not be more en- 
 grossed in her mind." 
 
 The hill itself, with days of eager hunting after 
 the red-deer, brought not enough distraction, 
 and to stand by the mountain tarns and fish the 
 dark trout was to hold a lonely carnival with 
 discontent. 
 
 It happened sometimes that on the street of In- 
 neraora I would meet Betty convoying her cousin 
 young MacLachlan to his wherry (he now took 
 care to leave for home betimes), or with his sister 
 going about the shops. It would be but a bow in 
 the bye-going, she passing on with equanimity, 
 and I with a maddening sense of awkwardness, 
 that was not much bettered by the tattle of the 
 plainstanes, where merchant lads and others made 
 audible comment on the cousinly ardour of young 
 Lachic. 
 
 On Sundays, perhaps worst of all, I found my 
 mind's torment. Our kirk to-day is a building of 
 substantiality and even grace ; then it was a some- 
 what squalid place of worship, in whose rafters the 
 pigeons trespassed and the swallow built her home. 
 We sat in torturous high-backed benches so nar- 
 row that our knees rasped the boards before us,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 87 
 
 and sleep in Master Gordon's most dreary dis- 
 course was impossible. Each good family in the 
 neighbourhood had its own pew, and Elrigmore's, 
 as it is to this day, lay well in the rear among the 
 shadows of the loft, while the Provost's was a little 
 to the left and at right angles, so that its occupants 
 and ours were in a manner face to face. 
 
 Old Gordon would be into many deeps of doc- 
 trine no doubt while I was in the deeper depths 
 of speculation upon my lady's mind. I think I 
 found no great edification from the worship of 
 those days — shame to tell it! — for the psalms 
 we chanted had inevitably some relevance to an 
 earthly affection, and my eyes were for ever roam- 
 ing from the book or from the preacher's sombre 
 face. 
 
 They might rove far and long, but the end of 
 each journey round that dull interior was ever in 
 the Provost's pew, and, as if by some hint of the 
 spirit, though Betty might be gazing steadfastly 
 where she ought, I knew that she knew I was look- 
 ing on her. It needed but my glance to bring a 
 flush to her averted face. Was it the flush of an- 
 noyance or of the conscious heart? 1 asked my- 
 self, and remembering her coldness elsewhere, I 
 was fain to think my interest was considered an 
 impertinence. And there I would be in a cold 
 perspiration of sorry apprehension.
 
 88 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE MIST 
 
 The Highlanders of Lochabcr, as the old saying 
 goes, " pay their daughters' tocher by the light of 
 the Michaelmas moon." Then it was that they 
 were wont to come over our seven hills and seven 
 waters to help themselves to our cattle when the 
 same were at their fattest and best. It would be a 
 skurry of bare knees down pass and brae, a ring of 
 the robbers round the herd sheltering on the bieldy 
 side of the hill or in the hollows among the ripe 
 grass, a brisk change of shot and blow if alarm 
 rose, and then hie ! over the moor by Macfarlane's 
 lantern. 
 
 This Michaelmas my father put up a huailc- 
 inhart, a square fold of wattle and whinstone, 
 into which the herdsmen drove the lowing beasts 
 at the mouth of every evening, and took turn 
 about in watching them throughout the clear sea- 
 son. It was perhaps hardly needed, for indeed 
 the men of Lochaber and Glenfalloch and the 
 other dishonest regions around us were too busy 
 dipping their hands in the dirty work of Mont- 
 rose and his Irish major-general to have any time 
 for their usual autumn's recreation. But a bnaile- 
 mhart when shifted from time to time in a field is 
 a profitable device in agriculture, and custom had
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 89 
 
 made the existence of it almost a necessity to the 
 sound slumber of our glens. There was a pleas- 
 ant habit, too, of neighbours gathering at night 
 about a fire within one of the spaces of the fold 
 and telling tales and singing songs. Our whole 
 West Country is full of the most wonderful stories 
 one might seek in vain for among the world of 
 books and scholars — of giants and dwarfs, fairies, 
 wizards, and water-horse and sea-maiden. The 
 most unlikely looking peasant that ever put his 
 foot to a cas-chrom, the most uncouth hunter that 
 ever paunched a deer, would tell of such histories 
 in the most scrupulous language and with cunning 
 regard for figure of speech. I know that nowa- 
 days, among people of esteemed cultivation in the 
 low country and elsewhere, such a diversion might 
 be thought a waste of time, such narratives a sign 
 of superstition. Of that I am not so certain. The 
 practice, if it did no more, gave wings to our most 
 sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. 
 As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and 
 buailc-inJiart I have little to say. Perhaps the 
 dullest among us scarce credited the giant and 
 dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our top- 
 most hills. 
 
 A doctor laughed at me once for an experience 
 of my own at the Piper's Knowe, in which any 
 man, with a couchant ear close to the grass, may 
 hear fairy tunes piped in the under-world. 
 
 " A trick of the senses," said he. 
 
 " But I can bring you scores who have heard 
 it ! " said L
 
 90 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " So they said of every miracle since time be- 
 gan," said he; " it but proves tlie widespread folly 
 and credulity of human nature." 
 
 I protested I could bring him to the very spot 
 or whistle him the very tunes; but he was busy, 
 and wondered so sedate a man as myself could 
 cherish so strange a delusion. 
 
 Our fold on Elrigmore was in the centre of a flat 
 meadowland that lies above Dhu Loch, where the 
 river winds among rush and willow-tree, a constant 
 whisperer of love and the distant hills and the salt 
 inevitable sea. There we would be lying under 
 moon and star, and beside us the cattle deeply 
 breathing all night long. To the simple talc of 
 old, to the humble song, these circumstances gave 
 a weight and dignity they may have wanted else- 
 where. Never a teller of tale, or a singer of song 
 so artless in that hour and mood of nature but he 
 hung us breathless on his every accent; we were 
 lone inhabitants of a little space in a magic glen, 
 and the great world outside the flicker of our fire 
 hummed untenanted and empty through the jeal- 
 ous night. 
 
 It happened on a night of nights — as the saying 
 goes — that thus we were gathered in the rushy 
 flat of Elrigmore and our hearts easy as to reiver 
 — for was not MacCailein scourging them over the 
 north? — when a hint came to us of a strange end 
 to these Lorn wars, and of the last days of the 
 Lord of Argile. A night with a sky almost pallid, 
 freckled with sparkling stars ; a great moon with 
 a brock or aureole round it, rolling in the east,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 91 
 
 and the scent of fern and heather thick upon 
 the air. 
 
 We had heard many stories, we had joined in 
 a song or two ; we had set proverb and guess and 
 witty saying round and round, and it was the 
 young morning when through the long grass to 
 the fold came a band of strangers. We were their 
 equal in numbers, whatever their mission might be, 
 and we waited calmly where we were, to watch. 
 
 The bulk of them stood back from the pin-fold 
 wall, and three of them came forward and put arms 
 upon the topmost divots, so that they could look 
 in and see the watchers gathered round the fire. 
 
 " Co tlia'n sud's an uchd air a bhuaile? " (" Who 
 is there leaning on the fold?") asked one of our 
 men, with a long bow at stretch in his hands. 
 
 He got no answer from any of the three strangers, 
 who looked ghastly eerie in their silence on the 
 wall. 
 
 " Mar freagar sibh mise bithidh m'inthaidh aig 
 an fhear as gile broilleach agaibh " (" My arrow's 
 for the whitest breast, if ye make no answer"), 
 said my man, and there was no answer. 
 
 The string twanged, the arrow sped, and the 
 stranger with the white breast fell — shot through 
 her kerchief For she was a woman of the clan 
 they name Macaulay, children of the mist, a luck- 
 less dame that, when we rushed out to face her 
 company, they left dying on the field. 
 
 They were the robber widows of the clan, a gang 
 then unknown to us, but namely now through the 
 west for their depredations when the absence of
 
 92 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 their men in battles threw them upon their own 
 resource. 
 
 And she was the oldest of her company, a half- 
 witted creature we grieved at slaying, but reptile 
 in her malice. For as she lay passing, with the 
 blood oozing to her breast, she reviled us with 
 curses that overran each other in their hurry from 
 her foul lips. 
 
 " Dogs ! dogs ! — heaven's worst ill on ye, 
 dogs ! " she cried, a waeful spectacle, and she 
 spat on us as we carried her beside the fire to try 
 and staunch her wound. She had a fierce knife at 
 her waist and would have used it had she the 
 chance, but we removed it from her reach, and she 
 poured a fresher, fuller stream of malediction. 
 
 Her voice at last broke and failed to a thin pip- 
 ing whisper, and it was then — with the sweat on 
 her brow — she gave the hint I speak of, the hint 
 of the war's end and the end of MacCailein Mor. 
 
 " Wry-mouths, wry-mouths ! " said she; " I see 
 the heather above the myrtle on Lhinne-side, and 
 MacCailein's head on a post." 
 
 That was all. 
 
 It is a story you will find in no books, and yet 
 a story that has been told sometime or other by 
 every fireside of the shire — not before the pro- 
 phecy was fulfilled but after, when we were loosed 
 from our bonded word. For there and then we 
 took oath on steel to tell no one of the woman's 
 saying till the fulness of time should justify or 
 disgrace the same. 
 
 Though I took oath on this melancholy busi-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 93 
 
 ness like the rest, there was one occasion, but a 
 day or two after, that I almost broke my pledged 
 word, and that to the lady who disturbed my 
 Sunday worship and gave me so much reflection 
 on the hunting-road. Her father, as I have said, 
 came up often on a Saturday and supped his 
 curds-and-cream and grew cheery over a Dutch 
 bottle with my father, and one day, as luck had 
 it, Betty honoured our poor doorstep. She came 
 so far, perhaps, because our men and women 
 were at work on the field I mention, whose second 
 crop of grass they were airing for the winter byres 
 — a custom brought to the glen from foreign 
 parts, and with much to recommend it. 
 
 I had such a trepidation at her presence that 
 I had almost fled on some poor excuse to the hill ; 
 but the Provost, who perhaps had made sundry 
 calls in the bye-going at houses further down the 
 glen, and was in a mellow humour, jerked a finger 
 over his shoulder towards the girl as she stood 
 hesitating in the hall after a few words with my 
 father and me, and said, " I 've brought you a 
 good harvester here, Colin, and she '11 give you a 
 day's darg for a kiss." 
 
 I stammered a stupid comment that the wage 
 would be well earned on so warm a day, and could 
 have choked, the next moment, at my rusticity. 
 
 Mistress Betty coloured and bit her lip. 
 
 " Look at the hussy ! " said her father again, 
 laughing with heaving shoulders. "'Where shall 
 we go to-day on our rounds?' said L 'Where but 
 to Elrigmore? ' said she ; ' I have not seen Colin for
 
 94 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 an age ! ' Yet I '11 warrant you thought the cun- 
 ning jade shy of a gentleman soldier ! Ah, those 
 kirtles, those kirtles ! I '11 give you a word of 
 wisdom, sir, you never learned in Glasgow Hie 
 Street nor in the army." 
 
 I looked helplessly after the girl, who had fled, 
 incontinent, to the women at work in the field. 
 
 " Well, sir," I said, " I shall be pleased to hear 
 it. If it has any pertinence to the harvesting of 
 a second crop it would be welcome." 
 
 My father sighed. He never entered very 
 heartily into diversion nowadays — small wonder ! 
 — so the Provost laughed on with his counsel. 
 
 " You know very well it has nothing to do with 
 harvesting nor harrowing," he cried ; " I said 
 kirtles, didn't I! And you needn't be so coy 
 about the matter; surely to God you never learned 
 modesty at your trade of sacking towns. Many a 
 wench " 
 
 "About this counsel," I put in; "I have no 
 trick or tale of wenchcraft beyond the most inno- 
 cent. And beside, sir, I think we were just talking 
 of a lady who is your daughter." 
 
 Even in his glass he was the gentleman, for he 
 saw the suggestion at once. 
 
 "Of course, of course, Colin," he said hurriedly, 
 coughing in a confusion. " Never mind an old 
 fool's havering." Then said he again, " There 's 
 a boy at many an old man's heart. I saw you 
 standing there and my daughter was yonder, and 
 it just came over me like the verse of a song that 
 I was like you when I courted her mother. My
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 95 
 
 sorrow ! it looks but yesterday, and yet here 's an 
 old done man ! Folks have been born and married 
 (some of them) and died since syne, and I 've been 
 going through life with my eyes shut to my own 
 antiquity. It came on me like a flash three min- 
 utes ago, that this gross oldster, sitting of a Satur- 
 day sipping the good aqua of Elrigmorc, with a 
 pendulous waistcoat and a wrinkled hand, is not 
 the lad whose youth and courtship you put me in 
 mind of." 
 
 " Stretch your hand, Provost, and fill your glass," 
 said my father. He was not merry in his later 
 years, but he had a hospitable heart. 
 
 The two of them sat dumb a space, heedless of 
 the bottle or me, and at last, to mar their manifest 
 sad reflections, I brought the Provost back to the 
 topic of his counsel. 
 
 " You had a word of advice," I said, very softly. 
 There was a small tinge of pleasure in my guess 
 that what he had to say might have reference to 
 his daughter. 
 
 " Man ! I forget now," he said, rousing himself. 
 "What were we on?" 
 
 " Harvesting," said father. 
 
 "No, sir; kirtles," said I. 
 
 " Kirtles ; so it was," said the Provost. " My 
 wife at Betty's age, when I first sought her com- 
 pany, was my daughter's very model, in face and 
 figure." 
 
 " She was a handsome woman, Provost," said my 
 father." 
 
 " I can well believe it," said I.
 
 96 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " She is that to-da}'," cried the Provost, pursing 
 his lips and lifting up his chin in a challenge. 
 "And I learned one thing at the courting of her 
 which is the gist of my word of wisdom to you, 
 Colin. Keep it in mind till you need it. It 's 
 this : There 's one thing a woman will put up with 
 blandly in every man but the one man she has a 
 notion of, and that 's the absence of conceit about 
 himself or her," 
 
 In the field by the river, the harvesters sat at a 
 mid-day meal, contentedly eating their bannock 
 and cheese. They were young folks all, at the 
 age when toil and plain living but give a zest to 
 the errant pleasures of life. So they filled their 
 hour of leisure with gallivanting among the mown 
 and gathered grass. 
 
 Let no one, remembering the charm of an autumn 
 field in his youth, test its cheerfulness when he has 
 got up in years. For he will find it lying under a 
 sun less genial than then; he will fret at some in- 
 fluence lost; the hedges tall and beautiful will have 
 turned to stunted boundaries upon his fancy; he 
 will ache at the heart at the memory of those old 
 careless crops and reapers when he sits, a poor 
 man or wealthy, among the stubble of grass and 
 youth. 
 
 As I lay on the shady side of an alder bank 
 watching our folk at their gambols, I found a 
 serenity that again set me at my ease with the 
 Provost's daughter. I gathered even the calmness 
 to invite her to sit beside me, and she made no 
 demur.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 97 
 
 "You are short of reapers, I think, by the look 
 of them," she said ; " I miss some of the men who 
 were here last year." 
 
 They were gone with MacCailein, I explained, 
 as paid volunteers. 
 
 " Oh ! those wars ! " she cried sadly. " I wish 
 they were ended. Here are the fields, good crops, 
 food and happiness for all, why must men be 
 fighting? " 
 
 " Ask your Highland heart," said I. "We are 
 children of strife." 
 
 " In my heart," she replied, " there 's but love 
 for all. I toss sleepless, at night, thinking of the 
 people we know — the good, kind, gallant, merry 
 lads we know — waging savage battle for some- 
 thing I never had the wit to discover the mean- 
 ing of." 
 
 "The Almighty's order — we have been at it 
 from the birth of time." 
 
 " So old a world might have learned," she said, 
 " to break that order when they break so many 
 others. Is his lordship likely to be back soon?" 
 
 " I wish he might be," said I, with a dubious 
 accent, thinking of the heather above the myrtle 
 and MacCailein's head on a post. " Did you hear 
 of the Macaulay beldame shot by Roderick?" 
 
 " Yes," she said ; " an ugly business ! What 
 has that to do with MacCailein's home-coming?" 
 
 " Very little indeed," I answered, recalling our 
 bond ; " but she cursed his lordship and his army 
 with a zeal that was alarming, even to an old soldier 
 of Sweden." 
 
 7
 
 98 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " God ward all evil ! " cried Betty in a passion of 
 earnestness. " You '11 be glad to see your friend 
 M'lver back, I make no doubt." 
 
 "Oh! he's an old hand at war, madam; he'll 
 come safe out of this by his luck and skill, if he 
 left the army behind him." 
 
 " I 'm glad to hear it," said she, smiling. 
 
 "What!" I cried in raillery; "would you be 
 grateful for so poor a balance left of a noble 
 army? " 
 
 And she reddened and smiled again, and a ser- 
 vant cried us in to the dinner-table. 
 
 In spite of the Macaulay prophecy, MacCailein 
 and his men came home in the fulness of time. 
 They came with the first snowstorm of winter, the 
 clan in companies down Glenaora and his lordship 
 roundabout by the Lowlands, where he had a mis- 
 sion to the Estates. The war, for the time, was 
 over, a truce of a kind was patched up, and there 
 was a cheerful prospect — too briefly ours — that 
 the country would settle anon to peace.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 99 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 
 THE BALE-FIRES ON THE BENT 
 
 Hard on the heels of the snow came a frost that 
 put shackles on the very wind. It fell black and 
 sudden on the country, turning the mud floors of 
 the poorer dwellings into iron that rang below the 
 heel, though the peat-fires burned by day and 
 night, and Loch Finne, lying flat as a girdle from 
 shore to shore, visibly crisped and curdled into ice 
 on the surface in the space of an afternoon. A sun 
 almost genial to look at, but with no warmth at the 
 heart of him, rode among the white hills that looked 
 doubly massive with their gullies and corries, for 
 ordinary black or green, lost in the general hue; 
 and at mid-day bands of little white birds would 
 move over the country from the north, flapping 
 weakly to a warmer clime. They might stay a 
 little, some of them, deceived by the hanging peat- 
 smoke into the notion that somewhere here were 
 warmth and comfort ; but the cold searched them 
 to the core, and such as did not die on the roadside 
 took up their dismal voyaging anew. 
 
 The very deer came down, from the glens — 
 cabarfeidh stags, hinds, and prancing roes. At 
 night we could hear them bellowing and snorting 
 as they went up and down the street in herds from 
 Ben Bhrec or the barren sides of the Black Mount
 
 lOO JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and Dalncss in the land of Bredalbane, seeking the 
 shore and the travellers' illusion — the content 
 that 's always to come. In those hours, too, the 
 owls seemed to surrender the fir-woods and come 
 to the junipers about the back doors, for they 
 kenned in the darkness, even on, woeful warders 
 of the night, telling the constant hours. 
 
 'Twas in these bitter nights, shivering under 
 blanket and plaid, I thought ruefully of foreign 
 parts, of the frequented towns I had seen else- 
 where, the cleanly paven streets swept of snow, 
 the sea-coal fires, and the lanterns swinging over 
 the crowded causeways, signs of friendly interest 
 and companionship. Here were we, poor peas- 
 ants, in a waste of frost and hills, cut ofi" from the 
 merry folks sitting by fire and flame at ease! 
 Even our gossiping, our ceilidh in each other's 
 houses, was stopped ; except in the castle itself 
 no more the song and story, the pipe and trump. 
 
 In the morning when one ventured abroad he 
 found the deer-slot dimpling all the snow on the 
 street, and down at the shore, unafeared of man, 
 would be solitary hinds, widows and rovers from 
 their clans, sniffing eagerly over to the Cowal hills. 
 Poor beasts ! poor beasts ! I 've seen them in their 
 madness take to the ice for it when it was little 
 thicker than a groat, thinking to reach the oak- 
 woods of Ardchyline. For a time the bay at the 
 river mouth was full of long-tailed ducks, that at a 
 whistle almost came to your hand, and there too 
 came flocks of wild-swan, flying in wedges, trum- 
 peting as they flew. Fierce otters quarrelled over
 
 JOHN SPLENDID loi 
 
 their eels at the mouth of the Black Burn that 
 flows underneath the town and out below the Tol- 
 booth to the shore, or made the gloaming melan- 
 choly with their doleful whistle. A roebuck in his 
 winter jacket of mouse-brown fur died one night 
 at my relative's door, and a sea-eagle gorged him- 
 self so upon the carcass that at morning he could 
 not flap a wing, and fell a ready victim to a knock 
 from my staff. 
 
 The passes to the town were head-high with 
 drifted snow, our warders at the heads of Aora 
 and Shira could not themselves make out the 
 road, and the notion of added surety this gave 
 us against Antrim's Irishmen was the only com- 
 pensation for the ferocity of nature. 
 
 In three days the salt loch, in that still and 
 ardent air, froze like a fish-pond, whereupon the 
 oddest spectacle ever my country-side saw was his 
 that cared to rise at morning to see it. Stags and 
 hinds in tremendous herds, black cattle, too, from 
 the hills, trotted boldly over the ice to the other 
 side of the loch, that in the clarity of the air seemed 
 but a mile off. Behind them went skulking foxes, 
 polecats, badgers, cowering hares, and bead-eyed 
 weasels. They seemed to have a premonition that 
 Famine was stalking behind them, and they fled 
 over luckless woods and fields like rats from a 
 sinking ship. 
 
 To Master Gordon I said one morning as we 
 watched a company of dun heifers mid-way on the 
 loch, " This is an ill omen or I 'm sore mistaken." 
 
 He was not a man given to superstitions, but he
 
 I02 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 could not gainsay me. " There's neither hip nor 
 haw left in our woods," he said; " birds I 've 
 never known absent here in the most eager win- 
 ters arc gone, and wild-eyed strangers, their like 
 never seen here before, tamely pick crumbs at my 
 very door. Signs ! Signs ! It beats me some- 
 times to know how the brute scents the circum- 
 stance to come, but — what 's the Word — ' Not a 
 sparrow shall fall.' " 
 
 We fed well on the wild meat driven to our fire- 
 side, and to it there never seemed any end, for new 
 flocks took up the tale of the old ones, and a con- 
 stant procession of fur and feather moved across 
 our white prospect. Even the wolf — from Ben- 
 derloch, no doubt — came baying at night at the 
 empty gibbets at the town-head, that spoke of the 
 law's suspense. 
 
 Only in Castle Inneraora was there anything to 
 be called gaiety. MacCailein fumed at first at the 
 storm that kept his letters from him, and spoiled 
 the laburnums and elms he was coaxing to spring 
 about his garden ; but soon he settled down to his 
 books and papers, ever his solace in such homely 
 hours as the policy and travel of his life permitted. 
 And if the burgh was dull and dark, night after 
 night there was merriment over the drawbrig of 
 the castle. It would be on the loth or the 15th 
 of the month I first sampled it. I went up with 
 a party from the town and neighbourhood, with 
 their wives and daughters, finding an atmosphere 
 wondrous different from that of the cooped and 
 anxious tenements down below. Big loirs roared
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 103 
 
 behind the fire-dogs, long candles and plenty lit 
 the hall, and pipe and harp went merrily. Her 
 ladyship had much of the French manner, — a 
 dainty dame with long thin face and bottle shoul- 
 ders, attired always in Saxon fashion, and indul- 
 gent in what I then thought a wholesome levity, 
 that made up for the Gruamach husband. And 
 she thought him, honestly, the handsomest and 
 noblest in the world, though she rallied him for 
 his over-much sobriety of deportment. To me she 
 was very gracious, for she had liked my mother, 
 and I think she planned to put me in the way of 
 the Provost's daughter as often as she could. 
 
 When his lordship was in his study, our dafifing 
 was in Gaelic, for her ladyship, though a Morton, 
 and only learning the language, loved to have it 
 spoken about her. Her pleasure was to play the 
 harp — a clarsach of great beauty, with lona carv- 
 ing on it — to the singing of her daughter Jean, 
 who knew all the songs of the mountains and 
 sang them like the bird. The town girls, too, 
 sang, Betty a little shyly, but as daintily as her 
 neighbours, and we danced a reel or two to the 
 playing of Paruig Dall, the blind piper. Venison 
 and wine were on the board, and whiter bread 
 than the town baxters afforded. It all comes back 
 on me now — that lofty hall, the skins of seal and 
 otter and of stag upon the floor, the flaring can- 
 dles and the glint of glass and silver, the banners 
 swinging upon the walls over devices of pike, gun, 
 and claymore, — the same to be used so soon ! 
 
 The castle, unlike its successor, sat adjacent to
 
 104 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the river side, its front to the hill of Dunchiiach 
 on the north, and its back a stone-cast from the 
 mercat cross and the throng streets of the town. 
 Between it and the river was the small garden 
 consecrate to her ladyship's flowers, a patch of 
 level soil, cut in dice by paths whose tiny peb- 
 bles and broken shells crunched beneath the foot 
 at any other season than now when the snow cov- 
 ered all. 
 
 John Splendid, who was of our party, in a lull of 
 the entertainment was looking out at the prospect 
 from a window at the gable end of the hall, for the 
 moon sailed high above Strone, and the outside 
 world was beautiful in a cold and eerie fashion. 
 Of a sudden he faced round and beckoned to me 
 with a hardly noticeable toss of the head. 
 
 I went over and stood beside him. He was 
 bending a little to get the top of Dunchuach in 
 the field of his vision, and there was a puzzled 
 look on his face. 
 
 "Do you see any light up }'ondcr?" he asked, 
 and I followed his query with a keen scrutiny of 
 the summit, where the fort should be lying in 
 darkness and peace. 
 
 There was a twinkle of light that would have 
 shown fuller if the moonlight was less. 
 
 " I see a spark," I said, wondering a little at his 
 interest in so small an affair. 
 
 "That's a pity," said he, in a rueful key. "I 
 was hoping it might be a private vision of my own, 
 and yet I might have known my dream last night 
 of a white rat meant something. If that's flame
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 105 
 
 there's more to follow. There should be no lowe 
 on this side of the fort after night-fall, unless the 
 warders on the other side have news from the 
 hills behind Dunchuach, In this matter of fire at 
 night, Dunchuach echoes Ben Bhuidhe or Ben 
 Bhrec, and these two in their turn carry on the 
 light of our friends further ben in Bredalbane and 
 Cruachan. It 's not a state secret to tell you we 
 were half feared some of our Antrim gentry might 
 give us a call; but the Worst Curse on the pigs 
 who come guesting in such weather ! " 
 
 He was glowering almost feverishly at the hill- 
 top, and I turned round to see that the busy room 
 had no share in our apprehension. The only eyes 
 I found looking in our direction were those of 
 Betty, who finding herself observed, came over, 
 blushing a little, and looked out into the night. 
 
 " You were hiding the moonlight from me," 
 she said with a smile, a remark which struck me 
 as curious, for she could not see out at the window 
 from where she sat. 
 
 " I never saw one who needed it less," said 
 Splendid, and still he looked intently at the mount. 
 " You carry your own with you." 
 
 Having no need to bend she saw the top of 
 Dunchuach whenever she got close to the window, 
 and by this time the light on it looked like a 
 planet, wan in the moonlight, but unusually large 
 and angry. 
 
 " I never saw star so bright," said the girl, in a 
 natural enough error. 
 
 " It 's a challenge to your eyes, madam," re-
 
 io6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 torted Splendid again, in a raillery wonderful con- 
 sidering his anxiety, and he whispered in my ear 
 — "or to us to war." 
 
 As he spoke, the report of a big gun boomed 
 through the frosty air from Dunchuach to the 
 plain, and the beacon flashed up, tall, flaunting, 
 and unmistakable. 
 
 John Splendid turned into the hall and raised 
 his voice a little, to say with no evidence of dis- 
 turbance, — 
 
 " There 's something amiss up the glens, your 
 ladyship." 
 
 The harp her ladyship strummed idly on at the 
 moment had stopped on a ludicrous and unfinished 
 note, the hum of conv^ersation ended abruptly. 
 Up to the window the company crowded, and they 
 could see the balefire blazing hotly against the 
 cool light of the moon and the widely sprinkled 
 stars. Behind them in a little came Argile, one 
 arm only thrust hurriedly in a velvet jacket, his 
 hair in a disorder, the pallor of study on his cheek. 
 He very gently pressed to the front, and looked 
 out with a lowering brow at the signal. 
 
 " Aye, aye ! " he said in the English, after a 
 pause that kept the room more intent on his face 
 than on the balefire. " My old luck bides with 
 me: I thought the weather guaranteed me a sea- 
 son's rest, but here 's the claymore again ! Alas- 
 dair, Craignish, Sir Donald, I wisli you gentlemen 
 would set the summons about with as little delay 
 as need be. We have no time for any display of 
 militant science, but as these beacons carry their
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 107 
 
 tale fast we may easily be at the head of Glen 
 Aora before the enemy is down Glenurchy." 
 
 Sir Donald, who was the more elderly of the 
 officers his lordship addressed, promised a muster 
 of five hundred men in three hours' time. " I can 
 have a crois-tara," he said, " at the very head of 
 Glen Shira in an hour." 
 
 "You may save yourself the trouble," said 
 John Splendid, " Glen Shira 's awake by this time, 
 for the watchers have been in the hut on Ben 
 Bhuidhe since ever we came back from Lorn, and 
 they are in league with other watchers at the 
 Gearron town, w^ho will have the alarm miles up 
 the Glen by now if I make no mistake about the 
 breed." 
 
 By this time a servant came in to say Sithean 
 Sluaidhe hill on Cowal was ablaze, and likewise 
 the hill of Ardno above the Ardkinglas lands. 
 
 "The alarm will be over Argile in two hours," 
 said his lordship. " We 're grand at the begin- 
 nings of things," and as he spoke he was pour- 
 ing, with a steady hand, a glass of wine for a 
 woman in the tremors. " I wish to God we were 
 better at the endings," he added bitterly. " If these 
 Athole and Antrim caterans have the secret of our 
 passes, we may be rats in a trap before the morn's 
 morning." 
 
 The hall emptied quickly, a commotion of folks 
 departing rose in the courtyard, and candle and 
 torch moved about. Horses put over the bridge 
 at a gallop, striking sparks from the cobble-stones, 
 swords jingled on stirrups. In the town, a piper's
 
 io8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 tune hurriedly lifted, and numerous lights danced 
 to the windows of the burghers. John Splendid, 
 the Marquis, and I were the only ones finally left 
 in the hall, and the Marquis turned to me with a 
 smile — 
 
 " You see your pledge calls for redemption 
 sooner than you expected, Elrigmore. The en- 
 emy 's not far from Ben Bhuidhe now, and your 
 sword is mine by the contract." 
 
 "Your lordship can count on me to the last 
 ditch," I cried ; and indeed I might well be ready, 
 for was not the menace of war as muckle against 
 my own hearth as against his? 
 
 "Our plan," he went on, "as agreed upon at a 
 council after my return from the north, was to 
 hold all above Inneraora in simple defence while 
 lowland troops took the invader behind. Mont- 
 rose or the MacDonalds can't get through our 
 passes." 
 
 " I 'm not cock-sure of that, MacCailein," said 
 Splendid. "We're here in the bottom of an 
 ashet; there's more than one deserter from your 
 tartan on the outside of it, and once they get on 
 the rim they have, by all rules strategic, the upper 
 hand of us in some degree. I never had much 
 faith (if I dare make so free) in the surety of our 
 retreat here. It 's an old notion of our grandads 
 that we could bar the passes." 
 
 " So we can, sir, so we can ! " said the Marquis, 
 nervously picking at his buttons with his long 
 white fingers, the nails vexatiously polished and 
 shaped.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 109 
 
 "Against horse and artillery, I allow, surely not 
 against Gaelic foot. This is not a wee foray of 
 broken men, but an attack by an army of numbers. 
 The science of war — what little I learned of it in 
 the Low Countries with gentlemen esteemed my 
 betters — convinces me that if a big enough horde 
 fall on from the rim of our ashet, as I call it, they 
 might sweep us into the loch like rattons." 
 
 I doubt MacCailein Mor heard little of this 
 uncheery criticism, for he was looking in a seem- 
 ing blank abstraction out of the end window at the 
 town lights increasing in number as the minutes 
 passed. His own piper in the close behind the 
 buttery had tuned up and into the gathering — 
 
 " Bha mi air banais 'am bail' Inneraora, 
 Banais bii mhiosa bha riamh air afit-saoghal ! " 
 
 I felt the tune stir me to the core, and MTver, I 
 could see by the twitch of his face, kindled to the 
 old call. 
 
 " Curse them ! " cried MacCailein. " Curse 
 them ! " he cried in the Gaelic, and he shook a 
 white fist foolishly at the north; "I'm wanting 
 but peace and my books. I keep my ambition in 
 leash, and still and on they must be snapping like 
 curs at Argile. God's name ! and I "11 crush them 
 hke ants on the ant-heap." 
 
 From the door at the end of the room, as he 
 stormed, a little bairn toddled in, wearing a night- 
 shirt, a curly gold-haired boy with his cheeks 
 like the apple for hue, the sleep he had risen from 
 still heavy on his eyes. Seemingly the commotion
 
 no JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 had brought him from his bed, and up he now ran,, 
 and his httlc arms went round his father's knees. 
 On my word I 've seldom seen a man more vastly 
 moved than was Archibald, Marquis of Argile. 
 He swallowed his spittle as if it were wool, and 
 took the child to his arms awkwardly, like one who 
 has none of the handling of his own till they are 
 grown up, and I could see the tear at the cheek he 
 laid against the youth's ruddy hair. 
 
 "Wild men coming, dada?" said the child, not 
 much out about after all. 
 
 " They shan't touch my little Illeasbuig," whis- 
 pered his lordship, kissing him on the mouth. 
 Then he lifted his head and looked hard at John 
 Splendid. " I think," he said, " if I went post- 
 haste to Edinburgh, I could be of some service in 
 advising the nature and route of the harassing on 
 the rear of Montrose. Or do you think — do you 
 think " 
 
 He ended in a hesitancy, flushing a little at the 
 brow, his lips weakening at the corner. 
 
 John Splendid, at my side, gave me with his 
 knee the least nudge on the leg next him. 
 
 " Did your lordship think of going to Edinburgh 
 at once? " he asked, with an odd tone in his voice, 
 and keeping his eyes very fixedly on a window. 
 
 " If it was judicious, the sooner the better," said 
 the Marquis, nu/zling his face in the soft warmth 
 of the child's neck. 
 
 Splendid looked helpless for a bit, and then took 
 up the policy that I learned later to expect from 
 him in every similar case. He seemed to read
 
 JOHN SPLENDID iii 
 
 (in truth it was easy enough ! ; wliat was in his 
 master's mind, and he said, ahnost witli gaiety — 
 
 " The best thing you could do, my lord. I^e- 
 yond your personal encouragement (and a Chief's 
 aye a consoling influence on the field, I 'U never 
 deny), there 's little you could do here that cannot, 
 with your pardon, be fairly well done by Sir 
 Donald and myself, and Elrigmore here, who hav^e 
 made what you might call a trade of tulzie and 
 brulzie." 
 
 MacCailein Mor looked uneasy for all this open 
 assurance. He set the child down with an awk- 
 ward kiss, to be taken away by a servant lass who 
 had come after him. 
 
 "Would it not look a little odd?" he said, eye- 
 ing us keenly. 
 
 " Your lordship might be sending a trusty mes- 
 sage to Edinburgh," I said, and John Splendid 
 with a " Pshaw ! " walked to the window, saying 
 what he had to say with his back to the candle- 
 light. 
 
 " There 's not a man out there but would botch 
 the whole business if you sent him," he said ; " it 
 must be his lordship or nobody. And what's to 
 hinder her ladyship and the children going too? 
 Snugger they 'd be by far in Stirling Lodge than 
 here, Lll warrant. If I were not an old runt of a 
 bachelor, it would be my first thought to give 
 my women and bairns safety." 
 
 MacCailein flew at the notion. " Just so, jus\ 
 so," he cried, and of a sudden he skipped out ol 
 the room.
 
 112 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 John Splendid turned, pushed the door to after 
 the nobleman, and in a soft voice broke into the 
 most terrible torrent of bad language ever I heard 
 (and I 've known cavaliers of fortune free that 
 way). He called his Marquis everything but a 
 man. 
 
 " Then why in the name of God do you egg 
 him on to a course that a fool could read the pol- 
 troonery of? I never gave MacCailein Mor credit 
 for being a coward before," said I. 
 
 " Coward ! " cried Splendid. " It 's no cowardice 
 but selfishness — the disease, more or less, of us 
 all. Do you think yon gentleman a coward? 
 Then you do not know the man, I saw him once, 
 empty-handed, in the forest, face the white stag and 
 beat it off a hunter it was goring to death, and they 
 say he never blenched when the bonnet was shot 
 off his head at Drimtyne, but jested with a ' Close 
 on't; a nail-breadth more, and Colin was heir to 
 an earlhood ! ' " 
 
 " I 'rn sorry to think the worst of an Argilc and 
 a Campbell, but surely his place is here now." 
 
 "It is, I admit; and I egged him to follow his 
 inclination because I 'm a fool in one thing, as 
 you '11 discover anon, because it 's easier and pleas- 
 anter to convince a man to do what he wants to 
 do than to convince him the way he would avoid 
 is the only right one." 
 
 "It's not an altogether nice quirk of the char- 
 acter," I said drily. It gave me something of a 
 stroke to find so weak a bit in a man of so many 
 notable parts.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 113 
 
 He spunked up like tinder. 
 
 " Do you call me a liar?" he said, with a face 
 as white as a clout, his nostrils stretching in his 
 rage. 
 
 "Liar!" said I, "not I! It would be an ill 
 time to do it with our common enemy at the door. 
 A lie (as I take it in my own Highland fashion) is 
 the untruth told for cowardice or to get a mean 
 advantage of another; your way with MacCailein 
 was but a foolish way (also Highland, I 've no- 
 ticed) of saving yourself the trouble of spurring 
 up your manhood to put him in the right." 
 
 " You do me less than half justice," said Splen- 
 did, the blood coming back to his face, and him 
 smiling again; "I allow I'm no preacher. If a 
 man must to hell, he must, his own gait. The only 
 way I can get into argument with him about the 
 business is to fly in a fury. If I let my temper 
 up I would call MacCailein coward to his teeth, 
 though I know it's not his character. But I've 
 been in a temper with my cousin before now, and 
 I ken the stuff he 's made of; he gets as cold as 
 steel the hotter I get, and with the poorest of 
 causes he could then put me in a black con- 
 fusion " 
 
 "But you -" 
 
 " Stop, stop ! let me finish my tale. Do you 
 know I put a fair face on the black business to 
 save the man his own self-respect. He '11 know him- 
 self his going looks bad without my telling him, 
 and I would at least leave him the notion that 
 we were blind to his weakness. After all it 's not 
 
 8
 
 114 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 nuicli of a weakness — the wish to save a wife and 
 children from danger. Another bookish disease, 
 I admit; their over-much study has deadened the 
 man to the sense of the becoming, and in an affair 
 demanding courage he acts hke a woman, thinking 
 of his household when he should be thinking of his 
 clan. My only consolation is that after all (except 
 for the look of the thing) his leaving us Httle 
 matters." 
 
 I thought different on that point, and I proved 
 right. If it takes short time to send a fiery cross 
 about, it takes shorter yet to send a naughty 
 rumour, and the story that MacCailein Mor and 
 his folks were off in a hurry to the Lowlands was 
 round the greater part of Argile before the clans- 
 men mustered at Inneraora. The)^ never mustered 
 at all, indeed ; for the chieftains of the small com- 
 panies that came from Glen Finne and down the 
 country, no sooner heard that the Marquis was 
 off than they took the road back, and so Montrose 
 and Colkitto MacDonald found a poltroon and 
 deserted countryside waiting them.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 115 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 INVASION 
 
 Eight hours after the beacon kindled on Dun- 
 chuach, the enemy was feehng at the heart of 
 Argile. 
 
 It came out years after, that one Angus Maca- 
 lain, a Glencoe man, a branded robber off a 
 respectable Water-of-Duglas family, had guided 
 the main body of the invaders through the moun- 
 tains of the Urchy and into our territory. They 
 came on in three bands, Alasdair MacDonald and 
 the Captain of Clanranald (as they called John 
 MacDonald, the beast — a scurvy knave!), sepa- 
 rating at Accurach at the forking of the two Glens, 
 and entering both, Montrose himself coming on 
 the rear as a support. As if to favour the people 
 of the Glens, a thaw came that day with rain and 
 mist that cloaked them largely from view as they 
 ran for the hills to shelter in the shelling bothies. 
 The ice, as I rode up the water-side, home to Glen 
 Shira to gather some men and dispose my father 
 safely, was breaking on the surface of the loch 
 and roaring up on the shore in the incoming tide. 
 It came piling in layers in the bays — a most won- 
 derful spectacle ! I could not hear my horse's 
 hooves for the cracking and crushing and cannon- 
 ade of it as it flowed in on a south wind to the
 
 ii6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 front of the Gcarran, giving the long curve of the 
 land an appearance new and terrible, filled as it 
 was far over high-water niark with monstrous 
 blocks, answering with groans and cries to every 
 push of the tide. 
 
 I found the Glen wrapped in mist, the Gearran 
 hamlet empty of people, Maam, Kilblaan, Stuch- 
 goy, and Ben Bhuidhe presenting every aspect of 
 desolation. A weeping rain was making sodden 
 all about my father's house when I galloped to the 
 door, to find him and the sgalag the only ones 
 left. 
 
 The old man was bitter on the business. 
 
 " Little I thought," said he, " to see the day 
 when Glen Shira would turn tail on an enemy." 
 
 "Where are they?" I asked, speaking of our 
 absent followers ; but indeed I might have saved 
 the question, for I knew before he told me they 
 were up in the corries between the mounts, and in 
 the caves of Glen Finne. 
 
 He was sitting at a fire that was down to its 
 grey ash, a mournful figure my heart was vexed 
 to see. Now and then he would look about him, 
 at the memorials of my mother, her chair and her 
 Irish Bible (the first in the parish), and a posy of 
 withered flowers that lay on a bowl on a shelf 
 where she had [)laced them, new cut and fresh, 
 the day she took to her deathbed. Her wheel, 
 too, stood in the corner, with the thread snapped 
 short in the heck — a hint, I many times thought, 
 at the sundered interests of life. 
 
 " I suppose we must be going with the rest," I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 117 
 
 ventured; "there's small sense in biding here to 
 be butchered." 
 
 He fell in a rain of tears, fearing nor death nor 
 hardship I knew, but vvae at the abandonment of 
 his home. I had difficulty in getting him to con- 
 sent to come with me, but at last I gave the pros- 
 pect of safety in the town and the company of 
 friends there so attractive a hue that he con- 
 sented. So we hid a few things under a bvuacJi 
 or overhanging brae beside the burn behind the 
 house, and having shut all the doors — a comical 
 precaution against an army, it struck me at the 
 time — we rode down to Inneraora, to the town 
 house of our relative Craignure. 
 
 It was a most piteous community, crowded in 
 every lane and pend with men, women, and chil- 
 dren dreadful of the worst. All day the people 
 had been trooping in from the landward parts, fly- 
 ing before the rumour of the Athole advance down 
 Cladich. For a time there was the hope that the 
 invaders would but follow the old Athole custom 
 and plunder as they went, sparing unarmed men 
 and women ; but this hope we surrendered when a 
 lad came from Carnus with a tale of two old men, 
 who were weavers there, and a woman, nailed into 
 their huts and burned to death. 
 
 Had Inneraora been a walled town, impreg- 
 nable, say, as a simple Swabian village with a few 
 sconces and redoubts, and a few pieces of cannon, 
 we old stagers would have counselled the holding 
 of it against all comers; but it was innocently open 
 to the world, its back windows looking into the
 
 ii8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 fields, its through-going wynds and closes leading 
 frankly to the open hcallacJi or pass. 
 
 A high and sounding wind had risen from the 
 south, the sea got in a tumult, the ice-blocks ran 
 like sheep before it to the Gearran bay and the 
 loch-head. I thought afterwards it must be God's 
 providence that opened up for us so suddenly a 
 way of flight from this lamentable trap, by the 
 open water now free from shore to shore in front 
 of the town. Generalling the community as if he 
 was a marshal of brigade, John Splendid showed 
 me the first of his manly quality in his preparation 
 for the removal of the women and children. He 
 bade the men run out the fishing smacks, the wher- 
 ries and skiffs, at the Cadger's Quay, and moving 
 about that frantic people, he disposed them in 
 their several places on the crafts that were to carry 
 them over the three-mile ferry to Cowal. A man 
 born to enterprise and guidance, ccrtes ! I never 
 saw his equal. He had the happy word for all, 
 the magic hint of hope, a sober merriment when 
 needed, sometimes a little raillery and laughing, 
 sometimes (with the old) a farewell in the ear. 
 Even the better gentry, Sir Donald and the rest, 
 took a second place in the management, beholding 
 in this poor gentleman the human heart that at a 
 pinch is better than authority in a gold-braided 
 coat. 
 
 V>y noon we had every l)airn and woman (but 
 for one woman I Ml mention) on their way from 
 the shore, poor dears ! tossing on the turbulent 
 sea, the women weeping bitterly for the husbands
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 119 
 
 and sons they left, for of men there went with 
 them but the oldsters, able to guide a boat, but 
 poorly equipped for battling with Irish banditty. 
 And my father was among them, in the kind hands 
 of his sgalag and kinswomen, but in a vague 
 indifference of grief. 
 
 A curious accident, that in the grace of God 
 made the greatest difference on my after-life, left 
 among them that found no place in the boats the 
 daughter of Provost Brown. She had made every 
 preparation to go with her father and mother, and 
 had her foot on the beam of the boat, when the 
 old woman set up a cry for an oe that had been 
 forgot in the confusion, and was now, likely, crying 
 in the solitude of the backlands. It was the love- 
 bairn of a dead mother, brought up in the kindly 
 Highland fashion, free of every girnel and kail-pot. 
 Away skirted Betty up the causeway of the Cad- 
 ger's Quay, and in among the lanes, for the little 
 one, and (I learned again) she found her playing 
 well content among puddled snow, chattering to 
 herself in the loneliness of yon war-menaced town. 
 And she had but snatched her up to seek safety 
 with her in the boats when the full tide of Colkitto's 
 robbers came pelting in under the Arches. They 
 cut her off from all access to the boats by that way, 
 so she turned and made for the other end of the 
 town, hoping to hail in her father's skiff when he 
 had put far enough off shore to see round the 
 point and into the second bay. 
 
 We had but time to shout her apparent project 
 to her father, when we found ourselves fighting
 
 I20 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 hand to hand against the Irish gentry in trews. 
 This was no market-day brawl, but a stark assault- 
 at-arms. All in the sound of a high wind, broken 
 now and then with a rain blattering even-down, and 
 soaking through tartan and clo-dubh, we at it for 
 dear life. Of us Clan Campbell people, gentrice 
 and commoners, and so many of the Lowland 
 mechanics of the place as were left behind, there 
 would be something less than two hundred, for the 
 men who had come up the loch-side to the sum- 
 mon of the beacons returned the way they came 
 when they found MacCailein gone, and hurried to 
 the saving of wife and bairn. We were all well 
 armed with fusil and sword, and in that we had 
 some advantage of the caterans bearing down on 
 us; for they had, for the main part, but rusty 
 matchlocks, pikes, bill-hooks — even bows and 
 arrows, antique enough contrivance for a time of 
 civilised war! But they had hunger and hate for 
 their backers, good guidance in their own savage 
 fashion from MacDonald, and we were fighting on 
 a half heart, a body never trained together, and 
 stupid to the word of command. 
 
 From the first, John took the head of our poor 
 defence. Me was dninc-iiasail enough, and he had, 
 notoriously, the skill that earned him the honour^ 
 even over myself (in some degree), and certainly 
 over Sir Donald. 
 
 The town-head fronted the upper bay, and be- 
 tween it and the grinding ice on the shore lay a 
 broad track of what might be called esplanade, 
 presenting ample space for our rencontre.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID I2i 
 
 " Gentlemen," cried John, picking off a man 
 with the first shot from a silver-butted tag he 
 pulled out of his waist-belt at the onset, " and with 
 your leave, Sir Donald (trusting you to put pluck 
 in these Low Country shopkeepers), it's Inneraora 
 or Ifrinn for us this time. Give them cold steel, 
 and never an inch of arm-room for their bills ! " 
 
 Forgotten were the boats, behind lay all our 
 loves and fortunes — was ever Highland heart but 
 swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairy 
 scamps the Irish — never German boor so inele- 
 gant — but venomous in their courage. Score 
 upon score of them ran in on us through the 
 Arches. Our lads had but one shot from the 
 muskets, then into them with the dirk and sword. 
 
 " Montrose ! Montrose ! " cried the enemy, even 
 when the blood glucked at the thrapple, and they 
 twisted to the pain of the knife. 
 
 "A papist dog!" cried Splendid, hard at it on 
 my right, for once a zealous Protestant, and he 
 was whisking around him his broad sword like a 
 hazel wand, facing half a-dozen Lochaber axes. 
 " Cruachan ! Cruachan ! " he sang. And we cried 
 the old slogan but once, for time pressed and wind 
 was dear. 
 
 Sitting cosy in a tavern with a friend nowadays, 
 listening to a man singing, in the cheery way of 
 taverns, the ditty that the Lcckan bard made upon 
 this little spulzie, I could weep and laugh in turns 
 at minding of yon winter's day. In the hot stress 
 of it I felt but the ardour that 's under all men who 
 wear tartan — less a hatred of the men I thrust
 
 122 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and slashed at with Sir Claymore than a zest in 
 the busy traffic, and something of a pride (God 
 help me!) in the pretty way my blade dirled on 
 the harn-pans of the rascals. There was one trick 
 of the sword I had learned off an old sergeant of 
 pikes in Mackay's Scots, in a leisure afternoon in 
 camp, that I knew was alien to every man who 
 used the targe in home battles, and it served me 
 like a Mull wife's charm. They might be sturdy, 
 the dogs, valorous too, for there 's no denying the 
 truth, and they were gleg, gleg with the target in 
 fending, but, man, I found them mighty simple to 
 the feint and lunge of Alasdair Mor ! 
 
 Listening, as I say, to a song in a tavern, T 'm 
 sad for the stout fellows of our tartan who fell 
 that day, and still I could laugh gaily at the amaze 
 of the ragged corps who found gentlemen before 
 them. They pricked at us, for all their natural 
 ferocity, with something like apology for marring 
 our fine clothes, and when the end came, and we 
 were driven back, they left the gentlemen of our 
 band to retreat by the pends to the beechwood, 
 and gave their attention to the main body of our 
 common townsmen. 
 
 We had edged. Splendid and Sir Donald and I, 
 into a bit of green behind the church, and we held 
 a council of war on our next move. 
 
 Three weary men, the rain smirring on our 
 sweating faces, there we were. I noticed that a 
 trickle of blood was running down my wrist, and 
 I felt at the same time a beat at the shoulder that 
 gave the explanation, and had mind that a fellow
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 123 
 
 in the Atholc corps had fired a pistolct point-blank 
 at me, missing me, as I had thought, by the thick- 
 ness of my doublet-sleeve. 
 
 " You 've got a cut," said Sir Donald. " You 
 have a face like the clay." 
 
 " A bit of the skin off," said I, unwilling to vex 
 good company. 
 
 " We must take to Eas-a-chosain for it," said 
 Splendid, his eyes flashing wild upon the scene, 
 the gristle of his red neck throbbing. 
 
 Smoke was among the haze of the rain ; from 
 the thatch of the townhead houses the wind brought 
 on us the smell of burning heather and brake and 
 fir-joist. 
 
 "Here's the lamentable end of town Inner- 
 aora ! " said John, in a doleful key. 
 
 And we ran, the three of us, up the Fisherland 
 burn-side to the wood of Creas Dubh.
 
 124 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FLIGHT TO THE FOREST 
 
 We made good speed up the burn-side, through 
 the fields, and into the finest forest that was (or is 
 to this day, perhaps) in all the wide Highlands. 
 I speak of Creag Dubh, great land of majestic 
 trees, home of the red-deer, rich with glades car- 
 peted with the juiciest grass, and endowed with 
 a cave or two where we knew we were safe of a 
 sanctuary if it came to the worst, and the Athole 
 men ran at our heels. It welcomed us from the 
 rumour of battle with a most salving peace. 
 Under the high fir and oak we walked in a still 
 and scented air, aisles lay about and deep recesses, 
 the wind sang in the tops and in the \'istas of the 
 trees, so that it minded one of Catholic kirks fre- 
 quented otherwhere. We sped up by the quarries 
 and through Eas-a-chosain (that little glen so full 
 of fondest memorials for all that have loved and 
 wandered), and found our first resting-place in a 
 cunning little hold on an eminence looking down 
 on the road that ran from the town to Coiilebhraid 
 mines. Below us the hillside dipped three or four 
 hundred feet in a sharp slant bushed over with 
 young daracJi wood, behind us hung a tremendous 
 rock that few standing upon would think had a 
 hollow heart. Here was our refuge, and the dry
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 125 
 
 • 
 
 and stoury alleys of the fir-wood we had traversed 
 gave no clue of our track to them that might 
 hunt us. 
 
 We made a fire whose smoke curled out at the 
 back of the cave into a linn at the bottom of a fall 
 the Fisherland burn has here, and had there been 
 any to see the reek they would have thought it 
 but the finer spray of the thawed water rising 
 among the melting ice-lances. We made, too, 
 couches of fir-branches — the springiest and most 
 wholesome of beds in lieu of heather or gall, and 
 laid down our weariness as a soldier would relin- 
 quish his knapsack, after John Splendid had ban- 
 daged my wounded shoulder. 
 
 In the cave of Eas-a-chosain we lay for more 
 days than I kept count of, I immovable, fevered 
 with my wound, Sir Donald my nurse, and John 
 Splendid my provider. They kept keen scrutiny 
 on the road below, where sometimes they could 
 see the invaders passing in bands in their search 
 for scattered townships or crofts. 
 
 On the second night John ventured into the 
 edge of the town to see how fared Inneraora, and 
 to seek provand. He found the place like a fiery 
 cross — burned to char at the ends, and only the 
 mid of it — the solid Tolbooth and the gentle 
 houses — left to hint its ancient pregnancy. A 
 corps of Irish had it in charge while their com- 
 rades scoured the rest of the country, and in the 
 dusk John had an easy task to find brandy in the 
 cellars of Craignure (the invaders never thought 
 of seeking a cellar for anything more warming
 
 126 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 tl'ian peats), a boll of meal in handfuls here and 
 there among the meal-girncls of the commoner 
 houses that lay open to the night, smelling of stale 
 hearth-fires, and harried. 
 
 To get fresh meat was a matter even easier, 
 though our guns we dare not be using, for there 
 were blue hares to snare, and they who have not 
 taken fingers to a roasted haunch of badger har- 
 ried out of his hiding with a club, have fine 
 feeding yet to try. The good Gaelic soldier will 
 eat, swectl}% crowdy made in his brogue — how 
 much better off were we with the stout and well- 
 fired oaten cakes that this Highland gentleman 
 made on the flagstone in front of our cave-fire ! 
 
 Never had a wounded warrior a more rapid heal- 
 ing than I. " Riiis;idh an i'o-g;JiiiilIac]i air an ro- 
 gJialar'' — -good nursing will overcome the worst 
 disease, as our antique proverb says ; and I had 
 the best of nursing and but a baggage-master's 
 wound after all. By the second week I was hale 
 and hearty. We were not uncomfortable in our 
 forest sanctuary ; we were well warmed by the per- 
 fumed roots of the candle-fir; John Splendid's 
 foraging was richer than we had on many a cam- 
 paign, and a pack of cards lent some solace to the 
 heaviest of our hours. To our imprisonment we 
 brought even a touch of scholarship. Sir Donald 
 was a student of Edinburgh College — a Master of 
 Arts — learned in the moral philosophies, and he 
 and I discoursed most gravely of many things 
 that had small harmony with our situation in that 
 savage, foe-haunted countryside.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 127 
 
 To these, our learned discourses, John Splendid 
 would list with an impatient tolerance, finding in 
 the most shrewd saying of the old scholars we 
 dealt with but a paraphrase of some Gaelic pro- 
 verb or the roundabout expression of his own views 
 on life and mankind. 
 
 "Tuts! tuts! " he would cry, " I think the dis- 
 sensions of you two arc but one more proof of the 
 folly of book-learning. Your minds are not your 
 own, but the patches of other people's bookish 
 duds. A keen eye, a custom of puzzling every- 
 thing to its cause, a trick of balancing the different 
 motives of the human heart, get John MTver as 
 close on the bone when it comes to the bit. Every 
 one of the scholars you are talking of had but my 
 own chance (maybe less, for who sees more than 
 a Cavalier of fortune?) of witnessing the real true 
 facts of life. Did they live to-day poor and hardy, 
 biting short at an oaten bannock to make it go the 
 farther, to-morrow gorging on fat venison and red 
 rich wine? Did they parley with cunning lawyers, 
 cajole the boor, act the valorous on a misgiving 
 heart, guess at the thought of man or woman 
 oftener than we do? Did ever you find two of 
 them agree on the finer points of their science? 
 Never the bit ! " 
 
 We forgave him his heresies for the sake of their 
 wit, that I but poorly chronicle, and he sang us 
 wonderful Gaelic songs that had all of that same 
 wisdom he bragged of — no worse, I '11 allow, than 
 the wisdom of print; not all love-songs, laments, 
 or such naughty ditties as you will hear to-day,
 
 128 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 but the poetry of the more cunning bards. Our 
 cavern, in its inner recesses, filled with the low, 
 rich chiming of his voice ; his face, and hands, and 
 whole body took part in the music. In those 
 hours his character borrowed just that touch of 
 sincerity it was in want of at ordinary times, for 
 he was one of those who need trial and trouble to 
 bring out their better parts. 
 
 We might have been happy, we might have been 
 content, living thus in our cave the old hunter's 
 life; walking out at early mornings in the ad- 
 jacent parts of the wood for the wherewithal 
 to breakfast; rounding in the day with longer 
 journeys in the moonlight, when the shadows were 
 crowded with the sounds of night bird and beast; 
 we might have been happy, I say, but for the 
 thinking of our country's tribulation. Where were 
 our friends and neighbours? Who were yet among 
 the living? How fared our kin abroad in Cowal 
 or fled farther south to the Rock of Dunbarton? 
 These restless thoughts came oftener to me than 
 to my companions, and many 's the hour I spent 
 in woeful pondering in the alleys of the wood. 
 
 At last it seemed the Irish who held the town 
 were in a sure way to discover our hiding if we 
 remained any longer there. Their provender was 
 running low, though they had driven hundreds of 
 head of cattle before them down the Glens ; the 
 weather hardened to frost again, and they were 
 pushing deeper into the wood to seek for bestial. 
 It was full of animals wc dare not shoot, but which 
 they found easy to the bullet ; red-deer with horns
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 129 
 
 — even at three years old — stunted to knobs by a 
 constant life in the shade and sequestration of the 
 trees they threaded their lives through, or dun- 
 bellied fallow-deer unable to face the blasts of the 
 exposed hills, light-coloured yeld hinds and horn- 
 less " heaviers " (or winterers) the size of oxen. 
 A flock or two of wild goat, even, lingered on the 
 upper slopes towards Ben Bhrec, and they were 
 down now browsing in the ditches beside the 
 Marriage Tree. 
 
 We could see little companies of the enemy 
 come closer and closer on our retreat each day — 
 attracted up the side of the hill from the road by 
 birds and beast that found cover under the young 
 oaks. 
 
 "We'll have to be moving before long," said Sir 
 Donald, ruefully looking at them one day — so 
 close at hand that we unwittingly had our fingers 
 round the dirk-hilts. 
 
 He had said the true word. 
 
 It was the very next day that an Irishman, bend- 
 ing under a tush to lift a hedgehog that lay sleep- 
 ing its winter sleep tightly rolled up in grass and 
 bracken, caught sight of the narrow entrance to 
 our cave. Our eyes were on him at the time, and 
 when he came closer we fell back into the rear of 
 our dark retreat, thinking he might not push his 
 inquiry further. 
 
 For once John Splendid's cunning forsook him 
 in the most ludicrous way. " I could have 
 stabbed him where he stood," he said afterwards, 
 " for I was in the shadow at his elbow ; " but he 
 
 9
 
 130 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 forgot that the fire whose embers glowed red 
 within the cave would betray its occupation quite 
 as well as the sight of its occupants, and that we 
 were discovered only struck him when the man, 
 after but one glance in, went bounding down the 
 hill to seek for aid in harrying this nest of ours. 
 
 It was " Bundle and Go " on the bagpipes. We 
 hurried to the top of the hill and along the ridge 
 just inside the edge of the pines in the direction of 
 the Aora, apprehensive that at every step we 
 should fall upon bands of the enemy; and if we 
 did not come upon themselves, we came upon 
 numerous enough signs of their employment. 
 Little farms lay in the heart of the forest of Creag 
 Dubh, — or rather more on the upper edge of it, 
 — their fields scalloped into the wood, their hills 
 a part of the mountains that divide Loch Finne 
 from Lochow. To-day their roof-trees lay hum- 
 bled on the hearth, the gable-walls stood black 
 and eerie, with the wind piping between the stones, 
 the cabars or joists held charred ends to heaven, 
 like poor mart}'rs seeking mercy. Nothing in or 
 about these once happy homesteads, and the perti- 
 nents and pendicles near them, had been spared 
 by the robbers. 
 
 But we had no time for weeping over such 
 things as we sped on our way along the hillside 
 for Dunchuach, the fort we knew impregnable and 
 sure to have safety for us if we could get through 
 the cordon that was bound to be round it. 
 
 It was a dull damp afternoon, an interlude in the 
 frost, chilly and raw in the air, the forest filled
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 131 
 
 with the odours of decaying leaves and moss. 
 A greater part of our way lay below beechwood 
 neither thick nor massive, giving no protection 
 from the rain to the soil below it, so that we 
 walked noisily and uncomfortably in a mash of 
 rotten vegetation. We were the length of the 
 Cherry Park, moving warily, before our first check 
 came. Here, if possible, it were better we should 
 leave the wood and cut across the mouth of the Glen 
 to Dunchuach on the other side. But there was no 
 cover to speak of in that case. The river Aora, 
 plopping and crying on its hurried way down, had 
 to be crossed, if at all, by a wooden bridge, cut at 
 the parapets in the most humorous and useless 
 way in embrasures, every embrasure flanked by 
 port-holes for musketry — a laughable pretence 
 about an edifice in itself no stronger against 
 powder than a child's toy. 
 
 On the very lowest edges of the wood, in the 
 shade of a thick plump of beech, strewed gener- 
 ously about the foot by old bushes of whin and 
 bramble, we lay at last studying the open country 
 before us, and wondering how we should win across 
 it to the friendly shelter of Dunchuach. Smoke 
 was rising from every chimney in the castle, which, 
 with its moat and guns, and its secret underground 
 passage to the seashore, was safe against surprises 
 or attacks through all this disastrous Antrim occu- 
 pation. But an entrance to the castle was beyond 
 us; there was nothing for it but Dunchuach, and 
 it cheered us wonderfully too, that from the fort 
 there floated a little stream of domestic reek,
 
 132 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 white-blue against the leaden grey of the unsettled 
 sky. 
 
 " Here we are, dears, and yonder would we be," 
 said John, digging herb-roots with his knife and 
 chewing them in an abstraction of hunger, for we 
 had been disturbed at a meal just begun to. 
 
 I could see a man here and there between us 
 and the lime-kiln we must pass on our way up 
 Dunchuach. I confessed myself in as black a 
 quandary as ever man experienced. As for Sir 
 Donald — good old soul ! — he was now, as always, 
 unable to come to any conclusion except such as 
 John Splendid helped him to. 
 
 We lay, as I say, in the plump, each of us under 
 his bush, and the whole of us overhung a foot or 
 two by a brow of land bound together by the 
 spreading beech-roots. To any one standing on 
 the brnacli we were invisible, but a step or two 
 would bring him round to the foot of our retreat 
 and disclose the three of us. 
 
 The hours passed, with us ensconced there — 
 every hour the length of a day to our impatience 
 and hunger; but still the way before was barred, 
 for the coming and going of people in the valley 
 was unceasing. We had talked at first eagerly in 
 whispers, but at last grew tired of such unnatural 
 discourse, and began to sleep in snatches for sheer 
 lack of anything else to do. It seemed we were 
 prisoned there till nightfall at least, if the Athole 
 man who found our cave did not track us to our 
 hiding. 
 
 I lay on the right of my two friends, a little
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 133 
 
 more awake, perhaps, than they, and so I was the 
 first to perceive a httle shaking of the soil, and 
 knew that some one was coming down upon our 
 hiding. We lay tense, our breathing caught at the 
 chest, imposing on ourselves a stillness that swelled 
 the noises of nature round about us — the wind, 
 the river, the distant call of the crows — to a most 
 clamorous and appalling degree. 
 
 We could hear our visitor breathing as he moved 
 about cautiously on the stunted grass above us, 
 and so certain seemed discovery that we had our 
 little black knives lying naked along our wrists. 
 
 The suspense parched me at the throat till I 
 thought the rasping of my tongue on the roof of 
 my palate seemed like the scraping of a heath- 
 brush in a wooden churn. Unseen we were, we 
 knew ; but it was patent that the man above us 
 would be round in front of us at any moment, and 
 there we were to his plain eyesight ! He was 
 within three yards of a steel death, even had he 
 been Fin MacCoul; but the bank he was stand- 
 ing on — or lying on, as wc learned again — crum- 
 bled at the edge and threw him among us in a 
 different fashion from that we had looked for. 
 
 My fingers were on his throat before I saw that 
 we had for our visitor none other than young Mac- 
 Lachlan. 
 
 He had his sgian diihJi almost at my stomach 
 before our mutual recognition saved the situation. 
 
 " You 're a great stranger," said John Splendid, 
 with a fine pretence at more coolness than he felt, 
 *' and yet I thought Cowal side would be more
 
 134 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 to your fancy than real Argilc in this vexatious 
 time." 
 
 " I wish to God I was on Cowal side now ! " said 
 the lad, ruefully. " At this minute I would n't give 
 a finger-length of the Loch Eck road for the whole 
 of this rich strath." 
 
 " I don't suppose you were forced over here," I 
 commented. 
 
 "As well here in one way as another," he said. 
 " I suppose you are unaware that Montrose and 
 MacDonald have overrun the whole country. 
 They have sacked and burned the greater part of 
 Cowal ; they have gone down as far as Knapdale. 
 I could have been in safety with my own people 
 (and the bulk of your Inneraora people too) by 
 going to Bute or Dunbarton, but I could hardly 
 do that with my kinsfolk still hereabouts in dif- 
 ficulties." 
 
 " Where, where? " I cried; "and who do you 
 mean? " 
 
 He coughed in a sort of confusion, I could see, 
 and said he spoke of the Provost and his family. 
 
 " Rut the Provost 's gone, man ! " said I, " and 
 his family too." 
 
 " My cousin Betty is not gone among them," 
 said he ; " she 's cither in the castle yonder — and 
 I hope to God she is — or a prisoner to the Mac- 
 Donalds, or " 
 
 " The Worst Curse on their tribe ! " cried John 
 Splendid, in a fervour. 
 
 Betty, it seemed, from a narrative that gave me 
 a stound of anguish, had never managed to join her
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 135 
 
 father in the boats going over to Cowal the day 
 the MacDonalds attacked the town. Terror had 
 seemingly sent her, carrying the child, away be- 
 hind the town ; for though her father and others 
 had put ashore again at the south bay, they could 
 not see her, and she was still unfound when the 
 triumph of the invader made flight needful 
 again. 
 
 " Her father would have bided too," said Mac- 
 Lachlan, " but that he had reason to believe she 
 found the safety of the castle. Lying off the quay 
 when the fight was on, some of the people in the 
 other boats saw a woman with a bundle run up 
 the riverside to the back of the castle garden, and 
 there was still time to get over the draw-brig 
 then." 
 
 MacLachlan himself had come round by the 
 head of the loch, and by going through the Bar- 
 rabhreac wood and over the shoulder of Duntorval, 
 had taken Inneraora on the rear flank. He had 
 lived several days in a bothy above the Beannan 
 on High Balantyre, and, like ourselves, depended 
 on his foraging upon the night and the luck of the 
 woods. 
 
 We lay among the whins and bramble Ondis- 
 turbed till the dusk came on. The rain had 
 stopped, a few stars sedately decked the sky. 
 Bursts of laughing, the cries of comrades, bits of 
 song, came on the air from the town where the 
 Irish caroused. At last between us and Dunchu- 
 ach there seemed to be nothing to prevent us ven- 
 turing on if the bridge was clear. ''
 
 136 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " If not," said Sir Donald, " here 's a doomed 
 old man, for I know no swimming." 
 
 "There 's Edinburgh for you, and a gentleman's 
 education ! " said John Splendid, with a dry laugh ; 
 and he added, " but I daresay I could do the swim- 
 ming for the both of us, Sir Donald. I have car- 
 ried my accoutrements dry over a German river 
 ere now, and I think I could convey you safe over 
 yon bit burn even if it were not so shallow above 
 the bridge as I expect it is after these long 
 frosts." 
 
 " I would sooner force the bridge if ten men 
 held it," said MacLachlan. " I have a Highland 
 hatred of the running stream, and small notion to 
 sleep a night in wet tartan." 
 
 John looked at the young fellow with a struggle 
 for tolerance. " Well, well," he said ; " we ha\'e 
 all a touch of the fop in our youth," 
 
 "True enough, you're not so young as you 
 were once," put in MacLachlan, with a sly laugh. 
 
 "I'm twenty at the heart," cried John, — "at 
 the heart, man, — and do my looks make me more 
 than twice that age? I can sing you, or run you, 
 or dance you. What I thought was that at your 
 age I was dandified too about my clothing. I '11 
 give you the benefit of believing that it 's not the 
 small discomfort of a journey in wet tartan you 
 vex yourself over. Have we not — we old cam- 
 paigners of Lumsden's^ — soaked our plaids in the 
 running rivers of Low Germanic, and rolled them 
 round us at night to make our hides the warmer, 
 our sleep the snugger? Oh, the old days! Oh,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 137 
 
 the stout days ! God's name, but I ken one 
 man who wearies of these tame and comfortable 
 times ! " 
 
 " Whether or not," said Sir Donald, anxious to 
 be on, " I wish the top of Dunchuach was under 
 our brogues." 
 
 ^'Allans, Dies amis, then," said John, and out we 
 set. 
 
 Out we went, and we sped swiftly down to the 
 bridge, feeling a sense of safety in the dark and the 
 sound of the water that mourned in a hollow way 
 under the wooden cabars. There was no sentinel, 
 and we crossed dry and safely. On the other side, 
 the fields, broken here and there by dry-stone 
 dykes, a ditch or two, and one long thicket of 
 shrubs, rose in a gentle ascent to the lime-kiln. 
 We knew every foot of the way as 't were in our 
 own pockets, and had small difficulty in pushing 
 on in the dark. The night, beyond the kiln and 
 its foreign trees, was clamorous with the call of 
 white-horned owls, sounding so human sometimes 
 that it sent the heart vaulting and brought us to 
 pause in a flurried cluster on the path that we 
 followed closely as it twisted up the hill. 
 
 However, we were in luck's way for once. Never 
 a creature challenged our progress until we landed 
 at the north wall of the fort, and crouching in the 
 rotten brake, cried, " Gate, oh ! " to the occupants. 
 
 A stir got up within; a torch flared on the wall, 
 and a voice asked our tartan and business. 
 
 " Is that you, Para Mor?" cried John Splendid. 
 " It's a time for short ceremony. Here are three
 
 138 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 or four of your closest friends terribly keen to see 
 the inside of a wall." 
 
 " Barbreck, is't?" cried Para Mor, holding the 
 flambeau over his head that he might look down 
 on us. 
 
 "Who's that with the red tartan?" he asked, 
 speaking of MacLachlan, whose garments shone 
 garish in the light beside our dull Campbell country 
 war-cloth. 
 
 " Condemn your parley, Para Mor," cried Sir 
 Donald; "it's young MacLachlan, — open your 
 doors ! " 
 
 And the gate in a little swung on its hinges to 
 pass us in.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 139 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ON BENS OF WAR 
 
 This mount of Dunchuach, on which we now 
 found ourselves ensconced, rises in a cone shape 
 to a height of about eight hundred feet, its bottom 
 being but a matter of a quarter-mile from the 
 castle door. It is wooded to the very nose, almost, 
 except for the precipitous sgoriiach or scaur, that, 
 seen from a distance, looks like a red wound on 
 the face of it. The fort, a square tower of ex- 
 traordinarily stout masonry, with an eminent roof, 
 had a sconce with escarpment round it, placed on 
 the very edge of the summit. Immediately behind 
 Dunchuach is Duntorvil, its twin peak, that at less 
 distance than a shout will carry, lifts a hundred 
 feet higher on the north. The two hills make, 
 indeed, but one, in a manner of talking, except for 
 this hundred feet of a hollow worn by a burn lost 
 midway in long sour grasses. It had always been 
 a surprise to me that Argile's grandfather, when 
 he set the fort on the hill, chose the lower of the 
 two eminences, contrary to all good guidance of 
 war. But if he had not full dominition on Dun- 
 chuach, he had, at any rate, a fine prospect. I 
 think, in all my time, I have never witnessed a 
 more pleasing scene than ever presents itself in 
 clear weather from the brow of this peak. Loch
 
 140 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Finne — less, as the whim of the fancy might have 
 it, a loch than a noble river — runs south in a 
 placid band ; the Cowal hills rise high on the left, 
 bare but of heather and gall ; in front Argile, 
 green with the forest of Creag Dubh, where the 
 stag bays in the gloaming. For miles behind the 
 town and castle lies a plain, flat and rich, growing 
 the most lush crops. The town itself, that one 
 could almost throw a stone down on, looks like 
 a child's toy. And away to the north and west 
 the abundant hills, rising higher and higher — 
 sprinkled here and there with spots of moor 
 loch. 
 
 The fort this night was held by a hundred men 
 of the body called the Marquis his Halberdiers, a 
 corps of antique heroes whose weapon for ordi- 
 nary was the Lochaber tiiagh or axe, a pretty in- 
 strument on a parade of state, but small use, even 
 at close quarters, with an enemy. They had skill 
 of artillery, however, and few of them but had a 
 Highlander's training in the use of the broad- 
 sword. Besides two culverins mounted on the 
 less precipitous side of the hill — which was the 
 way we came — they had smaller firearms in 
 galore on the sconce, and many kegs of powder 
 disposed in a recess or magazine at the base of 
 the tower. To the east of the tower itself, and 
 within the wall of the fort (where now is but an 
 old haw-tree), was a governor's house perched on 
 the sheer lip of the hill, so that, looking out at its 
 window, one could spit farther than a musket-ball 
 would carry on the level.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 141 
 
 We were no sooner in than MacLachlan was 
 scenting round and into this Httlc house. He 
 came out crestfallen, and went over to the group 
 of halberdiers, who were noisily telling their story 
 to myself and Splendid. 
 
 "Are no people here but men?" he asked Para 
 Mor, who was sergeant of the company, and to all 
 appearance in charge of the place. 
 
 He caught me looking at him in some wonder, 
 and felt bound, seemingly, to explain himself. 
 
 " I had half the hope," said he, " that my cousin 
 had come here ; but she '11 be in the castle after 
 all, as her father thought." 
 
 John Splendid gave me the pucker of an eye 
 and a line of irony about the edge of his lips, that 
 set my blood boiling. I was a foolish and un- 
 governed creature in those days of no-grace. I 
 cried in my English, " One would think you had a 
 goodman's interest in this bit girl." 
 
 MacLachlan leered at me with a most devilish 
 light in his black eyes, and said, " Well, well, I 
 might have even more. Marriage, they say, 
 makes the sweetest woman wersh. But I hope 
 you '11 not grudge me, my dear I'^lrigmore, some 
 anxiety about my own relatives." 
 
 The fellow was right enough (that was the worst 
 of it), for a cousin 's a cousin in the friendly North ; 
 but I found myself for the second time since I 
 came home grudging him the kinship to the Pro- 
 vost of Inneraora's daughter. 
 
 That little tirravee passed, and we were soon 
 heartily employed on a supper that had to do
 
 142 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 duty for two meals. We took it at a rough table 
 in the tower, lighted by a flambeau, that sent sparks 
 flying like pigeons, into the sombre height of the 
 building, which tapered high ov^erhead as a lime- 
 kiln upside down. From this retreat we could see 
 the proof of knavery in the villages below. Far 
 down on Knapdale, and back in the recesses of 
 Lochow, were burning homes, to judge from the 
 blotched sky. 
 
 Dunchuach had never yet been attacked, but 
 that was an experience expected at any hour, and 
 its holders were ready for it. They had disposed 
 their guns round the wall in such a way as to com- 
 mand the whole gut between the hills, and conse- 
 quently the path up from the Glens. The town 
 side of the fort wall, and the east side, being on 
 the sheer face (almost) of the rock, called for no 
 artillery. 
 
 It was on the morning of the second day there 
 that our defence was put to the test by a regi- 
 ment of combined Irish and Athole men. The 
 day was misty, with the frost in a hesitancy, a raw 
 gowsty air sweeping o\'er the hills. Para Mor, 
 standing on the little north bastion or ravelin, as 
 his post of sergeant ahva}'s demanded, had been 
 crooning a ditt\'and carving a scroll wuth his hunt- 
 ing-knife on a crook he would maybe use when he 
 got back to the tack where his home was in ashes 
 and his cattle were far to seek, when he heard a 
 crackle of bushes at the edg'e of the wood that 
 almost reached the hill-top, but falls short for lack 
 of shelter from the sinister wind. In a second a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 143 
 
 couple of scouts in dirty red and green tartans, 
 with, fcaldags or pleatless kilts on them instead of 
 the better cldiSS philabeg, crept cannily out into the 
 open, unsuspicious that their position could be 
 seen from the fort. 
 
 Para Mor stopped his song, projected his fire- 
 lock over the wall as he ducked his body behind 
 it — all but an eye and shoulder — and with a hairy 
 cheek against the stock, took aim at the foremost. 
 The crack of the musket sounded odd and moist 
 in the mist, failing away in a dismal slam that 
 carried but a short distance, but it was enough 
 to rouse Dunchuach. 
 
 We took the wall as we stood, — myself, I re- 
 member me, in my kilt, with no jacket, and my 
 shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder; for I had 
 been putting the stone, a pleasant Highland pas- 
 time, with John Splendid, who was similarly dis- 
 accoutred. 
 
 "All the better for business," said he, though 
 the raw wind, as we lined the wall, cut like sharp 
 steel. 
 
 Para Mor's unfortunate gentleman was the only 
 living person to see when we looked into the gut, 
 and he was too little that way to say much about. 
 Para had fired for the head, but struck lower, so 
 that the scout writhed to his end with a red-hot 
 coal among his last morning's viands. 
 
 Long after, it w'ould come back to me, the odd- 
 ity of that spectacle in the hollow — a man in a 
 red fcaldag, with his hide-covered buckler gro- 
 tesquely flailing the grass, he, in the Gaelic custom,
 
 144 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 making a great moan about liis end, and a pair of 
 bickering rooks cawing away heartily as if it was 
 no more than a sheep in the throes of braxy. 
 
 After a Httle the moan of the MacDonald 
 stopped, the crows slanted down to the loch-side, 
 stillness came over the place. We talked in whis- 
 pers, sped about the walls on the tiptoes of our 
 brogues, and peered wonderingly down to the edge 
 of the wood. Long we waited and wearily, and 
 by-and-by who came out high on the shoulder of 
 Duntorvil but a band of the enemy, marching in 
 good order for the summit of that paramount 
 peak ? 
 
 " I hope to God they have no large pieces with 
 them yonder," said John ; " for they '11 have a 
 coign there to give us trouble if once they get 
 mother of muskets in train." 
 
 But, fortunately for us, no artillery ever came to 
 Duntorvil. 
 
 Fully two hundred of the enemy massed on the 
 hill, commanded by a squat officer in brceks and 
 wearing a peruke Ajiglict', that went oddly with his 
 tartan plaid. He was the Master of Clanranald, we 
 learned anon, a cunning person, whose aim was to 
 avail himself of the impetuousness of the kilts he 
 had in his corps. Gaels on the attack, as he knew, 
 are omnipotent as God's thunderbolts; give them 
 a running start at a foe, with no waiting, and they 
 might carry the gates of hell against the Worst 
 One and all his clan ; on a standing defence where 
 coolness and discipline are wanted, they have less 
 s])lendid virtues. Clanranald was well aware that
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 145 
 
 to take his regiment all into the hollow where his 
 scout was stiffening was not only to expose them 
 to the fire of the fort without giving them any 
 chance of quick reply, but to begin the siege off 
 anything but the bounding shoe-sole the High- 
 lander has the natural genius for. What he 
 devised was to try musketry at long range (and, to 
 shorten my talc, that failed), then charge down the 
 one summit, over the rushy gut, and up the side of 
 Dunchuach, disconcerting our aim and bringing 
 his men in on their courageous heat. 
 
 We ran back our pieces through the gorge of 
 the bastions, wheeled them in on the terre-plein 
 back from the wall, and cocked them higher on 
 their trunnions to get them in train for the oppo- 
 site peak. 
 
 " Boom ! " went the first gun, and a bit of brown 
 earth spat up to the left of the enemy, low by a 
 dozen paces. 
 
 A silly patter of poor musketry made answer, 
 but their bullets might as well have been aimed at 
 snipe for all the difference it made to us; they 
 came short or spattered against our wall. We 
 could hear the shouts of the foe, and saw their 
 confusion as our third gun sent its message into 
 the very heart of them. 
 
 Then they charged Dunchuach. 
 
 Our artillery lost its value, and we met them 
 with fusil and caliver. 
 
 They came on in a sort of echelon of four com- 
 panies, close ordered, and not as a more skilly 
 commander would make them, and the leading
 
 146 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 company took tlic right. The rushy grass met 
 them with a swish as they bounded over it hke 
 roebucks, so fast that our few score of muskets 
 made no impression on them until they were 
 climbing up the steep brae that led to our 
 walls. 
 
 Over a man in a minority, waiting, no matter 
 how well ensconced, the onslaught of numbers 
 carried on the wings of hate there comes a strange 
 feeling — I'll never deny it — a sort of qualm at 
 the pit of the stomach, a notion to cry " 'Cavi ! " 
 and turn atail disgraceful. I felt it but for a 
 second, and then I took to my old practice of 
 making a personal foe of one particular man in 
 front of me. This time I chose a lieutenant or 
 sergeant of the MacDonalds (by his tartan), a 
 tall, lean rascal, clean shaved, in trews and a tight- 
 fitting cota gcarr or short coat, with an otter-skin 
 cap on his head, the otter-tail still attached and 
 dangling behind like a Lovvlandcr's queue. He 
 was striding along zealfully, brandishing his sword, 
 and disdaining even to take off his back the bull- 
 hide targe, though all his neighbours kept theirs 
 in front of them on the left arm. 
 
 "You have wrecked honest homes !" I argued 
 with him in my mind. " You i)ut the torch to the 
 widow's thatch, you have driven the cattle from 
 hLlrigmore, and what of a girl with dark eyes like 
 the sloe? Fancy man, man of my fancy! Oh! 
 here's the end of your journey! " 
 
 Our assailants, after their usual custom, dropped 
 their pieces, such as had them, when they had
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 147 
 
 fired the first shot, and risked all on the push of 
 the target and the slash of the broad brand, confi- 
 dent even that our six or seven feet of escarpment 
 would never stay their onset any time to speak of. 
 An abattis or a fosse would have made this step 
 futile; but as things were, it was not altogether 
 impossible that they might surmount our low wall. 
 Our advantage was that the terre-plcin on which 
 we stood was three or four feet higher than they 
 were at the outer side of the wall, apart from the 
 fact that they were poised precariously on a steep 
 brae. We leaned calmly over the wall and spat at 
 them with pistols now and then as they ran up the 
 hill, with Clanranald and some captains crying 
 them on at the flank or middle. In the plain they 
 left a piper who had naturally not enough wind to 
 keep his instrument going and face the hill at the 
 same time. He strode up and down in the dead- 
 liest part of the valley where a well-sent musket- 
 ball would never lose him, and played a tune they 
 call " The Galley of the Waves," a Stewart rant 
 with a hint of the zest of the sea in it. Nobody 
 thought of firing at him, though his work was an 
 encouragement to our foes, and anon the hill-tops 
 rang with a duel of pibrochs between him and a 
 lad of our garrison, who got round on the top of 
 the wall near the governor's house and strutted 
 high-shoulderedly up and down, blasting at the 
 good braggart air of " Baile Inneraora." 
 
 Those snorting, wailing, warring pipes mingled 
 oddly with the shout of the fighting men, who 
 had ways of battle new to me in practice though
 
 148 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 they were in a sense my own countrymen. Gaelic 
 slogans and maledictions they shouted, and when 
 one of them fell in the mob, his immediate com- 
 rades never failed to stop short in their charge 
 and coolly rob him of a silver button off his coat, 
 or a weapon if it seemed worth while. 
 
 In a little they were soon clamouring against 
 our wall. We laughed and progged them off 
 with the long-handed axes to get free play with 
 the fusils, and one after another of them fell off, 
 wounded or dead. 
 
 " This is the greatest folly ever I saw," said Sir 
 Donald, wiping his brow with a bloody hand. 
 
 " I wish I was sure there was no trick in it," said 
 John. He was looking around him and taking a 
 tug at his belt, that braced him b}- a couple of 
 holes. Then he spat, for luck, on a ball he 
 dropped into his fusil, said a Glassary charm on it 
 as he rammed home the charge and brought the 
 butt to his cheek, aiming at a white-faced Irisher 
 with a leathern waistcoat, who fell backward into a 
 dub of mud and stirred no more. 
 
 "Four ! " said John ; " I could scarcely do better 
 with my own French fusil Mairi Og." 
 
 The enem)' drew off at a command of their cap- 
 tain, and into the edge of the wood that came up 
 on the left near our summit. We lost our interest 
 in them for a time, watching a man running tip the 
 little valley from the right, above Kilmalieu. He 
 came on, waving his arms wildly and pointing 
 ahead; but though he was plain to our view, he 
 was out of sight of the enemy on the left.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 149 
 
 A long black coat hampered his movements, and 
 he looked gawky enough, stumbling through the 
 rushes. 
 
 •' If I did n't think the inside of Castle Inneraora 
 was too snug to quit for a deadly hillside," said 
 John, " I could believe yon was our friend the 
 English minister." 
 
 " The English minister sure enough," said half- 
 a-dozen beside us. 
 
 " Here 's ill luck for us then ! " cried John, with 
 irony. " He '11 preach us to death ; the fellow 's 
 deadlier than the Clanranald banditty." 
 
 Some one ran to the post beside the governor's 
 house, and let the gentleman in when he reached 
 it. He was panting like a winded hound, the sweat 
 standing in beads on his shaven jowl, and for a 
 minute or two he could say nothing, only pointing 
 at the back of our fort in the direction of the 
 town. 
 
 "A parish visit, is it, sir?" asked John, still in 
 his irony. 
 
 The minister sat him down on a log of wood and 
 clutched his side, still pointing eagerly to the south 
 of our fort. No one could understand him, but at 
 last he found a choked and roupy voice. 
 
 " A band behind there," he said ; " your — front 
 — attack is — but — -a — feint." 
 
 As he spoke, half-a-dozen men in a north-country 
 tartan got on the top of our low rear wall that wc 
 thought impregnable on the lip of the hill, and 
 came on us with a most ferocious uproar. " Bade- 
 noch ! " they cried in a fashion to rend the hills,
 
 150 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and the signal (for such it was more than slogan) 
 brought on our other side the Clanranald gentry. 
 
 What followed in that hearth-stone fight so hot 
 and brisk took so short a space of time, and hap- 
 pened in so confused and terrible a moment, that 
 all but my personal feelings escape me. My every 
 sense stirred with something horrible ; the numb 
 sound of a musket-butt on a head, the squeal of 
 men wounded at the vitals, and the deeper roar of 
 hate; a smell of blood as I felt it when a boy hold- 
 ing the candle at night to our shepherds slaughter- 
 ing shee'p in the barn at home ; before the eyes a 
 red blur cleared at intervals when I rubbed the 
 stinging sweat from my face. 
 
 Half a hundred of those back-gate assailants were 
 over our low wall with their axe-hooks and ladders 
 before we could charge and prime, engaging us 
 hand to hand in the cobbled square of our fort, at 
 the tower foot. The harassment on this new side 
 gave the first band of the enemy the chance to sur- 
 mount our front wall, and they were not slow to 
 take it. 
 
 Luckily our halberdiers stood firm in a mass 
 that faced both ways, and as luckily, we had in 
 Master John M'lver a general of strategy and 
 experience. 
 
 "Stand fast, Campbell Halberdiers!" he cried. 
 " It's bloody death, whether we take it like cra\'cns 
 or Gaelic gentlemen ! " He laid about him with a 
 good purpose, and whether they tried us in front 
 or rear, the scamps found the levelled pikes and 
 the ready swords. Some dropped beside, but
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 151 
 
 more dropped before us, for the tod in a hole will 
 face twenty times what he will flee from in the 
 open wood ; but never a man of all our striving 
 company fought sturdier than our minister, with a 
 weapon snatched from an Athole man he had 
 levelled at a first blow from an oaken rung. 
 
 " The sword of the Lord and of Gideon ! " he 
 would cry; "for all the kings of the Amorites 
 that dwell in the mountains are gathered together 
 against us." A slim elder man he was, ordinarily 
 with a wan sharp face ; now it was flushed and 
 hoved in anger, and he hissed his texts through 
 his teeth as he faced the dogs. Some of youth's 
 schooling was there, a Lowland youth's training 
 with the broadsword ; for he handled it like no nov- 
 ice, and even M'lver gave him " Bravo, siias c /" 
 
 That we held our ground was no great virtue — 
 we could scarcely do less ; but we did more, for 
 soon we had our enemy driven back on the walls. 
 They fought — there 's no denying it — with a 
 frenzy that made them ill to beat; but when a 
 couple of score of our lads lined the upper wall 
 again and kept back the leak from that airt by the 
 command of John Splendid, it left us the chance 
 of sweeping our unwelcome tenants back again on 
 the lower wall. They stayed stubbornly, but we 
 had weight against them and the advantage of the 
 little brae, and by-and-by we pinned them, like 
 foumarts, against the stones. Most of them put 
 back against the wall, and fought, even with the 
 pike at their vitals, slashing empty air with sword 
 or dirk ; some got on the wall again and threw
 
 152 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 themselves over the other side, risking the chance 
 of an ugHer death on the rocks below. 
 
 In less than an hour after the shot of Para Mor 
 (himself a stricken corpse now) rang over Dun- 
 chuach, our piper, with a gash on his face, was play- 
 ing some vaunting air on the walls again, and the 
 fort was free of the enemy, of whom the bulk had 
 fallen back into the wood, and seemingly set out 
 for Inneraora. 
 
 Then we gathered and stroked our dead — 
 twenty-and-three; we put our wounded in the 
 governor's house, and gave them the rough leech- 
 craft of the fighting field ; the dead of the assail- 
 ants we threw over the rock, and among them was 
 a clean-shaven man in trews and a tight-fitting cota 
 gcarr, who left two halves of an otter-skin cap 
 behind him.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 153 
 
 CHAPTER XH 
 
 " I WISH to God ! " cried John Splendid, " that I 
 had a drink of Altan-aluin at this minute, or the 
 well of Beallach-an-uarain." 
 
 It was my own first thought, or something very- 
 like it, when the fighting was by, for a most cruel 
 thirst crisped my palate, and, as ill luck had it, 
 there was not a cup of water in the fort. 
 
 " I could be doing with a drop myself," said the 
 English minister; " I '11 take a stoup and go down 
 to the well yonder and fetch it." 
 
 He spoke of the spout in the gut, a clean little 
 well of hill-water that, winter or summer, kept full 
 to the lip and accessible. 
 
 We had gathered into the fort itself (all but a 
 few sentinels), glad for a time to escape the sight of 
 yon shambles of friend and foe that the battle had 
 left us. The air had softened of a sudden from its 
 piercing cold to a mildness balmy by comparison ; 
 the sky had leadened over with a menacing vapour, 
 and over the water — in the great glen between Ben 
 Ime and Ardno — a mist hurried to us like driving 
 smoke. A few flakes of snow fell, lingering in the 
 air as feathers from a nest in spring. 
 
 " Here 's a friend of Argile back again," said an 
 old halberdier, staunching a savage cut on his
 
 154 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 knee, and mumbling his words because he was 
 chewing as he spoke an herb that 's the poultice 
 for every wound. 
 
 " Frost and snow might have been Argilc's friend 
 when that proverb was made," said John Splendid, 
 " but here are changed times ; our last snow did 
 not keep Colkitto on the safe side of Cladich. Still, 
 if this be snow in earnest," he added with a cheer- 
 ier tone, " it may rid us of these vermin, who '11 
 find provand iller to get every extra day they bide. 
 Where are you going, Master Gordon?" 
 
 " To the well," said the minister, simply, stop- 
 ping at the port, with a wooden stoup in his hand. 
 " Some of our friends must be burning for a 
 mouthful, poor dears ; the wounded flesh is 
 drouthy." 
 
 John turned himself round on a keg he sat on, 
 and gave a French shrug he had picked up among 
 foreign cavaliers. 
 
 "Put it down, sir," he said; " there 's a whccn 
 less precious lives in this hold than a curate's, and 
 for the turn you did us in coming up to alarm us 
 of the back attack, if for nothing else, I would be 
 sorry to see you come to any skaith. Do you not 
 know that between us and the well there might be 
 death half a dozen times? The wood, I '11 war- 
 rant, is botching still with those tlisappointed 
 warriors of Clanranald, who would have no more 
 reverence for your life than for your Gcnc\a 
 bands." 
 
 " There 's no surer cure for the disease of death 
 in a hind than for the same murrain in a minister
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 155 
 
 of the Gospel — or a landed gentleman," said 
 Gordon, touched in his tone a little by the aus- 
 terity of his speeches as we heard them at the 
 kirk-session. 
 
 John showed some confusion in his face, and 
 the minister had his feet on the steps before he 
 could answer him. 
 
 " Stop, stop ! " he cried. " Might I have the 
 honour of serving the Kirk for once? I'll get 
 the water from the well, minister, if you '11 go in 
 again and see how these poor devils of ours are 
 thriving. I was but joking when I hinted at the 
 risk ; our Athole gentry are, like enough, far off 
 by this time." 
 
 " I liked you better when you were selfish and 
 told the truth, than now that you 're valiant (in a 
 small degree) and excuse it with a lie," quo' the 
 minister, and off he set. 
 
 He was beyond the wall, and stepping down the 
 brae before we could be out at the door to look 
 after him. 
 
 " Damn his nipped tongue ! " fumed John. 
 " But, man ! there 's a lovable quirk in his char- 
 acter, too. I'll give twenty pounds (Scots) to his 
 kirk-plate at the first chance if he wins out of this 
 fool's escapade of his without injury." 
 
 There was no doubt the minister's task had many 
 hazards in it, for he carried stave nor steel as he 
 jogged on with the stoup, over the frank open brae- 
 side down to the well. Looking at him going down 
 into the left of the gut as unafcared as he had 
 come up on the right of it, I put myself in his
 
 156 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 place, and felt the skin of my back pimpling at the 
 instinct of lurking enemies. 
 
 But Gordon got safely to the well, through the 
 snow, now falling in a heavy shower, dipped out 
 a stoupful, and turned about to come home. A 
 few yards off his path back, to the right and closer 
 to the wood, lay the only man of all the bodies 
 lying in the valley who seemed to have any life 
 left in him. This fellow lay on his side, and was 
 waving his hands feverishly when the minister went 
 up to him, and — as we saw in a dim way through 
 the snow — gave him a drink of the water from the 
 lip of the stoup. 
 
 " Sassenach fool ! " said young MacLachlan, 
 parched with thirst, gathering in with a scooped 
 hand the snow as it fell on the wall, and glutton- 
 ously sucking it. 
 
 " There are many kinds of folly, man," said I ; 
 " and I would think twice before I would grudge 
 a cleric's right to give a mouthful of water to a 
 dying man, even if he was a MacDonald on his 
 way to the Pit." 
 
 "Tuts, tuts! PLlrigmorc," cried John, "let the 
 young cock crow; he means no more than that 
 it's hard to be hungry and see your brother feed a 
 foeman. Indeed I could be wishing m}'self that 
 his reverence was the Good Samaritan on a more 
 fitting occasion." 
 
 We were bandying words now, and not so closch' 
 watching our friend in the hollow, and it was Sir 
 Donald, standing to a side a little, who called our 
 attention anew, with a cry of alarm.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 157 
 
 " Look, lads, look ! " he cried, " God help 
 Gordon ! " 
 
 We looked through the snow — a gray veil — 
 and saw two or three men fall on the minister. 
 
 John Splendid but stopped a second to say, " It 
 may be a feint to draw us off the fort ; bide where 
 ye are," and then he leaped over the wall, armed 
 with a claymore picked from the haunch of a hal- 
 berdier beside him. I was over at his heels, and 
 the pair of us scoured down the brae. 
 
 There was some hazard in the enterprise. I 'm 
 ashamed to this day to tell I thought that, at every 
 foot of the way as we ran on. Never before nor 
 since have I felt a wood so sinister, so ghastly, so 
 inspired by dreadful airs, and when it was full on 
 our flank, I kept my head half turned to give an 
 eye to where I was going and an eye to what might 
 come out on my rear. People tell you fear takes 
 wings at a stern climax, that a hot passion fills the 
 brain with blood and the danger blurs to the eye. 
 It 's a theory that works but poorly on a forlorn 
 hope, with a certainty that the enemy are out- 
 numbering you on the rear. With man and ghost, 
 I have always felt the same ; give me my back to 
 the wall, and I could pluck up valour enough for 
 the occasion, but there 's a spot between the shoul- 
 ders that would be coward flesh in Hector himself. 
 That, I 'm thinking, is what keeps some armies 
 from turning tail to heavy odds. 
 
 Perhaps the terror behind (John swore anon he 
 never thought on 't till he learned I had, and then 
 he said he felt it worse than I) gave our approach
 
 158 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 all the more impctuousness, for we were down in 
 the gut before the MacDonald loiterers (as they 
 proved) were aware of our coming. We must 
 have looked unco numerous and stalwart in the 
 driving snow, for the scamps dashed off into the 
 wood as might children caught in a mischief We 
 let them go, and bent over our friend, lying with 
 a very gash look by the body of the MacDonald, 
 now in the last throes, a bullet-wound in his neck 
 and the blood frothing at his mouth. 
 
 " Ar't hurt, sir?" asked John, bending on a 
 knee, but the minister gave no answer. 
 
 We turned him round and found no wound but 
 a bruise on the head, that showed he had been 
 attacked with a cudgel by some camp-followers of 
 the enemy, who had neither swords, nor reverence 
 for a priest who was giving a brotherly sup to one 
 of their own tartan. In that driving snow we 
 rubbed him into life again, cruelly pallid, but with 
 no broken bit about him. 
 
 "Where's my stoup?" were his first words; 
 " my poor lads upbye must be w^earying for 
 water." He looked pleased to see the same be- 
 side him where he had set it down, with its water 
 untouched, and then he cast a wae glance on the 
 dead man beside him. 
 
 " Poor wretch, poor wretch ! " said he. 
 
 We took the stoup and our minister up to the 
 summit, and had got him but safely set there 
 when he let out what gave me the route again from 
 Dunchuach and led to divers circumstances that had 
 otherwise never come into this story if story there
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 159 
 
 was, which I doubt there had never been. Often 
 I Ve thought me since how pregnant was that 
 Christian act of Gordon in giving water to a foe. 
 Had I gone, or had John gone for the stoup of 
 water, none of us, in all likelihood, had stirred a 
 foot to relieve yon enemy's drouth ; but he found 
 a godly man, though an austere one too on occasion, 
 and paid for the cup of water with a hint in broken 
 English that was worth all the gold in the world to 
 me. Gordon told us the man's dying confidence 
 whenever he had come to himself a little more in 
 the warmth of the fort fire. 
 
 "There's a woman and child," said he, "in the 
 wood of Strongara."
 
 i6o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 When the English minister, in his odd lalland 
 Scots, had told us this tale of the dying Mac- 
 Donald, I found for the first time my feeling to the 
 daughter of the Provost of Inneraora. Before this 
 the thought of her was but a pleasant engagement 
 for the mind at leisure moments ; now it flashed on 
 my heart with a stound that yon black eyes were to 
 me the dearest jewels in the world, that lacking her 
 presence these glens and mountains were very cold 
 and empty. I think I gave a gasp that let John 
 Splendid into my secret there and then ; but at 
 least I left him no doubt about what I would 
 be at. 
 
 " What 's the nearer way to Strongara ? " I asked, 
 "alongside the river, or through Tombreck?" 
 
 He but peered at me oddly a second under his 
 brows, — a trifle wistfully, though I might natur- 
 ally think his mood would be quizzical, then he 
 sobered in a moment. That 's what I loved about 
 the man ; a fool would have laughed at the bravado 
 of my notion, a man of thinner sentiment would have 
 marred the moment by pointing out difficulties. 
 
 " So that 's the airt the wind 's in ! " he said, and 
 then he added, " I think I could show you, not 
 the shortest, but the safest road."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID i6i 
 
 " I need no guidance," I cried in a hurry, 
 "only — " 
 
 " Only a friend who knows every wood in the 
 countryside, and has your interest at heart, Colin," 
 he said softly, putting a hand on my elbow and 
 gripping it in a homely way. It was the first time 
 he gave me my Christian name since I made his 
 acquaintance. 
 
 His company was not to be denied. 
 
 We made up some bear-meal bannocks, and a 
 collop of boiled venison in a dorlacJi or knapsack 
 that I carried on my back, borrowed plaids from 
 some of the common soldiery, and set out for 
 Strongara at the mouth of the night, with the snow 
 still driving over the land. 
 
 MacLachlan was for with us, but John turned on 
 him with a great deal of determination, and dared 
 him to give extra risk to our enterprise by adding 
 another man to the chance of the enemy seeing us. 
 
 The lad met the objection ungraciously, and John 
 took to his flattery. 
 
 "The fact is, MacLachlan," said he, taking him 
 aside with a hand on his lapel, and a show of great 
 confidence; " the fact is, we can't be leaving this 
 place in charge of a lot of old bodacJis — Sir 
 Donald the least able of them all — and if there 's 
 another attack the guidance of the defence will 
 depend on you. You may relish that or you may 
 not, perhaps, after all, you would be safer with 
 us — " 
 
 MacLachlan put up his chest an inch or two, 
 unconscious that he did it, and whistled a stave of 
 
 II
 
 i62 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 music to give evidence of his indifference. Then 
 he knitted his brows to cogitate, as it were, 
 and — 
 
 " Very well ! " said he. " If you come on my 
 coz, you '11 bring her back here, or to the castle, I 
 suppose? " 
 
 " I had no thought of running away with the lass, 
 I '11 take my oath," cried John, sticking his tongue 
 in the cheek nearest me. 
 
 " I wish I could fathom yon fellow's mind," I 
 said to my comrade as we stepped out through 
 the snow and into the wooded brae-side, keeping a 
 wary eye about for spies of the enemy, whose foot- 
 prints we came on here and there, but so faint in 
 the fresh snowfall that it was certain they were now 
 in the valley. 
 
 " Do you find it difficult ? " asked John. " I 
 thought a man of schooling, with Latin at his 
 tongue"s-cnd (though very indifferent Latin in the 
 minister's opinion) would see to the deepest heart 
 of MacLachlan." 
 
 " He 's crafty." 
 
 " So 's the polecat till the fox meets him. Tuts, 
 man, you have a singular jealousy of the creature." 
 
 " Since the first day I saw him." 
 
 John laughed. 
 
 " That was in the Provost's," quo' he, and he 
 hummed a French song I caught the meaning of 
 but slightly. 
 
 "Wrong, wrong!" said I, striding under the 
 trees as we slanted to the right for Tombrcck. 
 " His manner is provoking,"
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 163 
 
 " I 've seen him polish it pretty well for the 
 ladies." 
 
 " His temper's always on the boil." 
 
 " Spirit, man ; spirit ! I like a fellow of warmth 
 now and then." 
 
 " He took it most ungraciously when we put 
 him out of the Provost's house on the night of 
 the squabble in the town." 
 
 " It was an awkward position he was in. I 'd 
 have been a bit blackbrowcd about it myself," said 
 John. " Man ! it 's easy to pick holes in the 
 character of an unfriend, and you and MacLachlan 
 are not friendly, for one thing that 's not his fault 
 any more than yours." 
 
 " You 're talking of the girl," I said, sharply, 
 and not much caring to show him how hot my 
 face burned at having to mention her. 
 
 "That same," said he; "I'll warrant that if it 
 was n't for the girl (the old tale ! the old tale !), 
 you had thought the young sprig not a bad gen- 
 tleman, after all." 
 
 " Oh, damn his soul ! " I blurted out. " What is 
 he that he should pester his betters with his 
 attentions? " 
 
 "A cousin, I think, a simple cousin-gcrman they 
 tell me," said John, drily ; " and in a matter of 
 betters, now — eh ? " 
 
 My friend coughed on the edge of his plaid, and 
 I could swear he was laughing at me. I said 
 nothing for a while, and with my skin burning, led 
 the way at a hunter's pace. But John was not 
 done with the subject.
 
 i64 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " I 'm a bit beyond the age of it myself," he said ; 
 " but that 's no reason why I should n't have eyes 
 in my head. I know how much put about you are 
 to have this young fellow gallivanting round the 
 lady." 
 
 "Jealous, you mean," I cried. 
 
 " I did n't think of putting it that way." 
 
 " No; it's too straightforward a way for you — 
 ever the roundabout way for you. I wish to God 
 you would sometimes let your Campbell tongue 
 come out of the kink, and say what you mean." 
 
 With a most astonishing steady voice for a man 
 as livid as the snow on the hair of his brogues, and 
 with his hand on the hilt of his dirk, John cried — 
 
 " Stop a bit." 
 
 I faced him in a most unrighteous humour, 
 ready to quarrel with my shadow. 
 
 " For a man I 'm doing a favour to, Elrigmore," 
 he said, " you seem to have a poor notion of polite- 
 ness. I 'm willing to make some allowance for a 
 lover's tirravee about a woman who never made 
 tryst with him ; but I '11 allow no man to call down 
 the credit of my clan and name." 
 
 A pair of gowks, were w^e not, in that darkening 
 wood, quarrelling on an issue as flimsy as a spider's 
 web, but who will say it was not human nature? I 
 daresay we might have come to hotter words and 
 bloody blows there and then, but for one of the 
 trifles that ever come in the way to change — not 
 fate, for that's changeless, but the semblance of it. 
 
 " My mother herself was a Campbell of an older 
 family than yours," I started to say, to show I had
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 165 
 
 some knowledge of the breed, and at the same 
 time a notion of fairness to the clan. 
 
 This was fresh heather on the fire. 
 
 " Older ! " he cried ; " she was a Mac Vicar as 
 far as ever I heard ; it was the name she took to 
 kirk with her when she married your father." 
 
 "So," said I; "but — " 
 
 *' And though I allow her grandfather Dol-a- 
 mhonadh (Donald-of-the-Hills) was a Campbell, it 
 was in a roundabout way ; he was but the son of 
 one of the Craignish gentry." 
 
 " You yourself — " 
 
 " Sir ! " said he in a new tone, as cold as steel 
 and as sharp, misjudging my intention. 
 
 "You yourself are no more than a M'lver." 
 
 " And what of that? " he cried, cooling down a 
 bit. " The M'lvers of Asknish are in the direct 
 line from Duncan, Lord of Lochow. We had 
 Pennymore, Stronshira, and Glenaray as cadets of 
 Clan Campbell when your Craignish cross-breeds 
 were under the salt." 
 
 " Only by the third cousin," said I ; " my father 
 has told me over and over again that Duncan's son 
 had no heir." 
 
 And so we went into all this perplexity of High- 
 land pedigree like old wives at a waulking, forget- 
 ting utterly that what we began to quarrel about 
 was the more serious charge of lying. M'lver 
 was most frantic about the business, and I think 
 I was cool, for I was never a person that cared a 
 bodle about my history bye the second generation. 
 They might be lairds or they might be lackeys for
 
 i66 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 all the differ it made to me. Not that there were 
 any lackeys among them. My grandfather was 
 the grandson of Tormaid Mor, who held the whole 
 east side of Lochow from Ford to Sonachan, and 
 we had at home the four-posted bed that Tormaid 
 slept on when the heads of the house of Argile 
 were lying on white-hay or chaff. 
 
 At last John broke into a laugh. 
 
 " Are n't you the amadan to be biting the tongue 
 between your teeth?" he said. 
 
 " What is it? " I asked, constrained to laugh too. 
 
 "You talk about the crook in our Campbell 
 tongue in one breath," said he, " and in the next 
 you would make yourself a Campbell more sib to 
 the chief than I am myself Don't you think we 
 might put off our little affairs of family history till 
 we find a lady and a child in Strongara? " 
 
 " No more of it, then," said I. " Our difference 
 began on my fool's notion that because I had 
 something of what you would call a liking for this 
 girl, no one else should let an eye light on her." 
 
 By now we were in a wide glade in the Tom- 
 breck wood. On our left we could see lying 
 among the gray snow the house of Tombreck, 
 with no light nor lowe (as the saying goes) ; and 
 though wc knew better than to expect there might 
 be living people in it, we sped down to see the 
 place. 
 
 " There 's one chance in a million she might 
 have ventured here," I said. 
 
 A most melancholy dwelling ! Dwelling indeed 
 no more but for the hoody-crow, and for the fawn
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 167 
 
 of the hill that years after I saw treading over the 
 grass-grown lintel of its door. To-night the place 
 was full of empty airs and ghosts of sounds 
 inexplicable, wailing among the cabars that jutted 
 black and scarred mid-way from wall to wall. The 
 byre was in a huddle of damp thatch, and strewn 
 (as God 's my judge) by the bones of the cattle 
 the enemy had refused to drive before them in the 
 sauciness of their glut. A desolate garden slept 
 about the place, with bush and tree — once tended 
 by a family of girls, left orphan and desolate for 
 evermore. 
 
 We went about on tiptoes as it might be in a 
 house of the dead, and peeped in at the windows 
 at where had been chambers lit by the cheerful 
 cruisie or dancing with peat-fire flame — only the 
 dark was there, horrible with the odours of char, 
 or the black joist against the dun sky. And then 
 we went to the front door (for Tombrcck was a 
 gentle-house), and found it still on the hinges, but 
 hanging half back to give view to the gloomy 
 interior. It was a spectacle to chill the heart, a 
 house burned in hatred, the hearth of many songs 
 and the chambers of love, merrymaking, death, 
 and the children's feet, robbed of every interest 
 but its ghosts and the memories of them they 
 came to. 
 
 " It were useless to look here ; she is not here," 
 I said in a whisper to my comrade. 
 
 He stood with his bonnet in his hand, dumb for 
 a space, then speaking with a choked utterance. 
 
 " Our homes, our homes, Colin ! " he cried.
 
 i68 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Have I not had the happy nights in those same 
 walls, those harmless hospitable halls, those dead 
 halls?" 
 
 And he looked broadcast over the country-side. 
 
 " The curse of Conan and the black-stones on 
 the hands that wrought this work," he said. " Poison 
 to their wells ; may the brutes die far afield ! " 
 
 The man was in a tumult of grief and passion, 
 the tears, I knew by his voice, welling to his eyes. 
 And indeed I was not happy myself, had not been 
 happy indeed, by this black home, even if the girl 
 I loved was waiting me at the turn of the road. 
 
 " Let us be going," I said at last. 
 
 " She might be here; she might be in the little 
 plantation ! " he said (and still in the melancholy 
 and quiet of the place we talked in whispers), 
 
 " Could you not give a call, a signal ? " he asked ; 
 and I had mind of the call I had once taught her, 
 the doleful pipe of the curlew. 
 
 I gave it with hesitancy to the listening night. 
 It came back an echo from the hills, but brought 
 no other answer. 
 
 A wild bird roosting somewhere in the ruined 
 house flapped out by the door and over us. I am 
 not a believer in the ghostly — at least to the 
 extent of some of our people ; but I was alarmed, 
 till my reason came to me and the badinage of 
 the professors at college, who had twitted me on 
 my fears of the mischancy. But MTver clutched 
 me by the shoulder in a frenzy of terror. I could 
 hear his teeth chittering as if he had come out of 
 the sea.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 169 
 
 " Name of God ! " he cried. " What was yon? " 
 
 " But a night-hag," said I. 
 
 He was ashamed of his weakness ; but the night, 
 as he said, had too many holes in it for his fancy. 
 
 And so we went on again across the hill face in 
 the sombre gloaming. It was odd that the last 
 time I had been on this hillside had been for a 
 glimpse of that same girl we sought to-night. 
 Years ago, when I was a lad, she had on a summer 
 been sewing with a kinswoman in Carlunan, the 
 mill croft beside a linn of the river, where the 
 salmon plout in a most wonderful profusion, and 
 I had gone at morning to the hill to watch her 
 pass up and down in the garden of the mill, or 
 feed the pigeons at the round doo-cot, content (or 
 well-nigh content) to see her and fancy the wind 
 in her tresses, the song at her lip. In these morn- 
 ings the animals of the hill and the wood and I 
 were friendly ; they guessed somehow, perhaps, 
 no harm was in my heart: the young roes came 
 up unafraid, almost to my presence, and the birds 
 fluttered like comrades about me, and the little 
 animals that flourish in the wild dallied boldly in 
 my path. It was a soft and tranquil atmosphere, 
 it was a world (I think now), very happy and 
 unperplexed. And at evening, after a hurried 
 meal, I was off over the hills to this brae anew, to 
 watch her who gave me an unrest of the spirit, 
 unappeasable but precious. I think, though the 
 mornings were sweet, 't was the eve that was 
 sweeter still. All the valley would be lying sound- 
 less and sedate, the hills of Salachary and the
 
 I/O JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 forest of Crcag Dubli purpling in the setting sun, 
 a rich gold tipping Dunchuach like a thimble. 
 Then the eastern woods filled with dark caverns of 
 shade, wherein the tall trunks of the statelier firs 
 stood gray as ghosts. What was it, in that pre- 
 cious time, gave me, in the very heart of my hap- 
 piness, a foretaste of the melancholy of coming 
 years? My heart would swell, the tune upon my 
 lip would cease, my eyes would blur foolishly, 
 looking on that prospect most magic and fine. 
 Rarely, in that happy age, did I venture to come 
 down and meet the girl, but — so contrary is the 
 nature of man ! — the day w^as happier when I 
 worshipped afar, though I went home fuming at 
 my own lack of spirit. 
 
 To-day, my grief! how different the tale ! That 
 bygone time loomed upon me like a wave borne 
 down on a mariner on a frail raft, the passion of 
 the past ground mc inwardly in a numb pain. 
 
 We stumbled through the snow, and my com- 
 rade — good heart ! — said never a word to mar 
 my meditation. On our right, the hill of Meall 
 Ruadh rose up like a storm-cloud ere the blackest 
 of the night fell; we walked on the edges of the 
 plantations, surmising our way by the aid of the 
 gray snow around us. 
 
 It was not till we were in the very heart of 
 Strongara wood that I came to my reason and 
 thought what folly was this to seek tlie wanderer 
 in such a place in dead of night. To walk that 
 ancient wood, on the coarse and broken ground, 
 among fallen timber, bog, bush, water-pass, and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 171 
 
 hillock, would have tried a sturdy forester by 
 broad day ; it was, to us weary travellers, after a 
 day of sturt, a madness to seek through it at night 
 for a woman and child, whose particular conceal- 
 ment we had no means of guessing. 
 
 M'lver, natheless, let me flounder through that 
 perplexity for a time, fearful, I suppose, to hurt 
 my feelings by showing me how little I knew of 
 it, and finally he hinted at three cairns he was 
 acquaint with, each elevated somewhat over the 
 general run of the country, and if not the harbour- 
 age a refugee would make for, at least the most 
 suitable coign to overlook the Strongara wood. 
 
 " Lead me anywhere, for God's sake ! " said I ; 
 " I 'm as helpless as a mowdie on the sea-beach." 
 
 He knew the wood as he knew his own pocket, 
 for he had hunted it many times with his cousin, 
 and so he led me briskly, by a kind of natural 
 path, to the first cairn. Neither there nor at the 
 second did I get answer to my whistle. 
 
 " We '11 go up on the third," said John, " and 
 bide there till morning ; scouring a wood in this 
 fashion is like hunting otters in the deep sea." 
 
 We reached the third cairn when the hour was 
 long past midnight. I piped again in vain, and 
 having ate part of our collop, we set us down to 
 wait the dawn. The air, for mid-winter, was 
 almost congenial ; the snow fell no longer, the 
 north part of the sky was wondrous clear and even 
 jubilant with star.
 
 172 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 I WOKE with a shiver at the hour before dawn, 
 that strange hour when the bird turns on the bough 
 to change his dream, when the wild-cat puts out 
 his tongue to taste the air and curls more warmly 
 into his own fur; when the leaf of the willows gives 
 a tremor in the most airless morning. M'lver 
 breathed heavily beside me, rolled in his plaid to 
 the very eyes; but the dumb cry of the day in 
 travail called him, too, out of the chamber of sleep, 
 and he turned on his back with a snatch of a sol- 
 dier's drill on his lips, but without opening his 
 eyes. 
 
 We were on the edge of a glade of the wood, at 
 the watershed of a small burn that tinkled among 
 its ice along the ridge from Tombreck, dividing 
 close beside us, half of it going to Shira Glen and 
 half to Aora. The tall trees stood over us like 
 sentinels, coated with snow in every bough, a cool, 
 crisp air fanned me, with a hint in it, somehow, of 
 a smouldering wood-fire. And I heard close at 
 hand the call of an owl, as like the whimper of a 
 child as ever howlet's vesper mocked. Then to 
 my other side, my plaid closer about mc, and to 
 my dreaming anew. 
 
 It was the same whimper waked me a second 
 time, now too prolonged to be an owl's complaint,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 173 
 
 and I sat upright to listen. It was now the break 
 of day. A faint gray Hght brooded among the 
 tree tops. 
 
 "John! John!" I said in my companion's ear, 
 shaking his shoulder. 
 
 He stood to his feet in a blink, wide awake, 
 fumbling at his sword-belt as a man at hurried 
 wakings on foreign shores. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked, in a whisper. 
 
 I had no need to answer him, for anew the 
 child's cry rose in the wood — sharp, petulant, 
 hungry. It came from a thick clump of under- 
 growth to the left of our night's lodging, not sixty 
 yards away, and in the half-light of the morning 
 had something of the eerie about it. 
 
 John Splendid crossed himself ere he had mind 
 of his present creed, and "God sain us! " he whis- 
 pered ; " have we here banshee or warlock? " 
 
 " I '11 warrant we have no more than what we 
 seek," said I, with a joyous heart, putting my tar- 
 tan about me more orderly, and running a hand 
 through my hair. 
 
 " I 've heard of unco uncanny things assume a 
 wean's cry in a wood," said he, very dubious in his 
 aspect. 
 
 I laughed at him, and " Come away, 'illc^ I 
 said; "here's the Provost's daughter." And I 
 was hurrying in the direction of the cry. 
 
 M'lver put a hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " Canny, man, canny; would ye enter a lady's 
 chamber (even the glade of the wood) without 
 tirling at the pin? "
 
 174 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 We stopped, and I softly sounded my curlew- 
 call — once, twice, thrice. 
 
 The echo of the third time had not ceased on 
 the hill when out stepped Betty. She looked mi- 
 raculous tall and thin in the haze of the dawn, 
 with the aspiring firs behind her, pallid at the face, 
 wearied in her carriage, and torn at her kirtle by 
 whin or thorn. The child clung at her coats, a 
 ruddy brat, with astonishment stilling its whimper. 
 
 For a little the girl half misdoubted us, for the 
 wood behind us and the still sombre west left us 
 in a shadow, and there was a tremor in her voice 
 as she challenged in English — 
 
 " Is that you, Elrigmore?" 
 
 I went forward at a bound, in a stupid rapture 
 that made her shrink in alarm; but MTver lin- 
 gered in the rear, with more discretion than my 
 relations to the girl gave occasion for. 
 
 " Friends ! oh, am not I glad to see you ? " she 
 said simply, her wan face lighting up. Then she 
 sat down on a hillock and wept in her hands. I 
 gave her awkward comfort, my wits for once fail- 
 ing me, my mind in a confusion, my hands, to my 
 own sense, seeming large, coarse, and in the way. 
 Yet to have a finger on her shoulder was a thrill 
 to the heart, to venture a hand on her hair was a 
 passionate indulgence. 
 
 The bairn joined in her tears till MTver took it 
 in his arms. He had a way with little ones that 
 had much of magic in it, and soon this one was 
 nestling to his breast with its sobs sinking, an arm 
 round his neck.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 175 
 
 More at the pair of them than at nie did Betty 
 look with interest when her tears were concluded. 
 
 "Am n't I like myself this morning?" asked 
 John, jocularly, dandling the bairn in his arms. 
 
 Betty turned away without a reply, and when 
 the child was put down and ran to her, she scarcely 
 glanced on it, but took it by the hand and made 
 to go before us, through the underwood she had 
 come from. 
 
 " Here's my home, gentlemen," she said, "like 
 the castle of Colin Dubh, with the highest ceiling 
 in the world and the stars for candles." 
 
 We might have passed it a score of times in 
 broad daylight and never guessed its secret. It 
 was the bieldy side of the hill. Two fir-trees had 
 fallen at some time in the common fashion of wind- 
 blown pines, with their roots clean out of the 
 earth, and raised up, so that coming together at 
 two edges they made two sides of a triangle. To 
 add to its efficiency as a hiding-place, some young 
 firs grew at the open third side of the triangle. 
 
 In this confined little space (secure enough 
 from any hurried search) there was still 3. grcasac/i, 
 as we call it, the ember of a fire that the girl had 
 kindled with a spark from a flint the night before, 
 to warm the child, and she had kept it at the low- 
 est extremity short of letting it die out altogether, 
 lest it should reveal her whereabouts to any 
 searchers in the wood. 
 
 We told her our story, and she told us hers. 
 She had fled on the morning of the attack, in the 
 direction of the castle ; but found her way cut off
 
 176 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 by a wing of the enemy, a number of whom chased 
 her as she ran with the child on her back up the 
 river-side to the Cairn-baan, where she eUided her 
 pursuers among his lordship's shrubberies, and 
 found a road to the wood. For a week she found 
 shelter and food in a cowherd's abandoned bothy 
 among the alders of Tarradubh; then hunger sent 
 her travelling again, and she reached Leacainn 
 Mhor, where she shared the cotter's house with a 
 widow woman who went out to the burn with a 
 kail-pot and returned no more, for the tardy bullet 
 found her. The murderers were ransacking the 
 house when Betty and the child were escaping 
 through the byre. This place of concealment in 
 Strongara she sought by the advice of a Glencoe 
 man well up in years, who came on her suddenly, 
 and, touched by her predicament, told her he and 
 his friends had so well beaten that place, it was 
 likely to escape further search. 
 
 " And so I am here with my charge," said the 
 girl, affecting a gaiety it were hard for her to feel. 
 " I could be almost happy and content, if I were 
 assured my father and mother were safe, and the 
 rest of my kinsfolk." 
 
 "There's but one of them in all the country- 
 side," I said. "Young MacLachlan, and he's on 
 Dunchuach." 
 
 To my critical scanning her check gave no flag. 
 
 " Oh, my cousin ! " she said. " I am pleased 
 that he is safe, though I would sooner hear he 
 was in Cowal than in Campbell country." 
 
 "He's honoured in your interest, madam," I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 177 
 
 could not refrain from saying, my attempt at rail- 
 lery I fear a rather forlorn one. 
 
 She flushed at this, but said never a word, only 
 biting her nether lip and fondling the child. 
 
 I think we put together a cautious little fire and 
 cooked some oats from my dor lac Jl, though the 
 ecstasy of the meeting with the girl left me no 
 great recollection of all that happened. But in a 
 quiet part of the afternoon we sat snugly in our 
 triangle of fir roots, and discoursed of trifles that 
 had no reasonable relation to our precarious state. 
 Betty had almost an easy heart, the child slept on 
 my comrade's plaid, and I was content to be in 
 her company and hear the little turns and accents 
 of her voice, and watch the light come and go in 
 her face, and the smile hover, a little wae, on her 
 lips at some pleasant tale of M'lver's. 
 
 " How came you round about these parts? " she 
 asked - — for our brief account of our doings held 
 no explanation of our presence in the wood of 
 Strongara. 
 
 " Ask himself here," said John, cocking a thumb 
 over his shoulder at me; "I have the poorest 
 of scents on the track of a woman." 
 
 Betty turned to me with less interest in the 
 question than she had shown when she addressed 
 it first to my friend. 
 
 I told her what the Glencoe man had told the 
 parson, and she sighed. " Poor man ! " said she, 
 " (blessing with him !), it was he that sent me here 
 to Strongara, and gave me tinder and flint." 
 
 " Wc could better have spared any of his friends, 
 12
 
 178 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 then," said I. " But you would expect some of us 
 to come in search of you? " 
 
 " I did," she said in a hesitancy, and crimsoning 
 in a way that tingled me to the heart with the 
 thought that she meant no other than myself She 
 gave a caressing touch to the head of the sleeping 
 child, and turned to M'lvcr, who lay on his side 
 with his head propped on an elbow, looking out on 
 the hill-face. 
 
 " Do you know the bairn? " she asked. 
 
 " No," he said, with a careless look where it lay 
 as peaceful as in a cradle rocked by a mother's 
 foot. 
 
 " It's the oe of Peggie Mhor," she said. 
 
 " So," said he ; " poor dear ! " and he turned 
 and looked out again at the snow. 
 
 We were, in spite of our dead Glencoe man's 
 assurance, in as wicked a piece of country as well 
 might be. No snow had fallen since we left Tom- 
 breck, and from that dolorous ruin almost to our 
 present retreat was the patent track of our 
 march. 
 
 " I 'm here, and I 'm making a fair show at an 
 easy mind," said M'lver; "but I've been in 
 cheerier circumstances ere now." 
 
 " So have I, for that part of it," said Betty 
 with spirit, half humorously, half in an obvious 
 punctilio. 
 
 "Mistress," said he, sitting up gravely; " I beg 
 your pardon. Do you wonder if I 'm not in a 
 mood for saying dainty things? Our state 's pre- 
 carious (it's needless to delude ourselves other-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 179 
 
 wise), and our friend Sandy and his bloody gang 
 may be at a javelin's throw from us as we sit here. 
 I wish— " 
 
 He saw the girl's face betray her natural alarm, 
 and amended his words almost too quickly for the 
 sake of the illusion. 
 
 "Tuts, tuts!" he cried. "I forgot the wood 
 was searched before, and here I 'm putting a dismal 
 black face on a drab business. We might be a 
 thousand times worse. I might be a clay-cold 
 corp with my last week's wage unspent in my 
 sporran, as it happens to be, and here I 'm to the 
 fore with a four or five MacDonalds to my credit. 
 If I 've lost my mercantile office as mine-manager 
 (curse your trades and callings !) my sword is left 
 me ; you have equal fortune, Elrigmore ; and you, 
 Mistress Brown, have them you love spared to 
 you." 
 
 Again the girl blushed most fiercely. " Thank 
 God ! Thank God ! " she cried in a stifled ecstasy, 
 " and O ! but I 'm grateful." And anew she 
 fondled the little bye-blow as it lay with its sunny 
 hair on the soldier's plaid. 
 
 John glanced at her from the corners of his eyes 
 with a new expression, and asked her if she was 
 fond of bairns. 
 
 "Need you ask that of a woman?" she said. 
 " But for the company of this one on my wander- 
 ings, my heart had failed me a hundred times a day. 
 It was seeing it so helpless that gave me my cour- 
 age : the dark at night in the bothy and the cot 
 and the moaning wind of this lone spot had sent
 
 i8o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 me crazy if I had not this Httle one's hand in mine, 
 and its breath in my hair as we lay together." 
 
 " To me," said John, " they 're Hke flowers, and 
 that 's the long and the short of it." 
 
 " You 're like most men, I suppose," said Betty, 
 archly ; " fond of them in the abstract, and with 
 small patience for the individuals of them. This 
 one now — you would not take half the trouble 
 with him I found a delight in. But the nursing of 
 bairns — even their own — is not a soldier's 
 business." 
 
 "No, perhaps not," said MTver, surveying her 
 gravely ; " and yet I 've seen a soldier, a rough 
 hired cavalier, take a wonderful degree of trouble 
 about a duddy little bairn of the enemy in the 
 enemy's country. He was struck — as he told me 
 after — by the gash look of it sitting in a scene of 
 carnage, orphaned, without the sense of it, and he 
 carried it before him on the saddle for a many 
 leagues' march till he found a peaceful wayside 
 cottage, where he gave it in the charge of as 
 honest a woman, to all appearance, as these parts 
 could boast. He might even — for all I know to 
 the contrary — have fairly bought her attention for 
 it by a season's paying of the kreutzers, and I 
 know it cost him a duel with a fool who mocked 
 the sentiment of the deed." 
 
 " I hope so brave and good a man was none the 
 worse for his duel in a cause so noble," said the 
 girl, softly. 
 
 "Neither greatly brave nor middling good," said 
 John, laughing, " at least to my way of thinking,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID i8i 
 
 and I know him well. But he was no poorer but 
 by the kreutzers for his advocacy of an orphan 
 bairn." 
 
 " I think I know the man," said I, innocently, 
 " and his name would be John." 
 
 " And John or George," said the girl, " I could 
 love him for his story." 
 
 M'lver lifted a tress of the sleeping child's hair 
 and toyed with it between his fingers. 
 
 "My dear, my dear!" said he; " it 's a foolish 
 thing to judge a man's character by a trifle like 
 yon : he 's a poor creature who has not his fine 
 impulse now and then ; and the man I speak of, as 
 like as not, was dirli ng a wanton flagon (or maybe 
 waur) ere nightfall, or slaying with cruelty and zest 
 the bairn's uncles in the next walled town he came 
 to. At another mood he would perhaps balance 
 this lock of hair against a company of burghers 
 but fighting for their own fire end." 
 
 " The hair is not unlike your own," said Betty, 
 comparing with quick eyes the curl he held and 
 the curls that escaped from under the edge of his 
 flat blue bonnet. 
 
 " May every hair of his be a candle to light him 
 safely through a mirk and dangerous world," said 
 he, and he began to whittle assiduously at a stick, 
 with a little black oxter-knife he lugged from his 
 coat. 
 
 " Amen ! " said the girl, bravely, " but he were 
 better with the guidance of a good father, and that 
 there seems small likelihood of his enjoying — 
 poor thing ! "
 
 i82 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 A constraint fell on us ; it may have been 
 there before, but only now I felt it myself. 
 I changed the conversation, thinking that perhaps 
 the child's case was too delicate a subject, but 
 unhappily made the plundering of our glens my 
 dolorous text, and gloom fell like a mort-cloth 
 on our little company. If my friend was easily up- 
 lifted, made buoyantly cheerful by the least acci- 
 dent of life, he was as prone to a hellish melancholy 
 when fate lay low. For the rest of the afternoon, 
 he was ever staving with a gloomy brow about the 
 neighbourhood, keeping an eye, as he said, to the 
 possible chance of the enemy. 
 
 Left thus for long spaces in the company of 
 Betty and the child, that daffed and croddled about 
 her, and even became warmly friendly with me for 
 the sake of my Paris watch and my glittering waist- 
 coat buttons, I made many gallant attempts to get 
 on my old easy footing. That was the wonder of it : 
 when my interest in her was at the lukewarm, I 
 could face her repartee with as good as she gave ; 
 now that I loved her (to say the word and be done 
 with it), my words must be picked and chosen and 
 my tongue must stammer in a contemptible awk- 
 wardness. Nor was she, apparently, quite at her 
 ease, for when our talk came at any point too close 
 on her own person, she was at great pains adroitly 
 to change it to other directions. 
 
 I never, in all my life, saw a child so mucklc 
 made use of. It seemed, by the most wonderful 
 of chances, to be ever needing soothing or scold- 
 ing or kissing or running after in the snow, when I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 183 
 
 had a word to say upon the human affections, or a 
 comphment to pay upon some grace of its most 
 assiduous nurse. 
 
 "I'm afraid," said Betty at last, "you learned 
 some courtiers' flatteries and coquetries in your 
 travels. You should have taken the lesson like 
 your friend and fellow-cavalier M'lvcr, and got the 
 trick of keeping a calm heart." 
 
 " M'lver ! " I cried. " He 's an old hand at the 
 business." 
 
 She put her lips to the child's neck and kissed it 
 tumultuously. 
 
 " Not — not at the trade of lovier? " she asked 
 after a while, carelessly keeping up the crack. 
 
 " Oh no ! " I said laughing. " He 's a most 
 religious man." 
 
 " I would hardly say so much," she answered 
 coldly; "for there have been tales — some idle, 
 some otherwise — about him, but I think his friend 
 should be last to hint at any scandal." 
 
 Good heavens ! here was a surprise for one who 
 had no more notion of traducing his friend than of 
 miscalling the Shorter Catechism. The charge stuck 
 in my gizzard. I fumed and sweat, speechless at 
 the injustice of it, while the girl held herself more 
 aloof than ever, busy preparing for our evening 
 meal. 
 
 I had no time to put myself right in her estimate 
 of me before MTver came back from his airing 
 with an alarming story. 
 
 "It's time we were taking our feet from here," 
 he cried, running up to us. " I 've been up on
 
 i84 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Meall Ruadh there, and I see the whole country- 
 side 's in a confusion. Pipers are blowing away 
 down the Glen and guns are firing; if it's not a 
 muster of the enemy preparatory to their quitting 
 the country, it 's a call to a more particular search 
 in the hills and woods. Anyway we must be 
 bundling." 
 
 He hurriedly stamped out the fire, that smoked 
 a faint blue reek which might have advertised our 
 whereabouts, and Betty clutched the child to her 
 arms, her face again taking the hue of hunt and 
 fear she wore when we first set eyes on her in the 
 morning. 
 
 " Where is safety? " she asked, hopelessly. " Is 
 there a shecp-fank or a sheiling-bothy in Argile 
 that is not at the mercy of those bloodhounds? " 
 
 " If it was n't for the snow on the ground," said 
 M'lver, " I could find a score of safe enough hid- 
 ings between here and Beannan. Heavens ! " 
 he added, " when I think on it, the Beannan itself 
 is the place for us ; it 's the one safe spot we can 
 reach by going through the woods without leaving 
 any trace, if we keep under the trees and in the 
 bed of the burn." 
 
 We took the bairn in turns, M'lvcr and I, and 
 the four of us set out for the oi)posite side of 
 Glenaora for the eas or gully called the Beannan, 
 tliat lay out of any route likely to be followed by 
 the enemy, whether their object was a retreat or a 
 hunting. But we were never to reach this place 
 of refuge, as it happened; for M'lver, leading 
 down the burn by a yard or two, had put his foot
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 185 
 
 on the path running through the pass beside the 
 three bridges, when he pulled back, blenching 
 more in chagrin than apprehension. 
 
 " Here they are," he said. " We 're too late ; 
 there 's a band of them on the march up this 
 way." 
 
 At our back was the burned ruin of a house that 
 had belonged to a shepherd, who was the first to 
 flee to the town when the invaders came. Its byre 
 was almost intact, and we ran to if up the burn as 
 fast as we could, and concealed ourselves in the 
 dark interior. Birds came chirping under the eaves 
 of thatch and by the vent-holes, and made so 
 much bickering to find us in their sanctuary that 
 we feared the bye-passers, who were within a 
 whisper of our hiding, would be surely attracted. 
 Band after band of the enemy passed, laden in the 
 most extraordinary degree with the spoil of war. 
 They had only a rough sort of discipline in their 
 retirement: the captains or chieftains marched 
 together, leaving the companies to straggle as they 
 might, for was not the country deserted by every 
 living body but themselves? In van of them they 
 drove several hundreds of black and red cattle, 
 and with the aid of some rough ponies, that pulled 
 such sledges (called earns) as are used for the 
 hauling home of peat on hilly land, they were 
 conveying huge quantities of household plenishing 
 and the merchandise of the biu'gh town. 
 
 Now we had more opportunity of seeing those 
 coarse savage forces than on any occasion since 
 they came to Argile, for the whole of them had
 
 i86 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 mustered at Inncraora after scouring the shire, 
 and were on their march out of the country to the 
 north, fatter men and better put on than when 
 they came. Among them were numerous tartans, 
 either as kilt, trews, or plaid ; the bonnet was uni- 
 versal, except that some of the officers wore steel 
 helms, with a feather tip in them, and a clan badge 
 of heather or whin or moss, and the dry oak-stalk 
 whimsy of Montrose. They had come bare -footed 
 and bare-buttocT<ed (many of the privates of them) 
 to Campbell country ; now, as I say, they were 
 very snod, the scurviest of the knaves set up ^^■ith 
 his hosen and brogues. Sturdy and black, or lank 
 and white-haired like the old sea-rovers, were they, 
 with few among them that ever felt the razor edge, 
 so that the hair coated them to the very eyeholes, 
 and they looked like wolves. The pipers, of whom 
 there were three, were blasting lustily at Clan- 
 ranald's march, when they came up the lower part 
 of the Glen, according to MTver, who had heard 
 them from Meall Ruadh ; but now the music was 
 stopped, and all were intent upon driving the cattle 
 or watching their stolen gear, for doubtless among 
 such thieves there was not as much honour as 
 would prevent one from picking his neighbour's 
 sporran. 
 
 We lay buried to the head in bracken that filled 
 one side of the byre, and keeked through the plen- 
 teous holes in the dry-stone wall at the passing 
 army. Long gaps were between the several clans, 
 and the Irish came last. It seemed — they moved 
 so slowly on account of the cattle — that the end
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 187 
 
 of the cavalcade was never to come; but at length 
 came the baggage and the staff of Montrose him- 
 self Then I got my first look of the man whose 
 name stinks in the bores' snout to this day. A 
 fellow about thirty-three years of age, of mid 
 height, hair of a very dark red, hanging in a thick 
 fell on the shoulder of the tartan jacket (for he 
 wore no armour), with a keen scrutinising eye, and 
 his beard trimmed in the foreign vein. He sat his 
 horse with considerable ease and grace, and was 
 surrounded by half-a-dozen of the chiefs who had 
 come under his banner. The most notable-looking 
 of these was Alasdair MacDonald, the Major- 
 General, an uncouth dog, but a better general, as I 
 learned later, than ever God or practice made James 
 Grahame of Montrose ; with John of Moidart, the 
 Captain of Clanranald, Donald Glas MacRanald of 
 Keppoch, and laird of Glencoe, Stuart of Appin, 
 and one of the Knoydart house, all of whilk we 
 distinguished by their tartan and badge. 
 
 In the mien of these savage chiefs there was 
 great elation that Montrose had little share in, to 
 all appearance. He rode moodily, and when fair 
 opposite our place of concealment he stopped his 
 horse as if to quit the sell, but more likely to get, 
 for a little, out of the immediate company of his 
 lawless troops. None of those home-returning 
 Gaels paid heed to his pause, for they were more 
 Alasdair MacDonald's men than his ; MacDonald 
 brought them to the lair of the boar, MacDonald 
 glutted their Highland thirst for Campbell blood, 
 MacDonald had compelled this raid in spite of the
 
 1 88 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 protests of the noble man who held the King's 
 Commission and seal. 
 
 For some minutes his lordship stood alone on 
 the pathway. The house where we lay was but 
 one, and the meanest, among a numerous cluster 
 of such drear memorials of a black business, and it 
 was easy to believe this generalissimo had some 
 gloomy thoughts as he gazed on the work he had 
 lent consent to. He looked at the ruins and he 
 looked up the pass at his barbarians, and shrugged 
 his shoulders with a contempt there was no mis- 
 taking. 
 
 " I could bring him down like a capercailzie," 
 said M'lver coolly, running his eye along his pistol 
 and cocking it through his keek-hole. 
 
 " For God's sake, don't shoot ! " I said, and he 
 laughed quietly. 
 
 " Is there anything in my general deportment, 
 Colin, that makes ye think me an assassin or an 
 idiot? I never wantonly shot an unsuspecting 
 enemy, and I 'm little likely to shoot Montrose and 
 have a woman and bairn suffer the worst for a 
 stupid moment of glory." 
 
 As ill luck would have it, the bairn, that had 
 been playing peacefully in the dusk, at this critical 
 minute let up a cry Montrose plainly heard. 
 
 "We're lost, we 're lost," said Betty, trembling 
 till the crisp dry bracken rustled about her, and 
 she was for instant flight. 
 
 " If we're lost, there 's a marquis will go travel- 
 ling with us," said M'lver, covering his lordship's 
 heart with his pistol.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 189 
 
 Had Montrose given the slightest sign that he 
 intended to call back his men to tread out this last 
 flicker of life in Aora Glen he would never have 
 died on the gibbet at the Grassmarket of Dunedin. 
 Years after, when Grahame met his doom (with 
 much more courtliness and dignity than I could 
 have given him credit for), M'lver would hark 
 back on his narrow escape at the end of the 
 raiding. 
 
 " I had his life in the crook of my finger," he 
 would say; "had I acted on my first thought, 
 Clan Campbell would never have lost Inverlochy, 
 but bha e air an dan, what will be will be, and 
 Grahame's fate was not in the crook of my finge-r, 
 though so I might think it. Are n't we the fools 
 to fancy sometimes our human wills decide the 
 course of fate and the conclusions of circum- 
 stances? From the beginning of time, my Lord 
 Marquis of Montrose was meant for the scaffold." 
 
 Montrose, when he heard the child's cry, only 
 looked to either hand to see that none of his 
 friends heard it, and finding there was no one 
 near him, took oft* his Highland bonnet, lightly, 
 to the house where he jaloused there was a woman 
 with the wean, and passed slowly on his way. 
 
 " It 's so honest an act," said John, pulling in his 
 pistol, " that I would be a knave to advantage 
 myself of the occasion." 
 
 A generous act enough. I daresay there were 
 few in the following of James Grahame would 
 have borne such a humane part at the end of a 
 bloody business ; and I never heard our people
 
 190 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 cry down the name of Montrose (bitter foe to 
 me and mine) but I minded to his credit that he 
 had a compassionate ear for a child's cry in the 
 ruined hut of Aora Glen. 
 
 Montrose gave no hint to his staff of what he 
 had heard, for when he joined them, he nor they 
 turned round to look behind. Before us now, free 
 and open, lay the way to Inncraora. We got 
 down before the dusk fell, and were the first of 
 its returning inhabitants to behold what a scandal 
 of charred houses and robbed chests the Athole 
 and Antrim caterans had left us. 
 
 In the gray light the place lay tenantless and 
 melancholy, the snow of the silent street and lane 
 trodden to a slush, the evening star peeping be- 
 tween the black roof-timbers, the windows lozen- 
 less, the doors burned out or hanging off their 
 hinges. Before the better houses were piles of 
 goods and gear turned out on the causeway. They 
 had been turned about by pike-handles and trod- 
 den upon with contemptuous heels, and the pick 
 of the plenishing was gone. Though upon the 
 rear of the kirk there were two great mounds, that 
 showed us where friend and foe had been buried, 
 that solemn memorial was not so poignant to the 
 heart as the poor relics of the homes gutted and 
 sacked. The Provost's tenement, of all the lesser 
 houses in the burgh, was the -only one that stood 
 in its outer entirety, its arched ceils proof against 
 the malevolent fire. Yet its windows gaped black 
 and empty. The tide was in close on the breast-wall 
 behind, and the sound of it came up and moaned
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 191 
 
 in the close like the sough of a sea-shell held 
 against the ear. 
 
 We stood in the close, the three of us (the bairn 
 clinging in wonder to the girl's gown), with never 
 a word for a space, and that sough of the sea was 
 almost a coronach.
 
 192 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 In a few hours, as it were, the news that the enemy 
 had left the country was put about the shire, and 
 people returned to pick up the loose ends of the 
 "^threads of family and affairs. Next day my lord 
 the Marquis came round Lochlong and Glencroe 
 in a huge chariot with four wheels, the first we had 
 ever seen in these parts, a manner of travel incum- 
 bent upon him because of a raxed shoulder he had 
 met with at Dunbarton. He came back to a poor 
 reception : the vestiges of his country's most bitter 
 extremity were on every hand, and, what was bound 
 to be embarrassing to any nobleman of spirit, there 
 was that in the looks and comportment of his clans- 
 men that must have given MacCailein some un- 
 pleasant thought. 
 
 Behind his lordship came eleven hundred Low- 
 land levies that had been with Baillie in England, 
 and to command them came his cousin, Sir Duncan 
 Campbell of Auchinbreac, luckily new over from 
 Ireland, and in the spirit for campaigning. A fiery 
 cross was sent round the clan, that in better times 
 should easily have mustered five thousand of the 
 prettiest lads ever trod heather ; but it brought 
 only a remnant of a thousand, and the very best 
 that would have been welcome under the galley
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 193 
 
 flag were too far afield for the summons to reach 
 them in time. But every well-affected branch of 
 Clan Campbell sent its gentlemen to officer our 
 brigade. 
 
 A parley of war held in the castle determined on 
 immediate pursuit of Montrose to Lochaber, keep- 
 ing within easy distance, but without attacking till 
 he was checked in front by troops that had gone 
 up to flank him by way of Stirling. I was at 
 the council, but had little to do with its decision, 
 though the word of M'lver and myself (as was 
 due to cavaliers of experience) was invited with 
 respect. 
 
 We were to march in two days ; and as I had 
 neither house nor ha' to shelter me, seeing the old 
 place up the glen was even more of a ruin than in 
 Donald Gorm's troubles, when the very roof-tree 
 was thrown in Dhuloch, I shared quarters with 
 M'lver in the castle, where every available corner 
 was occupied by his lordship's guests. 
 
 When these other guests were bedded, and the 
 house in all our wing of it was still, my comrade 
 and I sat down to a tasse of brandy in our cham- 
 ber, almost blythe, as you would say, at the pros- 
 pect of coming to blows with our country's spoilers. 
 We were in the midst of a most genial crack when 
 came a faint rap at the door, and in steps the good- 
 man, as solemn as a thunder-cloud, in spite of the 
 wan smile he fixed upon his countenance. He 
 bore his arm out of his sleeve in a sling, and his 
 hair was untrim, and for once a most fastidious 
 nobleman was anything but perjink. 
 
 13
 
 194 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "I cry pardon, gentlemen! " he said in Gaelic, 
 " for breaking in on my guests' privacy; but I'm 
 in no humour for sleeping, and I thought you 
 might have a spare glass for a friend." 
 
 " It 's your welcome, Argile," said I, putting a 
 wand chair to the front for him. He sat himself 
 down in it with a sigh of utter weariness, and ner- 
 vously poking the logs on the fire with a purring- 
 iron, looked sadly about the chamber. 
 
 It was his wife's tiring-room, or closet, or some- 
 thing of that nature, fitted up hastily for our accom- 
 modation, and there were signs of a woman's dainty 
 hand and occupation about it. The floor was car- 
 peted, the wall was hung with arras; a varnish 
 'scrutoire, some sweet-wood boxes, two little stat- 
 ues of marble, two raised silver candlesticks with 
 snuffers conform, broidery-work unfinished, and 
 my lord's picture, in a little gilded frame hanging 
 over a dressing-table, were among its womanly 
 plenishing. 
 
 " Well, coz," said his lordship, breaking an awk- 
 ward silence, " we have an enormous and dastardly 
 deed here to avenge." 
 
 " We have that ! " said MTver. " It 's a conso- 
 lation that we are in the mood and in the position 
 to set about paying the debt. Before the glad 
 news came of your return, I was half afraid that 
 oin- quarry would be too far gone ere we set loose 
 the dogs on him. Luckily he can be little farther 
 than Glcnurchy now. Elrigmore and I had the 
 honour to see the visitors make their departure. 
 They carried so much stolen gear, and drove
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 195 
 
 so big a prize of cattle, that I would not give 
 them more than a twenty miles' march to the 
 day." 
 
 "Will they hang together, do you think?" 
 asked his lordship, fingering a crystal bottle for 
 essence that lay on the 'scrutoire. 
 
 " I misdoubt it," said M'lvcr. "You know the 
 stuff, MacCailcin? He may have his Irish still; 
 but I '11 wager the MacDonalds, the Stewarts, and 
 all the rest of that reiving crowd are off to their 
 holds, like the banditti they are, with their booty. 
 A company of pikes on the rear of him, as like as 
 not, would settle his business." 
 
 The Marquis, besides his dishevelment, was look- 
 ing very lean and pale. I am wrong if I had not 
 before me a man who had not slept a sound night's 
 sleep in his naked bed since the point of war beat 
 under his castle window. 
 
 "Your arm, my lord," I said in a pause of his 
 conversation with M'lvcr, " is it a fashions injury? 
 You look off your ordinary." 
 
 " I do," he said. " I daresay I do, and I wish 
 to God it was only this raxed arm that was the 
 worst of my ailment." 
 
 His face burned up red in the candle-light, his 
 nostrils swelled, and he rose in his chair. A small 
 table was between us. He put his uninjured hand 
 on it to steady himself, and leaned over to me to 
 make his words more weighty for my ear. 
 
 " Do you know," he added, " I 'm Archibald, 
 Marquis of Argile, and under the cope and canopy 
 of heaven this January night there 's not a creature
 
 196 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 of God's making more down in the heart and 
 degraded than 1? If the humblest servant in my 
 house pointed a scornful finger at me and cried 
 Gioltar ! (coward) I would bow my head. Ay, 
 ay ! it 's good of you, sir, to shake a dissenting 
 head; but I'm a chief discredited. I know it, 
 man. I see it in the faces about me. I saw it at 
 Roseneath, when my very gardener fumbled, and 
 refused to touch his bonnet when I left. I saw it 
 to-night at my own table, when the company talked 
 of what they should do, and what my men should 
 do, and said never a word of what was to be ex- 
 pected of MacCailein Mor." 
 
 " I think, my lord," I cried, " that you 're exag- 
 gerating a very small affair." 
 
 " Small affair ! " he said (and he wetted his lips 
 with his tongue before the words came). " Small 
 affair ! Hell's flame ! is there anything smaller 
 than the self-esteem of a man who by some in- 
 fernal quirk of his nature turns his back on his 
 most manifest duty — leaves the blood of his blood 
 and the skin of his skin to perish for want of his 
 guidance and encouragement, and wakens at morn- 
 ing to find it no black nightmare but the horrible 
 fact? Answer me that, Elrigmore ! " 
 
 "Tut, tut," said M'lver, pouring his cousin a 
 glass; "you're in the xapours, and need a good 
 night's sleep. There 's no one in Argile dare ques- 
 tion your spirit, whatever they may think of your 
 policy." 
 
 Argile relapsed into his chair, and looked with a 
 pitiful eye at his kinsman.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 197 
 
 " My good Iain," he said, " do you ken the old 
 Lochow wife's story of the two daws ? ' Thou 
 didst well,' said the one, 'though thy wings are 
 cut; thou didst well to do as I told thee.' I'm 
 not blaming you ; you are a brave man of your 
 own hands, and a middling" honest man too, as hon- 
 esty goes among mercenaries ; but your tongue 's 
 plausible, plausible, and you are the devil's coun- 
 sellor to any other man who slackens his will by 
 so much as a finger-length." 
 
 M'lver took on a set stern jaw, and looked his 
 chief very dourly in the face. 
 
 " My Lord of Argile," he said, " you 're my 
 cousin-german, and you 're in a despondent key, 
 and small blame to you with your lands smoking 
 about you from Cruachan to Kilmartin ; but if you 
 were King Tearlach himself, I would take no insult 
 from you. Do you charge me with any of your 
 misfortunes? " 
 
 " I charge you with nothing, John," said Argile, 
 wearily. " I 'm only saying that at a time of stress, 
 when there 's a conflict in a man's mind between 
 ease and exertion, you 're not the best of con- 
 sciences. Are we two going to quarrel about a 
 phrase while our clansmen's blood is crying from 
 the sod? Sit down, sir; sit down, if it please you," 
 he said more sternly, the scowl that gave him the 
 gniamacJi reputation coming on his face ; "sit down, 
 if it please you, and instead of ruffling up like the 
 bubbly-jock over words, tell me if you can how to 
 save a reputation from the gutter. If it was not 
 that I know 1 have your love, do you think I should
 
 198 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 be laying my heart bare here and now? You have 
 known me some time now, M'lver — did you ever 
 find me without some reserve in my most intimate 
 speech? Did you ever hear me say two words 
 that I had not a third in the background to bring 
 forward if the policy of the moment called for it? " 
 
 M'lver laughed slyly, and hesitated to make any 
 answer. 
 
 "It's a simple question," said the Marquis; 
 " am I to think it needs too straightforward an 
 answer for John Splendid to give it?" 
 
 " I 'm as frank as my neighbours," said M'lver. 
 
 " Well, sir, do not check the current of my 
 candour by any picking and choosing of words. 
 I ask if you have ever found me with the babbling 
 and unbridled tongue of a fool in my mouth, giv- 
 ing my bottom-most thought to the wind and the 
 street? " 
 
 ** You were no Gael if you did, my lord. That 's 
 the sin of the shallow wit, I aye kept a bit 
 thought of my own in the corner of my vest." 
 
 MacCailein sighed, and the stem of the beaker 
 he was fingering broke in his nervous fingers. He 
 threw the fragments with an impatient cry into the 
 fireplace. 
 
 "It's the only weakness of our religion (God 
 pardon the sin of hinting at any want in that 
 same !) that we have no chance of laying the 
 heart bare to mortal man. Many a time I could 
 wish for the salving influence of the confessional, 
 even without the tibsolution to follow." 
 
 " I think," said John Splendid, " it would be a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 199 
 
 strange day when MacCailein Mor, Marquis of 
 Argile, would ask or need shriving from anything 
 or any one. There was never a priest or vicar in 
 the shire you could n't twist the neck of." 
 
 The Marquis turned to me with a vexed toss of 
 his shoulder. " It 's a hopeless task to look for 
 a pagan's backbone," said he. " Come, I '11 con- 
 fess. I dare not hint at my truant thought to 
 Auchinbreac or before any of these fiery officers 
 of mine, who fear perhaps more than they love 
 me. At the black tale of my weakness they 
 would make no allowance for my courage as the 
 same was shown before." 
 
 "Your courage, sir," said I, "has been proved; 
 it is the inheritance of your race. But I dare not 
 strain my conscience, my lord, much as I love and 
 honour your house, to say I could comprehend or 
 concur in the extraordinary retirement you made 
 from these parts when our need for your presence 
 was the sorest." 
 
 " I thank you for that, Elrigmore," said his 
 lordship, cordially. " You say no more now than 
 you showed by your face (and perhaps said too) 
 on the night the beacon flamed on Dunchuach. 
 To show that I value your frankness — that my 
 kinsman here seems to fancy a flaw of character — 
 I '11 be explicit on the cause of my curious be- 
 haviour in this crisis. When I was a boy I was 
 brought up loyally to our savage Highland tradi- 
 tion, that feuds were to carry on, enemies to con- 
 found, and that no logic under heaven should 
 keep the claymore in its sheath while an old
 
 200 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 grudge was to wipe out in blood or a wrong to 
 right." 
 
 " A most sensible and laudable doctrine ! " cried 
 M'lver. " With that and no more of a principle 
 in life — except paying your way among friends — 
 a good man of his hands could make a very snug 
 and reputable progress through the world." 
 
 "Some men might," said Argile, calmly; "I do 
 not know whether to envy or pity their kind. But 
 they are not my kind. I think I bore myself not 
 ungracefully in the Cabinet, in the field too, so 
 long as I took my father's logic without question. 
 But I have read, I have pondered " 
 
 "Just so," whispered M'lvcr, not a bit abashed 
 that a sneer was in his interjection and his master 
 could behold it. 
 
 " — And I have my doubts about the righteous- 
 ness of much of our warfare, either before my day 
 or now. I have brought the matter to my closet. 
 I have prayed " 
 
 " Pshaw ! " exclaimed M'lver, but at once he 
 asked pardon. 
 
 " — I am a man come — or well-nigh come — 
 to the conclusion that his life was never designed 
 by the Creator to be spent in the turmoil of fac- 
 tion and field. There is, I allow, a kind of man 
 whom strife sets off, a middling good man in his 
 way, perhaps, with a call to the sword whose jus- 
 tice he has never questioned. I have studied the 
 philosophies ; I have reflected on life — this un- 
 fathomable problem — and 'fore God I begin to 
 doubt my very right to wear a breastplate against
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 201 
 
 the poignard of fate : Dubiety plays on me like a 
 flute." 
 
 To all this I listened soberly, at the time com- 
 prehending that this was a gentleman suffering 
 from the disease of being unable to make up his 
 mind. I would have let him go on in that key 
 while he pleasured it, for it 's a vein there 's no 
 remedy for at the time being; but M'lver was not 
 of such tolerant stuff as I. He sat with an amazed 
 face till his passion simmered over into a torrent 
 of words. 
 
 " MacCailein ! " said he, " I '11 never call you 
 coward, but I '11 call you mad, book mad, closet 
 mad ! Was this strong fabric your house of 
 Argile (John M'lver the humblest of its mem- 
 bers) built up on doubt and whim and shilly- 
 shally hither and yond? Was 't that made notable 
 the name of your ancestor Cailein Mor na Sringe, 
 now in the clods of Kilchrcnan, or Cailein longa- 
 taich that cooled his iron hide in Linne-na-luraich ; 
 or your father himself (peace with him !), who did 
 so gallantly at Glenlivet?" 
 
 " And taught me a little of the trade of slaughter 
 at the Western Isles thirty years ago come Candle- 
 mas," said the Marquis. " How a man ages ! 
 Then — then I had a heart like the bird of 
 spring." 
 
 " He could have taught you worse ! I 'm your 
 cousin and cummer, and I '11 say it to your beard, 
 sir ! Your glens and howcs are ruined, your cat- 
 tle are houghed and berried, your clan's name is a 
 bye-word this wae day in all Albainn, and you sit
 
 202 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 there like a chemist weighing the wind on your 
 stomach." 
 
 " You see no farther than your nose, John," said 
 the Marquis, petulantly, the candle-light turning 
 his eyes blood-red. 
 
 "Thank God for that same! " said M'lver, "if 
 it gives me the wit to keep an enemy from striking 
 the same. If the nose was Argile's, it might be 
 twisted off his face while he debated upon his 
 right to guard it." 
 
 " 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'lver. " 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 per- 
 plexing 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 murthercrs and unbelievers?" 
 
 " I could scarcely put it more to the point my- 
 self," cried M'lver. " 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."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 203 
 
 " Ay, ay ! here we are into our dialectics again," 
 said his lordship, laughing, with no particular sur- 
 render in his merriment. " You gentlemen make 
 no allowance for the likelihood that James Gra- 
 hame, 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'lver, " 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 cun- 
 ning 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 enter- 
 prises of man — are they well contrived and car- 
 ried 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, MTver," said Argile, "you 
 beat me at my own trade of debate, and — have 
 you ever heard of a fellow Machiavelli? "
 
 204 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " I kent a man of that name in a corps we fore- 
 gathered with at Mentz — a ' provient schriever,' 
 as they called him. A rogue, with a hand in the 
 sporran of ev^ery 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'lver'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 oi 
 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 ni}^ 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 Inncraora though 
 Abijah's array and Jeroboam's horse and foot were 
 coming down the glens." 
 
 For a little MTver 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 Stron 
 before I could have bit out the tongue that flat- 
 tered 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.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 205 
 
 *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 ! "
 
 2o6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 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 evading 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 con- 
 tumely 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.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 207 
 
 Thus my leaving town Inneraora — its frozen 
 hearths, its smokeless vents, its desecrated door- 
 ways, 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 re- 
 treat (thought I), there was no great mystery in 
 his act. 
 
 What enhanced my trouble was that Clan Mac- 
 Lachlan, as Catholics, always safe to a degree 
 from the meddling of the invaders, had re-estab- 
 lished 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 char- 
 acteristic 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
 
 2o8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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, Elrig- 
 more," he said, smiling. "Your Latin gave you 
 no clue, did it, to the fact that she thought John 
 M'lver 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 stroked his chin with pursed lips, 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 gen- 
 eral 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?"
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 209 
 
 He looked at me with a heightened colour, and 
 he laughed shortly. 
 
 " You '11 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 fan- 
 faron among foreign gentry who claimed a coii- 
 qiiete (Vamoiir 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 dumfounder- 
 ment. " 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 par- 
 ticulars, for the place rang all the worse for its 
 comparative emptiness with the scandal of MTvcr's 
 encounter with MacLachlan, whom, it appeared, he 
 had found laying a gallant's siege to the ui)pcr win- 
 dow of Askaig's house, whose almost unharmed 
 
 14
 
 2IO JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 condition had made it a convenient temporary- 
 shelter for such as had returned to the town. 
 In the chamber behind the window that MacLach- 
 lan threw his pebbles at, were his cousin and the 
 child, as M'lver 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 bring with me 
 when we left Inneraora to follow the track of Mon- 
 trose was the friendl)' wave of Mistress Betty's 
 hand as we marched out below the Arches on our 
 Way to the North. 
 
 Argile and Auchinbrcac 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; Auchinbrcac on a smaller animal, 
 but of great spirit and beauty. M'lver and I 
 walked, as did all the officers. We had for c\'cry 
 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
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 211 
 
 of pike and the slash of sword than on our cul- 
 verins. Our Lowland levies looked fairly well dis- 
 ciplined 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'lver confided to me more than once his own 
 doubts about the mettle of the companies from 
 Dunbarton. 
 
 " P 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 sur- 
 prise them terribly when the time comes. This 
 aff"air's decision must depend, I 'm afraid, for the 
 most part on our own lads, and I wish there were 
 more of them." 
 
 We w^ent 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 b\' the 
 shadow on Tom-an-Uarader was three hours of
 
 212 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the afternoon, a crazy old caillcach, 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 drop- 
 ping 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 
 Carnus, 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 Stronmealochan. 
 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 thun- 
 der, 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
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 213 
 
 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 Lowlanders — 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 Diar- 
 maid 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 fore- 
 bears and ours on the close of many a weary 
 march, on the eves 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
 
 214 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 out, as only affection may, the best that was of 
 accompHshment 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 for- 
 bear 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 me, and l)rawl\ it served 
 me, 
 
 With pith to the claymore whcrevcn I won, 
 'T was the auld sodger's story, that, gallows or glory, 
 
 The Hielan's, the Hielan's were crying me on !
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 215 
 
 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, tliough far off the heather, 
 
 The Hielan's, the Hielan's were all at my back! 
 
 The ram to the gateway, 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 Ladyday, 
 
 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 shelling 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 !
 
 2i6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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 '11 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 ex- 
 ercise of prayer, wherein two clerics led our devo- 
 tion, one Master Mungo Law, a Lowlander, and 
 the other his lordship's chaplain — Master Alex- 
 ander 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 
 pra}'cd as prayed David, that the counsel of Ahith- 
 ophcl might be turned to foolishness ; and " Lo," 
 they said, "be strong and courageous; fear not, 
 neither be afraid of the King of 7\shur, 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 ! ' llicre be more 
 with us than with him.' I ne\cr lieard it so bluntly 
 put before. But perhaps Heaven will forgive us 
 the sin of our caution, seeing tliat lialf our superior 
 number are but Lowland levies." 
 
 And all night long deer belled to deer on the 
 braes of Glen Noe.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 217 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 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 gener- 
 ously for our every hoof and horn. For when we 
 crossed Loch Etive foot 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 to 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 ap- 
 petites to the very gorge. I must give Argile the 
 credit of giving no licence to our ongoings. He 
 rode after us with his Lowlanders, protesting, 
 threatening, cajoling in vain. Many a remon- 
 strance, too, made Gordon, many an opening fire 
 he stamped out in cot and barn. But the black
 
 2i8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 smoke of the j^ranary 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 dap- 
 pled 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 15cndcrloch, and 
 through Appin and even up to Glencoe, by some 
 strange spasm of physique — for she was frail and 
 famished — the barefooted old caillcacJi of Carnus 
 came after us, a bird of battle, croaking in a hor- 
 rible merriment over our operations. The Dark 
 Dame we called her. She would dance round the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 219 
 
 butchery of the fold, chanting her venomous GaeHc 
 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 goiit 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 roystercr'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 gen- 
 tleman with an account to pay — on thee this 
 mother's blessing, for thee this widow's prayers ! " 
 
 M'lver 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."
 
 220 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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, call- 
 ing, calling, through the gray, 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 sur- 
 render, that I behold generations of super- 
 stition 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 some- 
 thing 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."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 221 
 
 " 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, "per- 
 haps 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'lver 
 • — "do you know what our cailleacJi 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 tor the 
 Dark Dame's wizardy," said L
 
 222 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 He took me aside from some of the clansmen 
 who could overhear. 
 
 " Never let these lads think that you either treat 
 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
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 223 
 
 of Montrose, who, going np Loch Ncss-sidc, 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 after- 
 noon when Argile sent for M'lver 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 gen- 
 tlemen who have done more delicate and danger- 
 ous 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 
 affect 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 get- 
 ting hanged for a spy. James Grahame of Mon- 
 trose 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
 
 224 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 other there's a hair's-brcadth 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, Ebrigmore, 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.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 225 
 
 All night we walked on a deserted rocky road- 
 way 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, 
 toward 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 ven- 
 tured 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'lver, blandly, " we 're
 
 226 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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, and 
 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 con- 
 tracted interior — was lit mainly from the door 
 and the smoke-vent, that gave a narrow glimpse 
 of heaven through the black cnbar 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 gentleman of Keppoch and 
 Scumais Grahamc 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
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 227 
 
 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 wel- 
 come guests than the spoilers of Appin and Glen- 
 coe. I knew you for Campbells when you 
 knocked." 
 
 "Well, mistress," said M'lver, 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. Rut 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 cTan who would be glad to mar your slumber? " 
 
 John studied her face for a moment. It was a 
 sonsy and good-humoured face, and her eyes were 
 not unkindly. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you might have some ex- 
 cuse for a deed so unhospitablc, and a deed so 
 different from the spirit of the Highlands as I 
 know them. Your clan would be little the better 
 tor the deaths of two gentlemen whose fighting
 
 228 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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, goodwife, wild 
 and cruel times, and a widow more or less is 
 scarcely worth troubling over. I think we '11 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 j'^//r 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 '11 take back no jot of my com- 
 pliment to yourself" 
 
 " I was caught yonder," said he to me a little 
 later in a whisper in English, as we lay down in
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 229 
 
 our corner. "A man of my ordinary acuteness 
 should have seen that the brat was the only un- 
 spoiled 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 toward us." 
 . The man outside was talking in a shrill, high 
 voice, and the woman in a softer voice was mak- 
 ing 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 '11 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,
 
 230 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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 kailpot and spoon at 
 every passing door." 
 
 "This one was in a hurry," said the woman, 
 reddening a little in confusion. 
 
 " Just so," said M'lver, 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 '11 make her bitterly angry if you persist in 
 your purpose." 
 
 He paid no heed to mc, but addressed the 
 woman again with a most ingenious story, con- 
 trived with his usual wit as he went on with it
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 231 
 
 "Your pardon, goodwifc," 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 bluntness, 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 darken- 
 ing 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, mar- 
 vellously ready, " but to tell the truth we are curi- 
 ous 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, because we were Campbells, no doubt.
 
 232 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 I was starting on the way to Inverlochy when 
 M'lver 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 con- 
 fident of the truth of my story. At any rate she 'a 
 no woman if she 's not turning it over in her mind 
 by now, and she '11 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 straightforward-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 233 
 
 ness ; the honest word, though hard to say some- 
 times, 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 speak- 
 ing 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 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 '11 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 Mac- 
 Donald clothin"-.
 
 234 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XVni 
 
 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 bob- 
 bing about at his groin. I have never seen a man 
 with surprise more sharply stamped on his visage 
 than was betra}'ed 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 Badcnoch. 
 
 "You're taking your walk?" he said, with a 
 bantering tone, after a moment's pause. 
 
 " You could n'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 surve}'ing each other. " My 
 name," said he, in his odd north Gaelic, and throw- 
 ing out his narrow chest, " is John MacDonald. 
 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?
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 235 
 
 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'lver put a toe en one of mine, and said he, 
 " Am n'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 shelling 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.
 
 236 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Wc 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 happ)- 
 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 diiaiis ? " 
 
 " 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 bat- 
 tles ; have yon 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 (per- 
 haps), nor in errant freaks of the mind, but a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 237 
 
 something unnameable and remote, with a boun- 
 teous overflowing of the spirit. And that way 
 I learned the splendour of war as I sat b}' 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 mean- 
 ing, 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 heartsome and 
 invigorating glow. 
 
 "John Lom, 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'lvcr 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 ' Macran- 
 nul 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 }'on 
 tremor of joy, and it is telling of the far isles be- 
 yond Uist and Barra and the Seven Hunters, and 
 the white sands of Colomkill." 
 
 MTver sat down on the wayside and whittled a
 
 238 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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'lver, 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 '11 not say yea or nay to 
 that — but I never gave a lochan credit for wash- 
 ing the bulged sides of the world." 
 
 " You had n'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 oft" from his castle. I 'm mak- 
 ing 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 warningh' in 
 English to my friend, never knowing (what I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 239 
 
 learned on a later occasion) that John Loin had 
 the language as well as myself. 
 
 '* When MacCailein comes here," said the bard, 
 " he '11 get a Badenoch welcome." 
 
 " And that is the thief's welcome, the shirt off 
 his very back," cried M'lvcr. 
 
 "Off his back very likely," said the bard, "it's 
 the back we see oftenest of the bonny gentleman." 
 
 M'lver grew livid to the very lip, and sprung to 
 his feet, clutching 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 circimistance 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 man- 
 ner 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 an}' words with us marched us before 
 them on a journey of several hours to Kilcumin.
 
 240 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Long or ever we reached Kile u mi n we were 
 manifestly in the neighbourhood of Montrose's 
 force. His pickets held the road ; the hillsides 
 mov^ed with his scouts. On a plain called Leiter- 
 nan-lub the battalion lay camped, a mere frag- 
 ment of the force that brought ruin to Argile's 
 Athole 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 imder 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 
 Alasdair ; " but we '11 put it to the test with Kep- 
 poch 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 m\' 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 Lom, very short and blunt. "And we're
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 241 
 
 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 MacDonald determined to get round on the 
 flank of Argile.
 
 >42 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The month of January, as our old Gaelic notion 
 has it, borrows three clays from July for a bribe of 
 three young lambs. Those three days we call 
 FaoiltcacJi, 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 FaoiltcacJi, and on the morning of the last 
 clay 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 gray 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 ICrsemen 
 and wild kerns; they shut their doors steadfastly 
 on our doings, and gave us not even the compli- 
 ment of looking on at our strange manrcuvres. 
 There was but one exception, in a staunch and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 243 
 
 massive dwelling — a manifest baron keep or stout 
 domicile of that nature just on the border of the 
 field in which the camp was pitched ; it was 
 apparently in the charge of two old spinster sis- 
 ters whose men-folk were afield somewhere else, 
 for they had shuttered the windows, barricaded 
 the doors, 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 southeast. 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 neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 The country we now plunged into, as may be 
 guessed, was a terra incognita to me. Beyond that 
 it was Badenoch 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
 
 244 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 troopers, swanky blaspheming persons, whose 
 horses pranced very gaily up Glen Tarf, guided 
 by John Lorn. M'lv^er and I walked together with 
 the main body, quite free and unfettered, some- 
 times 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 w^e 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 burn- 
 ing heather. But when we got to the pass of 
 Corryarick, our trials began, and then such spirit 
 did MTver put in the struggle with the task before 
 us, such snatches of song, sharp saying and old 
 story — such comradcry as it might be named, 
 that wc were on good terms with all. For your 
 man of family the Gael has ever some regard. 
 M'hcr (not to speak of myself) was so manifestly 
 the (iniuc-uasail that the coarsest of the company 
 fell into a polite tone, helped to their manners to
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 245 
 
 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 Tarfside 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.v 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
 
 246 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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 jour- 
 ney ; far is the way before ; strike fast, strike hot ! 
 Would ye eat a meal with appetite while the Diar- 
 maids wait in the way? " 
 
 M'lver, who was plodding beside MacDonald 
 when he said these words, gave a laugh. "Take 
 your time. Sir Sandy," said he ; " you '11 need a 
 bowl or two of brose ere you come to grips with 
 MacCailein." 
 
 *' We '11 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'lver 
 warmly. 
 
 " Let your chief defend himself, friend," said 
 MacDonald. " Man, I '11 wager we never see 
 the colour of his face when it comes to close 
 quarters." 
 
 " I would n'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."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 247 
 
 Montrose edged up at this, with a red face and 
 a somewhat annoyed expression. He put his 
 gloved hand Hghtly 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 MTver, 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 hoofs 
 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 corric 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
 
 248 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 broken bands of different clansmen winding noise- 
 lessly and painfull)- 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 arc Campbells to slay, and sup- 
 pers 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 Lochy- 
 side, little thinking the fires they left in the Cam- 
 eron 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 Spcan, with
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 249 
 
 Ben Chluraig 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 stir-about 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, 
 oh ! 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.
 
 250 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 I have hungered many times on weary marches, 
 but yon was the most cruel hunger of my Hfe. 
 And though the pain of the starving could be 
 dulled a little by draughts of water from the way- 
 side springs, what there was no remedy 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 half-way 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 by them till they 
 had recovered. Thus a third of our force fell be- 
 hind us in the march, and I would have been 
 behind, too, but for MTver'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 Cove- 
 nanter that wc cannot keep up ! P'or a Scots 
 Cavalier you are giving in over early." 
 
 " Campaigning with Lumsden was never like
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 251 
 
 this," I pled 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 un- 
 wearied 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 griev- 
 ous complaint of ache and weariness. His pre- 
 tence deceived me only for a little. He was only 
 at his old quirk of keeping me in good repute 
 with myself, but he played the part with skill, let- 
 ting us both fall behind the general company a 
 little so that the MacDonalds 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
 
 252 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 a vapour on the hills ; the wind had failed in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 At the foot of the hill Carn 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 hap- 
 pened 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 dream, 
 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 MTver 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 particu- 
 lar 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'lver. "He broke his part 
 of the parole, and is lying on the other side of
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 253 
 
 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 trans- 
 action between this clay and John M'lver, 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'lver 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'lver 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 hesi- 
 tation, 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
 
 254 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 going. After all, we are in a trap any way we 
 look at all ; for half the Stewarts and Camerons 
 are behind in the wood there, and our flank retreat 
 among these hills might be a tempting of Provi- 
 dence. But are you thinking of this Athole corp 
 and what his kin will be doing to his slayers? " 
 
 " I '11 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 toward 
 the mouth of the glen the sound of a bagpipe. It 
 came on the tranquil air with no break in its up- 
 roar, and after a preparatory tuning it broke into 
 a tune 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 regi- 
 mentals 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 be for every honest 
 Gael. 
 
 " Cniachan gu bragh ! " I said lightly to M'lvcr, 
 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 CrniilnadJi as we call it, and the player
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 255 
 
 maybe came round a bend of the road, my com- 
 rade stopped in his pace, and added with what in 
 another I might have thought a sob — "I 've 
 trudged the world ; I 've learned many bravadoes, 
 so that my heart never stirred much to the mere 
 trick of an instrument but one, and the piod vihor 
 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 soldados ; they 
 played us into Holstein ; and when the ditch of 
 Stralsung 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, quiz- 
 zingly, " 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 wander- 
 ing in Lorn and Badenoch for as many years ! "
 
 256 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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 !
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 257 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 When we came up with the main body of Mac- 
 Donald's army, the country, as I say, was shining 
 in the hght 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, barring any passage to 
 Badenoch or Lochaber ; but they never knew it. 
 A few of their scouts came out across the fields 
 and challenged our pickets ; there was some ex- 
 change 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, Mar- 
 quis 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 
 lolair, 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 
 
 17
 
 258 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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- 
 brcastcdly strutted with a vain port up and down 
 their lines and played incessantly. Alasdair laid 
 out the clans with amazing skill, as MTver 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 sec Argilc'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 barge of Lome on a gold standard.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 259 
 
 I expressed some doubt about the steadfastness 
 of the Lowlandcrs, and M'lv^er was in sad agree- 
 ment 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 '11 prove a poor reed to lean on. 
 Why, in heaven's name, does MacCailein take the 
 risk of a battle in such an awkward corner? An 
 old stager like Auchinbreac should advise him to 
 follow the Kilcumin road and join forces with Sea- 
 forth, who must be far down Glen Albyn by now." 
 
 As we were standing apart thus, up to us came 
 Ian Lom, 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'lver, " what need ye be talking? 
 Bardachd and bravery don't very often go to- 
 gether." 
 
 Ian Lom scowled blackly at the taunt, but was 
 equal to answer it. 
 
 " If the need arise," said he, " you '11 sec whether 
 the bard is brave or not. There are plenty to 
 fight; there's but one to make the song of the
 
 26o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 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 consider- 
 ation -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 Ballachulish 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 Argilc by Loch Liniilic side, and took us clear 
 of the coming encounter.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 261 
 
 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 was n't 
 for exercise, as you might guess at any rate. 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 
 cong^, 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
 
 262 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 be on the heels of us now" — for we were in a 
 little dip of the ground where the force we had 
 just parted so gladly with were not to be seen from. 
 
 On that point M'lver speedily assured me. 
 
 " No, no ! " he said. " If Seumas Grahame him- 
 self were stretched out yonder instead of a Glenart 
 Cearnoch of no great importance to any one, Alas- 
 dair MacDonald would be scarcely zealous fool 
 enough to spoil his battle order to prosecute a 
 private feud. Look at that," he proceeded, turn- 
 ing 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 hav^e never seen the like of 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 Invcrlochy. It has been 
 written many times, though I harbour no book 
 on my shelves that tells the story. We saw Mac- 
 Donald'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'lver laid him down on the tiiUoch and 
 clawed with his nails the stunted grass that in wind-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 263 
 
 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 plaiding cast run un- 
 observed 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 Crachnish.
 
 264 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 At last there was but one horseman in chase ot 
 the six men who were fleeing without a look behind 
 them — a frenzied black-avised trooper on a short- 
 legged garron he rode most clumsily, with arms 
 that swung like wings from the shoulder, his boots 
 keeping time to the canter with grotesque knock- 
 ings against the gaunt and sweating flanks of his 
 starved animal. He rode with a shout, and he 
 rode with a fool's want of calculation, for he had 
 left all support behind him, and might readily 
 enough have been cut off by any judicious enemy 
 in the rear. Before wc could hurry down to join the 
 fugitives they observed for themselves that the pur- 
 suit had declined to this solitary person, so up they 
 drew (all but one of them), with dirks or sgcans 
 drawn to give him his welcome. And yet the 
 dragoon put no check on his horse. The beast, 
 in a terror at the din of the battle, was indifferent 
 to the check of its master, whom it bore with 
 thudding hoofs to a front that must ccrtainlx' have 
 appalled him. He was a person of some pluck, or 
 perhaps the drunkenness of terror lent him the 
 illusion of valour; at least when he found a bloody 
 end inevitable he made the best of the occasion. 
 Into the heaving sides of the brute he drove
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 265 
 
 desperate spurs, anew he shouted a scurrilous 
 name at Clan Campbell, then fired his pistol as 
 he fell upon the enemy. 
 
 The dag failed of its purpose, but the breast of 
 the horse struck an elderly man on the brow and 
 threw him on his back, so that one of the hind 
 hoofs of the animal crushed in his skull like a 
 hazel-nut. 
 
 Who of that fierce company brought the trooper 
 to his end we never knew; but when M'lver and I 
 got down to the level he was dead as knives could 
 make him, and his horse, more mad than ever, was 
 disappearing over a mossy moor with a sky-blue 
 lochan in the midst of it. 
 
 Of the five Campbells three were gentlemen — ■ 
 Forbes the baron-bailie of Ardkinglas, Neil Camp- 
 bell in Sonachan, Lochowside, and the third no 
 other than Master Gordon the minister, who was 
 the most woe-begone and crestfallen of them all. 
 The other two were small tacksmen from the 
 neighbourhood of Inneraora — one Callum Mac- 
 Iain vie Ruarie vie Allan (who had a little want, as 
 we say of a character, or natural, and was ever 
 moist with tears), and a Rob Campbell in Auch- 
 natra, whose real name was Stewart, but who had 
 been in some trouble at one time in a matter of a 
 neighbour's sheep on the braes of Appin, had dis- 
 creetly fled that country, and brought up a family 
 under a borrowed name in a country that kept him 
 in order. 
 
 We were, without doubt, in a most desperate 
 extremity. If we had escaped the immediate peril
 
 266 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 of the pursuing troopers of MacDonald, we had a 
 longer, wearier hazard before us. Any one who 
 knows the countryside I am writing of, or takes a 
 glance at my relative Gordon of Straloch's diagram 
 or map of the same, will see that we were now in 
 the very heart of a territory hotching (as the rough 
 phrase goes) with clans inimical to the house of 
 Argile. Between us and the comparative safety of 
 Bredalbane lay Stewarts, MacDonalds, Macgregors, 
 and other families less known in history, who hated 
 the name of MacCailein more than they feared the 
 wrath of God. The sight of our tartan in any one 
 of their glens would rouse hell in every heart about 
 us. 
 
 Also our numbers and the vexed state of the 
 times were against us. We could hardly pass for 
 peaceable drovers at such a season of the }'ear ; 
 we were going the wrong airt for another thing, 
 and the fact that not we alone, but many more of 
 Argile's forces in retreat were fleeing home would 
 be widely advertised around the valleys in a very 
 few hours after the battle had been fought. For 
 the news of war — good or ill — passes among the 
 glens with a magic speed. It runs faster than the 
 fiery cross itself — so fast and inexplicable on any 
 natural law, that more than once I have been ready 
 to believe it a witches' premonition more than a 
 message carried on young men's feet. 
 
 " But all that," said Sonachan, a pawky, sturdy 
 little gentleman with a round, ruddy face and a 
 great store of genealogy that he must be ever dis- 
 playing — "but all that makes it more incumbent
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 267 
 
 on us to hang together. It may easily be a week 
 before we get into Glenurchy ; we must travel by 
 night and hide by day, and besides the heartening 
 influence of company there are sentinels to consider 
 and the provision of our food." 
 
 Ardkinglas, on the other hand, was a fushion- 
 less, stupid kind of man; he was for an immediate 
 dispersion of us all, holding that only in individ- 
 uals or in pairs was it possible for us to penetrate 
 in safety to real Argile. 
 
 "I'm altogether with Sonachan," said M'lver; 
 " and I could mention half a hundred soldierly 
 reasons for the policy ; but it 's enough for me that 
 here are seven of us, no more and no less, and with 
 seven there should be all the luck that 's going." 
 
 He caught the minister's eyes on him at this, 
 and met them with a look of annoyance. 
 
 " O yes, I know, Master Gordon, you gentlemen 
 of the lawn bands have no friendliness to our old 
 Highland notions. Seven or six, it 's all the same 
 to you, I suppose, except in a question of merks 
 to the stipend." 
 
 " You 're a clever man enough, M'lver " 
 
 " Barbreck," corrected my friend, punctiliously, 
 
 " Barbreck let it be then. But you are generally 
 so sensitive to other folk's thoughts of you that 
 your skin tingles to an insult no one dreamt of 
 paying. I make no doubt a great many of your 
 Gaelic beliefs are sheer paganism or Popery or 
 relics of the same, but the charm of seven has a 
 scriptural warrant that as minister of the Gospel I 
 have some respect for, even when twisted into a
 
 268 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 portent for a band of broken men in the extremity 
 of danger." 
 
 We had to leave the dead body of our friend, 
 killed by the horse, on the hillside. He was a 
 Knapdale man, a poor creature, who was as well 
 done, perhaps, with a world that had no great 
 happiness left for him, for his home had been put 
 to the torch and his wife outraged and murdered. 
 At as much speed as we could command, we 
 threaded to the south, not along the valleys, but in 
 the braes, suffering anew the rigour of the frost 
 and the snow. By midday we reached the shore 
 of Loch Leven, and it seemed as if now our flight 
 was hopelessly barred, for the ferry that could be 
 compelled to take the army of MacCailein over the 
 brackish water at Ballachulish was scarce likely to 
 undertake the conveying back of seven fugitives of 
 the clan that had come so high-handedly through 
 their neighbourhood four days ago. On this side 
 there was not a boat in sight; indeed there was 
 not a vestige on any side of human tenancy. 
 Glencoe had taken with him every man who could 
 carry a pike, not to our disadvantage perhaps, for 
 it left the less danger of any strong attack. 
 
 On the side of the loch, when we emerged from 
 the hills, there was a cluster of whin-bushes spread 
 out upon a machar of land that in a less rigorous 
 season of the year, by the feel of the shoe-sole, 
 must be velvet-piled with salty grass. It lay in the 
 clear, gray forenoon like a garden of fairydom to 
 the view, the whin-bushes at a distant glance, float- 
 ing on billows of snow, touched at their lee by a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 269 
 
 cheering green, hung to the windward with the 
 silver of the snow, and some of them even prinked 
 off with the gold flower that gives rise to the 
 proverb about kissing being out of fashion when 
 the whin wants bloom. To come on this silent, 
 peaceful, magic territory, fresh out of the turmoil 
 of a battle, was to be in a region haunted, in the 
 borderland of morning dreams, where care is a 
 vague and far-off memory, and the elements study 
 our desires. The lake spread out before us with- 
 out a ripple, its selvedge at the shore repeating the 
 picture on the brae. I looked on it with a mind 
 peculiarly calm, rejoicing in its aspect. O ! love 
 and the coming years, thinks I, let them be here 
 or somewhere like it, not among the savage of the 
 hills, fighting, plotting, contriving; not among 
 snow-swept mounts and crying and wailing brooks, 
 but by the sedate and tranquil sea in calm weather. 
 As we walked, my friends with furtive looks to this 
 side and yon, down to the shore, I kept my face 
 to the hills of real Argile, and my heart was full of 
 love. I got that glimpse that comes to most of us 
 (had we the wit to comprehend it) of the future of 
 my life. I beheld in a wave of the emotion the 
 picture of my coming years, going down from day 
 to day very unadventurous and calm, spent in some 
 peaceful valley by a lake, sitting at no rich-laden 
 board, but at bien and happy viands with some 
 neighbour heart. A little bird of hope fluttered 
 within me, so that I knew that if every clan in that 
 countryside was arraigned against me, I had the 
 breastplate of fate on my breast. " I shall not die
 
 270 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 in this unfriendly country," I promised myself; 
 " there may be terror, and there may be gloom, 
 but I shall watch my children's children play upon 
 the braes of Shira Glen." 
 
 " You are very joco," said John to me as I broke 
 into a little laugh of content with myself. 
 
 " It's the first time you ever charged me with 
 jocosity, John," I said; " I 'm just kind of happy 
 thinking." 
 
 "Yon spectacle behind us is not humorous to 
 my notion," said he, " whatever it may be to yours. 
 And perhaps the laugh may be on the other side 
 of your face before the night comes. We are here 
 in a spider's web." 
 
 " I cry pardon for my lightness, John," I an- 
 swered ; " I '11 have time enough to sorrow over the 
 clan of Argile ; but if you had the Sight of your 
 future, and it lay in other and happier scenes than 
 these, would you not feel something of a gaiety? " 
 
 He looked at me with an envy in every feature, 
 from me to his companions, from them to the 
 jountry round about us, and then to himself as to 
 a stranger whose career was revealed in every rag 
 of his clothing. 
 
 " So," said he ; " you are the lucky man to be 
 of the breed of the elect of heaven, to get what 
 you want for the mere desire of it, and perhaps 
 without deserve. Here am I at my prime and over 
 it, and no glisk of the future before me. I must 
 be ever stumbling on, a carouscr of life in a mirk 
 and sodden lane." 
 
 "You cannot know m}' meaning," I cried.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 271 
 
 " I know it fine," said he. " You get what you 
 want because you are the bairn of content. And 
 I'm but the child of hurry (it's the true word), 
 and I must be seeking and I must be trying to the 
 bitter end." 
 
 He kicked, as he walked, at the knolls of snow 
 in his way, and lashed at the bushes with a hazel 
 wand he had lifted from a tree. 
 
 " Not all I want, perhaps," said I ; " for do 
 you know that fleeing thus from the disgrace of 
 my countrymen, I could surrender every sorrow 
 and every desire to one notion about — about — ■ 
 about " 
 
 " A girl of the middle height," said he, " and 
 her name is " 
 
 " Do not give it an utterance," I cried. " I 
 would be sorry to breathe her name in such a 
 degradation. Degradation indeed, and yet if I had 
 the certainty that I was a not altogether hopeless 
 suitor yonder, I would feel a conqueror greater 
 than Hector or Gilian-of-the-Axe." 
 
 " Ay, ay," said John. " I would not wonder. 
 And I '11 swear that a man of your fate may have 
 her if he wants her. I '11 give ye my notion of 
 wooing ; it 's that with the woman free and the 
 man with some style and boldness, he may have 
 whoever he will." 
 
 " I would be sorry to think it," said I ; " for that 
 might apply to suitors at home in Inneraora as 
 well as me." 
 
 M'lver laughed at the sally, and " Well, well," 
 said he, " we are not going to be debating the
 
 272 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 chance of love on Leven-side, with days and nights 
 of sHnking in the heather and the fern between us 
 and our home." 
 
 Though this conversation of ours may seem sin- 
 gularly calm and out of all harmony with our cir- 
 cumstances, it is so only on paper ; for, in fact, it 
 took but a minute or two of our time as we walked 
 down among those whins that inspired me with the 
 peaceful premonition of the coming years. We 
 were walking, the seven of us, not in a compact 
 group, but scattered, and at the whins when we 
 rested we sat in ones and twos behind the bushes, 
 with eyes cast anxiously along the shore for sign 
 of any craft that might take us over. 
 
 What might seem odd to any one who docs not 
 know the shrinking mood of men broken with a 
 touch of disgrace in their breaking, was that for 
 long we studiously said nothing of the horrors we 
 had left behind us. Five men fleeing from a disas- 
 trous field and two new out of the clutches of a 
 conquering foe, we were dumb or discoursed of 
 affairs very far removed from the reflection that 
 we were a clan at extremities. 
 
 But we could keep up this silence of shame 
 no longer than our running; when we sat among 
 the whins on Leven-side, and took a breath and 
 scrutinised along the coast, for sign of food or 
 ferry, we must be talking of what we had left 
 behind. 
 
 Gordon told the story with a pained, constrained, 
 and halting utterance : of the surprise of Auchin- 
 breck when he heard the point of war from Nevis
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 273 
 
 Glen, and could not believe that Montrose was so 
 near at hand ; of the wavering Lowland wings, the 
 slaughter of the Campbell gentlemen. 
 
 " We were in a trap," said he, drawing with a 
 stick on the smooth snow a diagram of the situa- 
 tion. " We were between brae and water. I am 
 no man of war, and my heart swelled at the spec- 
 tacle of the barons cut down like nettles. And by 
 the most foolish of tactics, surely, a good many of 
 our forces were on the other side of the loch." 
 
 " That was not Auchinbreck's doing, I '11 war- 
 rant," said M'lver; "he would never have coun- 
 selled a division so fatal." 
 
 " Perhaps not," said the cleric, drily ; " but what 
 if a general has only a sort of savage army at his 
 call? The gentry of your clan " 
 
 " What about MacCailein? " I asked, wondering 
 that there was no word of the chief 
 
 " Go on with your story," said MTver, sharply, 
 to the cleric. 
 
 ** The gentry of your clan," said Gordon, paying 
 no heed to my query, " were easy enough to 
 guide; but yon undisciplined kerns from the hills 
 had no more regard for martial law than for the 
 holy Commandments. God help them ! They 
 went their own gait, away from the main body, 
 plundering and robbing." 
 
 " I would not just altogether call it plundering, 
 nor yet robbing," said John, a show of anno)'ance 
 on his face. 
 
 " And I don't think myself," said Sonachan, 
 removing himself, as he spoke, from our side, and 
 
 i8
 
 274 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 going to join the three others, who sat apart from 
 us a few yards, " that it 's a gentleman's way of 
 s[)eaking of the doings of other gentlemen of the 
 same name and tartan as ourselves." 
 
 " Ay, ay," said the minister, looking from one 
 to the other of us, his shaven jowl with lines of a 
 most annoying pity on it — " ay, ay," said he, " it 
 would be pleasing you better, no doubt, to hint at 
 no vice or folly in your army; that's the High- 
 lands for you ! I 'm no Highlander, thank God, 
 or at least with the savage long out of me ; for I 'm 
 of an honest and orderl}' Lowland stock, and my 
 trade 's the Gospel and the truth, and the truth 
 you '11 get from Alexander Gordon, Master of the 
 Arts, if you had your black joctilegs at his neck 
 for it." 
 
 He rose up, pursing his face, panting at the nos- 
 tril, very crouse and defiant in every way. 
 
 " Oh, you may just sit you down," said M'lver, 
 sharply, to him. " You can surely give us truth 
 without stamping it down our throats with your 
 boots, that are not, I 've noticed, of the smallest 
 size." 
 
 " I know you, sir, from boot to bonnet," said 
 Gordon. 
 
 " You 're well off in your acquaintance," said 
 M'lver, jocularly ; " I wish I kent so good a man." 
 
 " P'rom boot to bonnet," said Gordon, in no 
 whit abashed by the irony. " Man, do you know," 
 he went on, " there 's a time comes to me now 
 when, by the grace of God, I can see to one's in- 
 nermost as through a lozen. I shudder, some-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 275 
 
 times, at the gift. For there's the fair face, and 
 there 's the smug and smiHng hp, and there 's the 
 flattery at the tongue, and below that masked front 
 is Beelzebub himself, meaning well sometimes — • 
 perhaps always — but by his fall a traitor first and 
 last." 
 
 " God ! " cried M'lver, with a very ugly face, 
 " that sounds awkwardly like a roundabout way of 
 giving me a bad character." 
 
 " I said, sir," answered Gordon, " that poor 
 Beelzebub does not sometimes ken his own trade. 
 I have no doubt that in your heart you are touched 
 to the finest by love of your fellows." 
 
 " And that 's the truth — when they are not 
 clerics," cried John. 
 
 " Touched to the finest, and set in a glow, too, 
 by a manly and unselfish act, and eager to go 
 through this world on pleasant footings with your- 
 self and all else." 
 
 " Come, come," I cried ; " I know my friend 
 well. Master Gordon. We are not all that we 
 might be ; but I 'm grateful for the luck that 
 brought me so good a friend as John M'lver." 
 
 " I never cried down his credit," said the minis- 
 ter, simply. 
 
 " Your age gives you full liberty," said John. 
 " I would never lift a hand." 
 
 " The lifting of your hand," said the cleric, with 
 a flashing eye, " is the last issue I would take 
 thought of. I can hold my own. You are a fair 
 and shining vessel (of a kind), but Beelzebub 's at 
 your heart. They tell me that people like you ;
 
 2/6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 this gentleman of Elrigmore claims you for his 
 comrade. Well, well, so let it be ! It but shows 
 anew the charm of the glittering exterior: they 
 like you for your weaknesses and not for your 
 strength. Do you know anything of what they 
 call duty? " 
 
 " I have starved to the bone in Laaland without 
 complaint, stood six weeks on watch in Stralsung's 
 Franken gate, eating my meals at my post, and 
 John M'lver never turned skirts on an enemy." 
 
 " Very good, sir, very good," said the minister ; 
 " but duty is most ill to do when it is to be done 
 in love and not in hate." 
 
 "Damn all schooling!" cried John. "You're 
 off in the depths of it again, and I cannot be after 
 you. Duty is duty in love or hate, is it not? " 
 
 " It would take two or three sessions of St. 
 Andrews to show you that it makes a great differ 
 whether it is done in love or hate. You do your 
 duty by your enemy well enough, no doubt — a 
 barbarian of the blackest will do no less — but 
 it takes the better man to do his duty sternly 
 by those he loves and by himself above all. 
 Argile " 
 
 "Yes," cried I, "what about Argile?" 
 
 The minister paid no heed to my question. 
 
 " Argile," said he, " has been far too long flat- 
 tered by you and your like, M'lver." 
 
 " Barbrcck," put in my comrade. 
 
 " Barbreck be it then. A man in his position 
 thus never learns the truth. He sees around him 
 but plausible faces and the truth at a cowardly
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 277 
 
 compromise. That 's the sorrow of your High- 
 lands ; it will be the black curse of your chiefs in 
 the day to come. As for me, I 'm for duty first 
 and last — even if it demands me to put a rope at 
 my brother's neck or my hand in the fire." 
 
 " Maybe you are, maybe you are," said John, 
 " and it's very fine of you; and I'm not denying 
 but I can fancy some admirable quality in the 
 character. But if I 'm no great hand at the duty, 
 I can swear to the love." 
 
 " It 's a word I hate to hear men using," said I. 
 
 The minister relaxed to a smile at John's amia- 
 bility, and John smiled on me. 
 
 " It 's a woman's word, I daresay, Colin," said he ; 
 " but there 's no man, I '11 swear, turning it over 
 more often in his mind than yourself." 
 
 Where we lay, the Pap of Glencoe — Sgor-na- 
 ciche, as they call it in the Gaelic — loomed across 
 Loch Leven in wisps of wind-blown gray. Long- 
 beaked birds came to the sand and piped a sharp 
 and anxious note, or chattered like children. The 
 sea-banks floated on the water, rising and dipping 
 to every wave ; it might well be a dream we were 
 in on the borderland of sleep at morning. 
 
 "What about Argile? " I asked again. 
 
 The minister said never a word. John Splendid 
 rose to his feet, shook the last of his annoyance 
 from him, and cast an ardent glance to those re- 
 mote hills of Lorn. 
 
 " God's grandeur," said he, turning to the Gaelic 
 it was proper to use but sparingly before a Saxon, 
 "Behold the unfriendliness of those terrible moun-
 
 278 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 tains and ravines ! I am Gaelic to the core ; but 
 give me in this mood of mine the flat south soil 
 and the ultimate dip of the sky round a bannock 
 of country. Oh, I wish I was where Aora runs ! 
 I wish I saw the highway of Loch Finnc that leads 
 down the slope of the sea where the towns pack 
 close together and fires are warm ! " He went on 
 and sang a song of the low country, its multitude 
 of cattle, its friendly hearths, its frequented walks 
 of lovers in the dusk and in the spring. 
 
 Sonachan and Ardkinglas and the tacksmen 
 came over to listen, and the man with the want 
 began to weep with a child's surrender. 
 
 "And what about Argile?" said I, when the 
 humming ceased. 
 
 " You are very keen on that bit, lad," said the 
 baron-bailie, smiling spitefully with thin hard lips 
 that revealed his teeth gleaming white and square 
 against the dusk of his face. " You are very keen 
 on that bit ; you might be waiting for the rest of 
 the minister's story." 
 
 " Oh," I said, " I did not think there was any 
 more of the minister's tale to come. I crave his 
 pardon." 
 
 " I think, too, I have not much more of a story 
 to tell," said the minister, stiffly. 
 
 "And I think," said M'lvcr, in a sudden hurry 
 to be off, " that we might be moving from here. 
 The head of the loch is the only way for us if \vc 
 are to be off this unwholesome countryside by the 
 mouth of the night." 
 
 It is likely we would have taken him at his word,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 279 
 
 and have risen and gone on his way to the east, 
 where the narrowing of the loch showed that it 
 was close on its conclusion ; but the Stewart took 
 from his dorlacJi or knapsack some viands that 
 gave a frantic edge to our appetite and compelled 
 us to stay and eat. 
 
 The day was drawing to its close, the sun, fall- 
 ing behind us, was pillowed on clouds of a rich 
 crimson. For the first time, we noticed the signs 
 of the relaxation of the austere season in the return 
 of bird and beast to their familiar haunts. As the 
 sun dipped, the birds came out to the brae side to 
 catch his last ray as they ever love to do. Whaups 
 rose off the sand, and following the gleam upon 
 the braes, ascended from slope to slope, and the 
 plover followed, too, dipping his feet in the golden 
 tide receding. On little fir-patches mounted 
 numerous coillcacJi dJudbJi — blackcock of sheeny 
 feather, and the owls began to hoot in the wood 
 beyond.
 
 28o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXn 
 
 We had eaten to the last crumb, and were ready 
 to be going when again I asked Gordon what had 
 come over Argile. 
 
 " I '11 tell you that," said he, bitterly ; but as he 
 began, some wildfowl rose in a startled flight to 
 our right and whirred across the sky. 
 
 "There's some one coming," said MTver, "let 
 us keep close together." 
 
 From where the wildfowl rose, the Dame Dubh, 
 as we called the old woman of Carnus, came in our 
 direction, half-running, half-walking through the 
 snow. She spied us while she was yet a great way 
 off, stopped a second as one struck with an arrow, 
 then continued her progress more eagerly than 
 ever, with high-piped cries and taunts at us. 
 
 " O cowards ! " she cried ; " do not face Argile, 
 or the glens }'ou belong to. Cowards, cowards. 
 Lowland women, Glencoc 's full of laughter at your 
 disgrace ! " 
 
 " Royal 's my race, I '11 not be laughed at," cried 
 Stewart. 
 
 " They cannot know of it already in Glencoe," 
 said MTver, appalled. 
 
 " Know it," said the crone, drawing nearer and 
 with still more frenzy, " Glencoe has songs on it
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 281 
 
 already. The stench from Invcrlochy 's in the air; 
 it 's a mock in Benderloch and Ardgour, it 's a 
 nightmare in Glenurchy, and the women are keen- 
 ing on the slopes of Cladich. Cowards, cowards, 
 little men, cowards ! all the curses of Conan on 
 you and the black rocks ; die from home, and Hell 
 itself reject you." 
 
 We stood in front of her in a group, slack at the 
 arms and shoulders, bent a little at the head, 
 affronted for the first time with the full shame of 
 our disaster. All my bright portents of the future 
 seemed, as they flashed again before me, muddy in 
 the hue, an unfaithful man's remembrance of his 
 sins when they come before him at the bedside of 
 his wife ; the evasions of my friends revealed them- 
 selves what they were indeed, the shutting of the 
 eyes against shame. 
 
 The woman's meaning Master Gordon could only 
 guess at, and he faced her composedly. 
 
 " You are far off your road," he said to her 
 mildly, but she paid him no heed. 
 
 " You have a bad tongue, mother," said MTver. 
 
 She turned and spat on his vest, and on him 
 anew she poured her condemnation. 
 
 " Yo?i, indeed, the gentleman with an account to 
 pay, the hero, the avenger ! I wish my teeth had 
 found your neck at the head of Aora Glen." She 
 stood in the half night, foaming ovcr-with hate and 
 evil words, her taunts stinging like asps. 
 
 " Take off the tartan, ladies ! " she screamed ; 
 " off with men's apparel and on with the short 
 gown."
 
 282 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Her cries rang so over the land that she was a 
 danger bruiting our presence to the whole neigh- 
 bourhood, and it was in a common panic we ran 
 with one accord from her in the direction of the 
 loch-head. The man with the want took up the 
 rear, whimpering as he ran, feeling again, it might 
 be, a child fleeing from maternal chastisement ; the 
 rest of us went silently, all but Stewart, who was a 
 cocky little man with a large bonnet pulled down 
 on the back of his head like a morion, to hide the 
 absence of ears that had been cut off by the law 
 for some of his Appin adventures. He was a per- 
 son who never saw in most of a day's transactions 
 aught but the humour of them, and as we ran from 
 this shrieking beldame of Carnus, he was choking 
 with laughter at the ploy. 
 
 " Royal 's my race," said he at the first ease to 
 our running — "Royal's my race, and I never 
 thought to run twice in one day from an enemy. 
 Stop your greeting, Galium, and not be vexing our 
 friends the gentlemen." 
 
 " What a fury ! " said Master Gordon. " And 
 that 's the lady of omens ! What about her blessing 
 now? " 
 
 "Ay, and what about her prophecies?" asked 
 M'lver, sharply. " She was not so far wrong, 
 I 'm thinking, about the risks of Inverlochy; the 
 heather's above the gall, indeed." 
 
 " But at any rate," said I, " MacGailcin's head is 
 not on a pike." 
 
 " You must be always on the old key," cried 
 MTver, angrily. " Oh man, man, but }'ou 're sore
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 283 
 
 in want of tact." His face was throbbing and 
 hoved. "Here's halfa-dozen men," said he, 
 " with plenty to occupy their wits with what 's to 
 be done and what 's to happen them before they 
 win home, and all your talk is on a most vexatious 
 trifle. Have you found me, a cousin of the Mar- 
 quis, anxious to query our friends here about the ins 
 and outs of the engagement? It's enough for me 
 that the heather 's above the gall. I saw this 
 dreary morning the sorrow of my life, and I 'm in 
 no hurry to add to it by the value of a single tear." 
 
 Sonachan was quite as bitter. " I don't think," 
 said he, " that it matters very much to you, sir, 
 what Argile may have done or may not have done ; 
 you should be glad of your luck (if luck it was and 
 no design), that kept you clear of the trouble 
 altogether." And again he plunged ahead of us 
 with Ardkinglas, to avoid my retort to an imper- 
 tinence that, coming from a younger man, would 
 have more seriously angered me. 
 
 The minister by now had recovered his wind, 
 and was in another of his sermon moods, with this 
 rufifling at MacCailein's name as his text. 
 
 " I think I can comprehend," said he, " all this 
 unwillingness to talk about my lord of Argile's 
 part in the disaster of to-day ; no Gael though I 
 am, I'm loath myself to talk about a bad black 
 business, but that's because I love my master — 
 for master he is in scholarship, in gifts, in every 
 attribute and intention of the Christian soldier. 
 It is for a different reason, I 'm afraid, that our 
 friend Barbreck shufiles."
 
 284 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Barbreck never shuffles," said John, stiffly. 
 " If he did in this matter it would be for as true an 
 affection for his chief as any lalland cleric ever felt 
 for his patron." 
 
 " And yet, sir, you shuffle for another reason, 
 too. You do not want to give your ridiculous 
 Highland pride the shock of hearing that }^our 
 chief left in a galley before the battle he lost had 
 well begun." 
 
 A curious cry came from M'lver's lips. He 
 lifted his face, lined with sudden shadows, to the 
 stars that now were lighting to the east, and I 
 heard his teeth grind. 
 
 " So that 's the bitter end of it ! " said I to 
 myself, stunned by this pitiful conclusion. My 
 mind groped back on the events of the whole wae- 
 ful winter. I saw Argile again at peace among his 
 own people ; I heard anew his clerkly but waver- 
 ing sentiment on the trade of the sword; I sat by 
 him in the mouth of Glen Noe, and the song and 
 the guess went round the fire. But the picture 
 that came to me first and stayed with me last was 
 Argile standing in his chamber in the Castle of 
 Inneraora, the pallor of the study on his face, and 
 his little Archie with his gold hair and the night- 
 gown running out and clasping him about the 
 knees. 
 
 We struggled through tlic night, weary men, hun- 
 gry men. Loch Levenhcad may be bonny b}- 
 day, but at night it is far from friendly to the 
 unaccustomed wanderer. Swampy meadows frozen 
 to the hard bone, and uncountable burns, and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 285 
 
 weary ascents, and alarming dips lie there at the 
 foot of the great forest of Mamore. And to us, 
 poor fugitives, even these were less cruel than the 
 thickets at the very head where the river brawled 
 into the loch with a sullen surrender of its moun- 
 tain independence. 
 
 About seven or eight o'clock we got safely over 
 a ford and into the hilly country that lies tumbled 
 to the north of Glencoe. Before us lay the choice 
 of two routes, either of them leading in the direc- 
 tion of Glenurchy; but both of them hemmed in 
 by the most inevitable risks, especially as but one 
 of all our party was familiar (and that one but 
 middling well) with the countryside. " The choice 
 of a cross-road at night in a foreign land is tall 
 John's pick of the farmer's daughters," as our 
 homely proverb has it ; you never know what you 
 have till the morn's morning. And our picking 
 was bad indeed, for instead of taking what we 
 learned again was a drove-road through to Tynree, 
 we stood more to the right and plunged into what, 
 after all, turned out to be nothing better than a cor- 
 rie among the hills. It brought us up a most steep 
 hillside, and landed us two hours' walk later far too 
 much in the heart and midst of Glencoe to be for 
 our comfort. From the hillside we emerged upon, 
 the valley lay revealed, a great hack among the 
 mountains.
 
 286 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Of the seven of us, Stewart was the only one with 
 a notion of the lie of the country. He had bought 
 cattle in the glen, and he had borrowed (as we 
 may be putting it) in the same place, and a man 
 with the gifts of observation and memory, who has 
 had to guess his way at night among foreign clans 
 and hills with a drove of unwilling and mourning 
 cattle before him, has many a feature of the neigh- 
 bourhood stamped upon his mind. Stewart's idea 
 was that to-night we might cross Glencoe, dive 
 into one of the passes that run between the moun- 
 tains called the Big and Little Herdsmen, or be- 
 tween the Little Herd and Ben Fhada, into the 
 foot of the forest of Dalness, then by the corries 
 through the Black Mount of Brcdalbane to Glen- 
 urchy. Once on the Brig of Urchy, we were as 
 safe, in a manner, as on the shores of Loch Finne. 
 On Gordon's map this looks a very simple jour- 
 ney, that a vigorous mountaineer could accom- 
 plish without fatigue in a couple of days if he 
 knew the drove-roads ; but it was a wicked season 
 for such an enterprise, and if the Dame Dubh's 
 tale was right (as well enough it might be, for the 
 news of Argile's fall would be round the world in 
 a rumour of wind), every clan among these valleys 
 and hills would be on the hunting-road to cut
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 287 
 
 down broken men seeking their way back to the 
 country of MacCailein Mor. Above all was it a 
 hard task for men who had been starving on a 
 half-meal dram mock for two or three days. I 
 myself felt the hunger gnawing at my inside like 
 a restless red-hot conscience. My muscles were 
 like iron, and with a footman's feeding could have 
 walked to Inneraora without more than two or 
 three hours' sleep at a time; but my weakness 
 for food was so great that the prospect before 
 me was appalling. 
 
 It appalled, indeed, the whole of us. Fancy us 
 on barren hills, unable to venture into the hamlets 
 or townships where we had brought torch and 
 pike a few days before ; unable to borrow or to 
 buy, hazarding no step of the foot without a look 
 first to this side and then to yon, lest enemies 
 should be up against us. Is it a wonder that very 
 soon we had the slouch of the gangrel and the 
 cunning aspect of the thief ? But there 's some- 
 thing in gentle blood that always comes out on 
 such an occasion. The baron-bailie and Neil 
 Campbell, and even the minister, made no ado 
 about their hunger, though they were suffering 
 keenly from it; only the two tacksmen kept up 
 a ceaseless grumbling. 
 
 M'lver kept a hunter's ear and eye alert at 
 every step of our progress. He had a hope 
 that the white hares, whose footprints sometimes 
 showed among the snow, might run, as I have 
 seen them do at night, within reach of a cudgel ; 
 he kept a constant search for badger-hamlets, for
 
 288 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 he would have dug from his sleep that glutton- 
 ous fat-haunched rascal who gorges himself in 
 his own yellow moon-time of harvest. The hare 
 nor badger fell in our way. 
 
 The moon was up, but a veil of gray cloud over- 
 spread the heavens and a frosty haze obscured the 
 country. A clear cold hint at an odour of spring 
 was already in the air, perhaps the first rumour the 
 bush gets that the sap must rise. Out of the haze 
 now and then, as we descended to the valley, there 
 would come the peculiar cry of the red-deer, or 
 the flafif of a wing, or the bleat of a goat. It was 
 maddening to be in the neighbourhood of the meal 
 that roe, or bird, or goat would offer, and yet be 
 unable to reach it. 
 
 Thus we were stumbling on, very weary, very 
 hungry, the man with the want in a constant wail, 
 and Sonachan lamenting for suppers he had been 
 saucy over in days of rowth and plenty, when a 
 light oozed out of the gray-dark ahead of us, in 
 the last place in the world one would look for 
 any such sign of humanity. 
 
 We stopped on the moment, and John Splendid 
 went ahead to see what lay in the way. He was 
 gone but a little when he came back with a hearty 
 accent to tell us that luck for once was ours. 
 
 " There 's a house yonder," said he, talking 
 English for the benefit of the cleric ; " it has a 
 roaring fire and every sign of comfort, and it's 
 my belief there 's no one at home within but a 
 woman and a few bairns. The odd thing is that 
 as I get a look of the woman between the door-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 289 
 
 post and the wall, she sits with her back to the 
 cruisie-Hght, patching clothes and crooning away 
 at a dirge that 's broken by her tears. If it had 
 been last week, and our little adventures in Glencoe 
 had brought us so far up this side of the glen, I 
 might have thought she had suffered something 
 at our hands. But we were never near this tack- 
 house this week, so the housewife's sorrow, what- 
 ever it is, can scarcely be at our door. Anyway," 
 he went on, " here are seven cold men, and weary 
 men and hungry men too (and that 's the worst of 
 it), and I 'm going to have supper and a seat, if 
 it 's the last in the world." 
 
 " I hope there 's going to be no robbery about 
 the affair," said the minister, in an apparent dread 
 of rough theft and maybe worse. 
 
 M'lver's voice had a sneer in every word of it 
 when he answered in a very affected tongue of 
 English he was used to assume when he wished 
 to be at his best before a Saxon. 
 
 " Is it the logic of your school," he asked, 
 "that what's the right conduct of war when we 
 are in regiments is robbery when we are but 
 seven broken men? I 'm trying to mind that you 
 found fault with us for helping ourselves in this 
 same Glencoe last week, and refused to eat Cor- 
 ryoick's beef in Appin, and I cannot just recall 
 the circumstance. Are we not, think ye, just as 
 much at war with Glencoe now as then? And 
 have seven starving men not an even better right, 
 before God, to forage for themselves than has an 
 army? " 
 
 19
 
 290 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "There's a difference," said the minister, stiffly. 
 " We were then legitimate troops of war, fighting 
 for the Solemn League and Covenant under a 
 noble lord with Letters. It was the Almighty's 
 cause, and " 
 
 "Was it, indeed?" said John Splendid. "And 
 was Himself on the other side of Loch Leven 
 when His tulzie was on?" 
 
 " Scoffer ! " cried Gordon, and M'lver said no 
 more, but led us through the dark to the house 
 whose light so cheerfully smiled before us. 
 
 The house, when we came to it, proved a trig 
 little edifice of far greater comfort than most of the 
 common houses of the Highlands — not a dry- 
 stone bigging but a rubble tenement, very snugly 
 thacked and windowed, and having a piece of 
 kail-plot at its rear. It was perched well up on 
 the brae, and its light at evening must have 
 gleamed like a friendly star far up the glen, that 
 needs every touch of brightness to mitigate its 
 gloom. As we crept close up to it in the snow, 
 we could hear the crooning John Splendid had 
 told us of, a most doleful sound in a land of 
 darkness and strangers. 
 
 " Give a rap, and when she answers the door we 
 can tell our needs peaceably," said the minister. 
 
 " I 'm not caring about rapping, and I 'm not 
 caring about entering at all now," said MTver, 
 turning about with some uneasiness. " I wish 
 we had fallen on a more cheery dwelling, even if 
 it were to be coerced with club and pistol. A 
 prickle 's at my skin that tells me here is dool, 
 and I can smell mort-cloth."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 291 
 
 Sonachan gave a grunt, and thumped loudly on 
 the fir boards. A silence that was like a swound 
 fell on the instant, and the light within went out at 
 a puft". For a moment it seemed as if our notion 
 of occupancy and light and lament had been a 
 delusion, for now the grave itself was no more 
 desolate and still. 
 
 " I think we might be going," said I in a whis- 
 per, my heart thud-thudding at my vest, my mind 
 sharing some of John Splendid's apprehension 
 that we were intruders on some profound grief. 
 And yet my hunger was a furious thing that 
 belched red-hot at my stomach. 
 
 " Royal 's my race ! " said Stewart. " I '11 be 
 kept tirling at no door-pin in the Highlands, — 
 let us drive in the bar." 
 
 "What does he say?" asked the cleric, and I 
 gave him the English of it. 
 
 " You '11 drive no doors in here," said he, firmly, 
 to Stewart. " We can but give another knock and 
 see what comes of it. Knock you, M'lver." 
 
 " Barbreck." 
 
 " Barbreck be it then." 
 
 " I would sooner go to the glen foot, and risk 
 all," said John. 
 
 Sonachan grunted again ; out he drew his dirk, 
 and he rapped with the hilt of it loud and long at 
 the door. A crying of children rose within, and, 
 behold, I was a child again ! I was a child again 
 in Shira Glen, alone in a little chamber with a win- 
 dow uncurtained and unshuttered, yawning red- 
 mouthed to the outer night. My back was almost
 
 292 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 ev^er to the window, whose panes reflected a peat- 
 fire and a face as long as a fiddle, and eyes that 
 shone like coal ; and though I looked little at the 
 window yawning to the wood, I felt that it never 
 wanted some curious spy outside, some one girning 
 or smiling in at me and my book. I must look 
 round, or I must put a hand on my. shoulder to 
 make sure no other hand was there, — then the 
 Terror that drives the black blood from the heart 
 through all the being, and a boy unbuckling his 
 kilt with fevered fingers and leaping with frantic 
 sobs to bed ! One night when the black blood of 
 the Terror still coursed through me, though I was 
 dovering over to sleep, there came a knocking at 
 the door, a knock commanding, a knock never 
 explained. It brought me to my knees with a 
 horror that almost choked me at the throat, a cold 
 dew in the very palms of the hands. I dare not 
 ask who rapped for fear I should have an answer 
 that comes some day or other to every child of my 
 race, — an answer no one told me of, an answer 
 that then I guessed. 
 
 All this flashed through my mind when the 
 children's crying rose in the dark interior — that 
 cry of children old and young as they go through 
 the mysteries of life and the alleyways of death. 
 
 The woman soothed her children audibl}', then 
 called out, asking what we wanted. 
 
 " I 'm a man from Appin," cried out Stewart, 
 with great promptness and cunning, " and I have a 
 friend or two with me. I was looking for the 
 house of Kilinchean, where a cousin of mine — a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 293 
 
 fine spinner and knitter, but thrawn in the temper 
 — is married on the tenant, and we lost our way. 
 We 're cold and we 're tired, and we 're hungry, 
 and-^" 
 
 " Step in," said the woman, lifting back the door. 
 " You are many miles from Kilinchean, and I know 
 Appin Mary very well." 
 
 But three of us entered, Stewart, M'lver, and 
 myself, the others, on a sudden inspiration, prefer- 
 ring not to alarm the woman by betraying the num- 
 ber of us, and concealing themselves in the byre 
 that leaned against the gable of the dwelling. 
 
 " God save all here ! " said M'lver, as we stepped 
 in, and the woman lit the cruisie by sticking its 
 nose in the peat-embers. " I 'm afraid we come 
 on you at a bad time." 
 
 She turned with the cruisie in her hands and 
 seemed to look over his head at vacancy, with 
 large and melting eyes in a comely face. 
 
 " You come," said she, " like grief, just when we 
 are not expecting it, and in the dead of night. 
 But you are welcome at my door." 
 
 We sat down on stools at her invitation, bathed 
 in the yellow light of cruisie and peat. The reek 
 of the fire rose in a faint breath among the pot- 
 chains, and lingered among the rafters, loath, as it 
 were, to emerge in the cold night. In a cowering 
 group beneath the blankets of a bed in a corner 
 were four children, the bed-clothes hurriedly 
 clutched up to their chins, their eyes staring out 
 on the intruders. The woman put out some food 
 before us, coarse enough in quality but plenty of it.
 
 294 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and was searching in a press for platters when she 
 turned to ask how many of us there were. We looked 
 at each other a httle ashamed, for it seemed as if she 
 had guessed of our divided company and the four 
 men in the byre. It is hkely she would have been 
 told the truth, but her next words set us on a 
 different notion. 
 
 " You '11 notice," said she, still lifting her eyes 
 to a point over our heads, " that I have not my 
 sight." 
 
 "God! that's a pity," said M'lver, in genuine 
 distress, with just that accent of fondling in it that 
 a Highlander, in his own tongue, can use like a 
 salve for distress. 
 
 "I am not complaining of it," said the woman; 
 " there are worse hardships in this world." 
 
 " Mistress," said John, " there are. I think I 
 
 would willingly have been bl dim in the sight 
 
 this morning if it could have happened." 
 
 "Ay, ay! " said the woman in a sad abstraction, 
 standing with plates in her hand listening (I could 
 swear) for a footstep that would never come again. 
 
 We sat and warmed ourselves and ate heartily, 
 the heat of that homely dwelling — the first we had 
 sat in for days — an indulgence so rare and pre- 
 cious that it seemed a thing we could never again 
 tear ourselves away from to encounter the unkind- 
 ness of those Lorn mounts anew. The children 
 watched us with an alarm and curiosity no way 
 abated, beholding in us perhaps (for one at least 
 was at an age to discern the difference our tartan 
 and general aspect presented from llu)se of Glencoc)
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 295 
 
 that we were strangers from a great distance, may- 
 be enemies, at least with some rigour of warfare 
 about our visage and attire. The mother, finding 
 her way with the readiness of long familiarity about 
 the house, got ease for her grief, whatever it was, 
 in the duties thus suddenly thrust upon her : she 
 spoke but seldom, and she never asked — in that 
 she was true Gael — any more particulars about 
 ourselves than Stewart had volunteered. And 
 when we had been served with our simple viands, 
 she sat composedly before us with her hands in her 
 lap, and her eyes turned on us with an appearance 
 of sedate scrutiny, no whit the less perplexing be- 
 cause we knew her orbs were but fair clean window- 
 panes shuttered and hasped within. 
 
 " You will excuse my dull welcome," she said, 
 with a wan smile, speaking a very pleasant accent 
 of North Country Gaelic, that turned upon the 
 palate like a sweet. " A week or two ago you 
 would have found a very cheerful house, not a 
 widow's sorrow, and, if my eyes were useless, my 
 man {l)cannachd Ids) had a lover's eyes, and these 
 were the eyes for himself and me." 
 
 "Was he at Inverlochy?" I asked, softly; "was 
 he out with Montrose?" 
 
 " He died a week come Thursday," said the 
 woman. "They 're telling me of wars — weary on 
 them and God's pity on the widow women they 
 make, and the mothers they must leave lonely — 
 but such a thing is sorrow that the world, from 
 France to the Isles, might be in flames and I would 
 still be thinking on my man that 's yonder in the
 
 296 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 cold clods of the yard. . . . Stretch your hands; 
 it's your welcome, gentlemen." 
 
 " I have one or two other friends out-bye there 
 in the byre," put in Stewart, who found the vigi- 
 lance of the youths in the bed gave no opportunity 
 for smuggling provand to the others of our party. 
 
 The woman's face flamed up a little and took on 
 the least of a look of alarm that Stewart — who 
 was very cunning and quick in some matters — 
 set about removing at once with some of those 
 convenient Hes that he seemed never out of the 
 want of. 
 
 " Some of our lads," said he, with a duck of 
 apology at M'lver and myself for taking liberties 
 with the reputation of our friends. " They 're very 
 well where they are among the bracken, if they 
 had but the bite and sup, and if it 's your will I 
 could take them that." 
 
 " Could they not be coming in and sitting by the 
 fire?" asked the woman, set at rest by Stewart's 
 story ; but he told her he would never think of fill- 
 ing her room with a rabble of plain men, and in a 
 little he was taking out the viands for our friends 
 in the byre. 
 
 The woman sat anew upon her stool and her 
 hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at 
 double exercise that now she could not readily 
 relax the strain on it. MTver was in a great fidget 
 to be off. I could see it in every movement of 
 him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his 
 feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting 
 griefs of life, and this intercourse with new widow-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 297 
 
 hood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, 
 in a way of speaking, the woman to my heart. She 
 stood to me for all the griefs I had known in life, 
 and was yet the representative, the figure of love — 
 revealing an element of nature, a human passion 
 so different from those tumults and hatreds we had 
 been encountering. I had been thinking as I 
 marched among the wilds of Lochaber and Bade- 
 noch that vengeance and victory and dominion by 
 the strong hand were the main spurs to action, and 
 now, on a sudden, I found that affection was 
 stronger than them all. 
 
 "Are you keeping the place on?" I asked the 
 widow, " or do you go back to your folks, for I 
 notice from your tongue that you are of the 
 North?" 
 
 " I 'm off the Grants," she said ; " but my 
 heart 's in Glencoe, and I '11 never leave it. I am 
 not grieving at the future, I am but minding on 
 the past, and I have my bairns. . . . More milk 
 for the lads outside ; stretch your hands. . . . Oh 
 yes, I have my bairns." 
 
 " Long may they prosper, mistress," said M'lver, 
 drumming with a horn spoon on his knee, and 
 winking and smiling very friendly to the little 
 fellows in a row in the bed, who, all but the oldest, 
 thawed to this humour of the stranger. " It must 
 be a task getting a throng like yon bedded at even- 
 ing. Some day they '11 be off your hand, and 
 it'll be no more the lullaby of Crodh Chailein, but 
 them driving at the beasts for themselves." 
 
 " Are you married ? " asked the woman.
 
 298 ' JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " No," said John, with a low laiigli, " not yet. 
 I never had the fortune to fill the right woman's 
 eye. I 've waited at the ferry for some one who '11 
 take a man over without the ferry fee, for I 'm a 
 poor gentleman, though I'm of a good family, and 
 had plenty, and the ones with the tocher won't 
 have me, and the tocherless girls I dare not 
 betray." 
 
 " You ken the old word," said the woman ; " the 
 man who waits long at the ferry will get over some 
 day." 
 
 Stewart put down a cogie and loosened a button 
 of his vest, and with an air of great joviality, that 
 was marred curiously by the odd look his absence 
 of lugs conferred, he winked cunningly at us and 
 slapped the woman in a rough friendship on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Are you thinking yourself " he began, and 
 
 what he would finish with may be easily guessed. 
 But M'lver fixed him with an eye that pricked 
 like a rapier. 
 
 " Sit ye down, Stewart," said he; "your race is 
 royal, as ye must be aye telling us, but there's 
 surely many a droll bye-blow in the breed." 
 
 "Are you not all from Appin?" asked the 
 woman, wath a new interest, taking a corner of 
 M'lver's plaiding in her hands and running a few 
 checks through the fine delicate fingers of a lady. 
 Her face dyed crimson; she drew back her stool 
 a little, and cried out — 
 
 " That 's not off a Stewart web — it was never 
 waulked in Appin. Whom have I here?"
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 299 
 
 John Splendid bent to her very kindly and laid 
 a hand on hers. 
 
 " I '11 tell you the God's truth, mother," said he; 
 " we 're broken men ; we have one Stewart of a kind 
 with us, but we belong to parts far off from here, 
 and all we want is to get to them as speedily as 
 may be. I '11 put you in mind (but troth I 'm sure 
 it's not needed) of two obligations that lie on 
 every Gaelic household. One of them is to give 
 the shelter of the night and the supper of the night 
 to the murderer himself, even if the corpse on the 
 heather was your son ; and the other is to ask no 
 question off your guest till he has drunk the 
 deocJi-an-doru is." 
 
 " I 'm grudging you nothing," said the woman ; 
 " but a blind widow is entitled to the truth and 
 frankness." 
 
 M'lver soothed her with great skill, and brought 
 her back to her bairns. 
 
 " Ay," said he, " some day they '11 be off your 
 hands, and you the lady with sons and servants." 
 
 " Had you a wife and bairns of your own," said 
 the woman, " you might learn some day that a 
 parent's happiest time is when her children are 
 young. They 're all there, and they 're all mine 
 when they 're under the blanket ; but when they 
 grow up and scatter, the nightfall never brings 
 them all in, and one pair of blankets will not 
 cover the cares of them. I do not know that," 
 she went on, " from what I have seen in my own 
 house ; but my mother told me, and she had 
 plenty of chance to learn the truth of it, with sons
 
 300 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 who died among strangers, and sons who bruised 
 her by their hves more than they could by their 
 deaths." 
 
 " You have some very ruddy and handsome 
 boys there," said M'lver. And aye he would be 
 winking and smiling at the young rogues in the 
 corner. 
 
 " I think they are," said the woman. " I never 
 saw but the eldest, and he was then at the breast, 
 mo viJicudail, the dear, his father's image." 
 
 "Then the father of him must have been a well- 
 fared and pretty man," said John, very promptly, 
 not a bit abashed by the homeliness of the youth, 
 who was the plainest of the flock, with a freckled 
 skin, a low hang-dog brow, and a nose like the 
 point of a dirk. 
 
 " He was that," said the woman, fondly — "the 
 finest man in the parish. He had a little lameness, 
 but " 
 
 " I have a bit of a halt, myself," said M'lver, 
 with his usual folly; "and I'm sure I'm none 
 the worse for it." 
 
 The oldest boy sat up in bed and gloomed at us 
 very sullenly. He could scarcely be expected to 
 understand the conceits of M Tver's talc about his 
 lameness, that any one with eyes could behold 
 had no existence. 
 
 "But I never think of my man," the woman 
 went on, " but as I saw him first before he met 
 with his lameness. Eyes are a kind of doubtful 
 blessing too in some ways. Mine have forgotten 
 all the ugly things they knew, and in my recollec-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 301 
 
 tion are but many bonny things : my man was 
 always as young to me as when he came court- 
 ing in a new blue bonnet and a short coat; my 
 children will be changing to every one but to 
 me." 
 
 Stewart, with his own appetite satisfied, was 
 acting lackey to the gentlemen in the byre — 
 fetching out cogies of milk and whangs of bear- 
 meal bannock, and the most crisp piquant white 
 cheese ever I put tooth to. He was a man with- 
 out a conscience, and so long as his own ends and 
 the ends of his friends were served, he would never 
 scruple to empty the woman's girnel or toom her 
 last basin, and leave her no morsel of food or drink 
 at the long-run. But M'lver and I put an end to 
 that, and so won, as we thought, to the confidence 
 of the elder lad in the bed, who had glunched low- 
 browed among his franker brethren. 
 
 We slept for some hours, the seven of us, among 
 the bracken of the byre, wearied out and unable 
 to go farther that night, even if the very dogs were 
 at our heels. We slept sound, I 'm sure, all but 
 M'lver, whom, waking twice in the chill of the 
 night, I found sitting up and listening like any 
 sentinel. 
 
 "What are you watching for there?" I asked 
 him on the second time. 
 
 " Nothing at all, Colin, nothing at all. I was 
 aye a poor sleeper at the best, and that snore of 
 Rob Stewart is the very trump of the next world." 
 
 It was in the dawn again he confessed to his real 
 apprehension, — only to my private ear, for he
 
 302 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 wished no more to alarm the others by day than 
 to mar my courtship of slumber by night. 
 
 " The fact is," said he, " I 'm not very sure about 
 our young gentleman yonder in the bed. He 's 
 far too sharp in the eye and black in the temper, 
 and too much of Clan Donallachd generally, to 
 be trusted with the lives and liberties of seven 
 gentlemen of a tartan he must know unfriendly to 
 Glencoe. I wish I saw his legs that I might guess 
 the length of him, or had had the wit to ask his 
 mother his age, for either would be a clue to his 
 chance of carrying the tale against us down the 
 valley there. He seemed tremendous sharp and 
 wicked lying yonder looking at us, and I was in 
 a sweat all night for fear he would be out and tell 
 on us. But so far he 's under the same roof as 
 ourselves." 
 
 Sonachan and the baron-bailie quarrelled away 
 about some point of pedigree as they sat, a towsy, 
 unkempt pair, in a dusty corner of the byre, with 
 beards of a most scraggy nature grown upon their 
 chins. Their uncouthncss gave a scruple of fop- 
 pishness to MTver, and sent him seeking a razor 
 in the widow's house. He found the late husband's 
 and shaved himself trimly, while Stewart pla)'cd 
 lackey again to the rest of us, taking out a break- 
 fast the housewife was in the humour to force on 
 us. He had completed his scraping, and was 
 cracking away very freely with the woman, who 
 WIS baking some bannocks on the stone, with 
 sleeves rolled up from arms that were rounded and 
 white. They talked of the husband (the one topic
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 303 
 
 of new widowhood), a man, it appeared, of a thou- 
 sand parts, a favourite with all, and yet, as she said, 
 " When it came to the black end they left me to 
 dress him for the grave, and a stranger had to 
 bury him." 
 
 M'lver, looking fresh and spruce after his cleans- 
 ing, though his eyes were small for want of sleep, 
 aroused at once to an interest in the cause of this 
 unneighbourliness. 
 
 The woman stopped her occupation with a 
 sudden start and flared crimson. 
 
 " I thought you knew," said she, stammering, 
 turning a rolling-pin in her hand — "I thought you 
 knew; and then how could you? ... I maybe 
 should have mentioned it, . . . but, . . . but 
 could I turn you from my door in the nighttime 
 and hunger? " 
 
 MTver whistled softly to himself, and looked at 
 me where I stood in the byre-door. 
 
 " Tuts," said he, at last, turning with a smile to 
 the woman, as if she could see him ; " what does 
 a bit difference with Lowland law make after all ? 
 I '11 tell you this, mistress, between us, — I have 
 a name myself for private foray, and it 's perhaps 
 not the first time I have earned the justification of 
 the kind gallows of Crief by small diversions 
 among cattle at night. It 's the least deserving 
 that get the tow gravat." 
 
 (Oh, you liar! I thought.) 
 
 The woman's face looked puzzled. She thought 
 a little, and said, " I think you must be taking me 
 up wrong; my man was never at the trade of 
 reiving, and "
 
 304 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " I would never hint that he was, goodwife," 
 cried John, quickly, puzzled-looking himself. " I 
 said I had a name for the thing; but they were 
 no friends of mine who gave me the credit, and I 
 never stole stot or quey in all my life." 
 
 (I have my doubts, thinks I.) 
 
 "My man died of the plague," said the woman, 
 blurting out her news, as if eager to get over an 
 awkward business. 
 
 I have never seen such a sudden change in a 
 person's aspect as came over John Splendid in 
 every feature. The vain, trim man of a minute 
 ago, stroking his chin and showing a white hand 
 (for the entertainment of the woman he must 
 always be forgetting was without her sight), bal- 
 ancing and posturing on well-curved legs, and 
 jauntily pinning his plaid on his shoulder, in a 
 flash lost backbone. He stepped a pace back, as 
 if some one had struck him a blow, his jaw fell, 
 and his face grew ashen. Then his eyes went 
 darting about the chamber, and his nostrils sniffed 
 as if disease was a presence to be seen and scented, 
 — a thing tangible in the air, maybe to be warded 
 off by a sharp man's instruction in combat of 
 arms. 
 
 " God of grace ! " he cried, crossing himself 
 most vigorously for a person of the Protestant 
 religion, and muttering what I have no doubt was 
 some charm of his native glen for the prevention 
 of fevers. He shut his mouth thereafter very 
 quickly on every phrase he uttered, breathing 
 through his nose; at the same time he kept him-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 305 
 
 self, in every part but the shoesoles he tiptoed on, 
 from touching anything. I could swear the open 
 air of the most unfriendly glen in Christendom 
 was a possession to be envious of for John M'lver 
 of Barbreck. 
 
 Stewart heard the woman's news that came to 
 him as he was carrying in from the byre the ves- 
 sels from which he had been serving his compan- 
 ions. He was in a stew more extraordinary than 
 John Splendid ; he blanched even to the scars of 
 his half-head, as we say, spat vehemently out of his 
 mouth a piece of bread he was chewing, turned 
 round about in a flash, and into the byre past 
 me as I stood (not altogether alarmed, but yet a 
 little disturbed and uneasy) in the doorway. He 
 emptied his clothing and knapsack of every scrap 
 of food he had purloined, making a goodly heap 
 upon the floor, — the very oaten flour he dusted 
 oft" his finger-tips, with which he had handled cake 
 that a little ago he was risking his soul's salvation 
 to secure. And — except the minister — the other 
 occupants of the byre were in an equal terror. 
 
 For in this matter of smittal plagues we High- 
 landers are the most arrant cowards. A man 
 whose life we would save on the field, or the rock- 
 face, or the sea, at the risk of our own lives or the 
 more abominable peril of wound and agony, will 
 die in a ditch of the Spotted Death or a fever be- 
 fore the most valiant of us would put out a hand 
 to cover him again with his blanket. He will get 
 no woman to sound his coronach, even if he were 
 Lord of the Isles. I am not making defence or
 
 3o6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 admitting blame, thouy,h I have walked in Ham- 
 burg when the pitch-barrels blazed in the street, 
 fuming the putrid wind ; but there is in the Gaelic 
 character a dread of disfiguration more than of 
 sudden and painful death. What we fear is the 
 black mystery of such disorders: they come on 
 cunning winds unheralded, in fair weather or bad, 
 day or night, to the rich and to the poor, to the 
 strong as to the weak. You may be robust to-day 
 in a smiling country and to-morrow in a twist of 
 agony, coal-black, writhing on the couch, every 
 fine interest in life blotted out by a yellow film 
 upon the eyes. A vital gash with a claymore con- 
 fers a bloodier but a more comely and natural 
 end. Thus the Gael abhors the very roads that 
 lead to a plague-struck dwelling. If plagues do 
 not kill, they will mar — yes, even against the 
 three charms of Island I, and that, too, makes 
 heavier their terror, for a man mutilated even by 
 so little as the loss of a hand is an object of pity 
 to every hale member of his clan. He may have 
 won his infirmity in a noble hour, but they will 
 pity him, and pity to the proud is worse than the 
 glove in the face. 
 
 Instantly there was a great to-do in getting 
 away from this most unfortunate dwelling. The 
 lads in the byre shook tartan antl out to the fresh 
 air, and rejoiced in the wind with deep-drawn 
 gulping breaths, as if they might wash the smallest 
 dust of disease from their bodily system. So at 
 last only MTver and I w'erc left standing at the 
 door.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 307 
 
 "Well," said John, with an effort, " we must be 
 going. I never thought it was so late. And we 
 must be on the other side of Dalness before very 
 long. You have been very good to us, and my 
 name's John M'lver, of Barbreck — a kind of 
 Campbell with a great respect for the MacDonalds, 
 of whom I kent a few perfect gentry in foreign 
 wars I have been at the fighting of. And — good 
 day, mistress, we must be going. My friends 
 have the very small manners surely, for they 're 
 off down the road. We '11 just let them go that 
 way. What need ye expect off small men and 
 gillies? " 
 
 He signed to me with a shake of his sporran to 
 show it was empty, and, falling to his meaning, I 
 took some silver from my own purse and offered it 
 to the glum-faced lad in the blankets. Beetle-brow 
 scowled, and refused to put a hand out for it, so I 
 left it on a table without a clink to catch the 
 woman's ear. 
 
 " Would you not have a dcocJi-an-doriiis ? " asked 
 the woman, making to a press and producing a 
 bottle. 
 
 M'lver started in a new alarm. "No, no. 
 You're very good," said he; " but I never take it 
 myself in the morning, and — good day, mistress 
 — and my friend Elrigmore, who 's left with me 
 here, is perhaps too free with it sometimes ; and 
 indeed maybe I 'm that way myself too — it 's a 
 thing that grows on you. Good-bye, mistress." 
 
 She put out her hand, facing us with uplifted 
 eyes, I felt a push at my shoulder, and the min-
 
 3o8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 ister, who had left the four others down the brae, 
 stepped softly into the room. M'lver was in a 
 high perplexity. He dare not shake the woman's 
 hand, and still he dare not hurt her feelings. " My 
 thong's loose," said he, stooping to fumble with a 
 brogue that needed no such attention. He rose 
 with the minister at his shoulder. 
 
 " And good-day to you again, mistress," said 
 M'lver, turning about to go, without heeding the 
 outstretched hand. 
 
 Master Gordon saw the whole play at a glance. 
 He took the woman's hand in his without a word, 
 wrung it with great warmth, and, seized as it 
 seemed by a sudden whim, lifted the fingers to his 
 lips, softly kissed them, and turned away. 
 
 " O," cried the woman, with tears welling to her 
 poor eyes — " O, Clan Campbell, I '11 never call 
 ye down ! Ye may have the guile they claim for 
 ye, but ye have the way with a widow's heart ! " 
 
 I did it with some repugnance, let me own ; but 
 I, too, shook her hand, and followed the minister 
 out at the door. M'lver was hot with annoyance 
 and shame, and ready to find fault with us for 
 what we had done; but the cleric carded him like 
 wool in his feelings. 
 
 " Oh, valour, valour ! " he said, in the midst of 
 his sermon, " did I not say you knew your duty 
 in hate better than in affection?" 
 
 John Splendid kept a dour-set jaw, said never a 
 word, and the seven of us proceeded on our way. 
 
 It was well on in the morning, the land sounding 
 with a new key of troubled and loosening waters.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 309 
 
 Mists clogged the mountain-tops, and Glencoe far 
 off to its westward streamed with a dun vapour 
 pricked with the tip of fir and ash. A moist feel 
 was in the air; it relapsed anon to a smirr of rain. 
 
 " This is a shade better than clear airs and frost 
 and level snow for quarries on a hunting," said I. 
 
 "I'm glad it suits you," said MTver. "I've 
 seen the like before, and I 'm not so sure about 
 the advantage of it."
 
 3IO JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The rain that was a smirr or drizzle on the north 
 side of Glencoe grew to a steady shower in the 
 valley itself, and when we had traversed a bit in 
 the airt of Tynree it had become a pouring torrent 
 — slanting in our faces with the lash of whips, 
 streaming from the hair and crinkling the hands, 
 and leaving the bonnet on the head as heavy as 
 any French soldier's salade. I am no great un- 
 lover of a storm in the right circumstances. There 
 is a long strath between Nordlingen and Donauworth 
 of Bavaria, where once we amazed our foreign 
 allies by setting out, bare to the kilt and sark, in 
 threshing hail, running for miles in the pelt of it 
 out of the sheer content of encounter — and per- 
 haps a flagon or two of wine. It was a bravado, 
 perhaps, but a ploy to brace the spirit ; we gath- 
 ered from it some of the virtues of our simple but 
 ample elders, who were strong men when they lay 
 asleep with a check to the naked earth and held 
 their faces frankly up to sun or rain. But if we 
 rejoiced in the rains of Bavaria, there was no cause 
 for glee in those torrents of Glencoe, for they 
 made our passage through the country more diffi- 
 cult and more dangerous than it was before. The 
 snow on the ground was for hours a slushy com- 
 post, that the foot slipped on at every step, or that
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 311 
 
 filled the brogue with a paste that nipped like 
 brine. And when the melting snow ran to lower 
 levels, the soil itself, relaxing the rigour of its 
 frost, became as soft as butter and as unstable to 
 the foot. The burns filled to the lip and brawled 
 over, new waters sprung up among the rocks and 
 ran across our path, so that we were for ever 
 wading and slipping and splashing and stumbling 
 on a route that seemed never to come to any end 
 or betterment. 
 
 Seven more pitiful men never trod High- 
 lands. The first smirr soaked our clothing ; by 
 the middle of the glen we were drenched to the 
 hide, and the rain was flowing from the edges of 
 our kilts in runnels. Thus heaven scourged us 
 with waters till about the hour of noon, when she 
 alternated water with wind and gales burst from 
 the west, the profound gorges of Stob Dubh belch- 
 ing full to the throat with animus. There were 
 fir-plantings by the way, whose branches twanged 
 and boomed in those terrific blasts, that on the 
 bare braeside lifted up the snow with an invisible 
 scoop and flung it in our faces. 
 
 Stewart and the man with the want led the way, 
 the latter ever with his eyes red a-weeping, look- 
 ing about him with starts and tremors, moaning 
 lamentably at every wail of wind, but ceasing now 
 and then to gnaw a bone he had had enough of a 
 thief's wit to pouch in the house of the blind 
 widow. Stewart, a lean wiry man, covered the 
 way with a shepherd's long stride — heel and toe 
 and the last spring from the knee — most poverty-
 
 312 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 struck and mean in a kilt that flapped too low on 
 his leg and was frayed to ribbons, a man with but 
 one wish in the world, to save his own unworthy 
 skin, even if every one else of our distressed corps 
 found a sodden and abominable death in the 
 swamps or rocks of that doleful valley. Then on 
 the rear behind those commoners came the minis- 
 ter and John Splendid and myself, the minister with 
 his breeks burst at the knees, his stockings caught 
 up with a poor show of trimness by a braid of 
 rushes, contrived by M'lver, and his coat-skirts 
 streaming behind him. You could not but re- 
 spect the man's courage : many a soldier I 've seen 
 on the dour hard leagues of Germanic - — good 
 soldiers too, heart and body — collapse under 
 hardships less severe. Gordon, with a drawn and 
 curd-white face, and eyes burning like lamps, sur- 
 rendered his body to his spirit, and it bore him as 
 in a dream through wind and water, over moor 
 and rock, and amid the woods that now and again 
 we had to hide in. 
 
 That we had to hide so little was one of the 
 miracles of our traverse. At any other time per- 
 haps Glencoe and the regions round about it would 
 be as well tenanted as any low-country strath, for it 
 abounded on cither hand with townships, with 
 crofts that perched on brief plateaux, here and 
 there with black bothy-houses such as are (they 
 say) the common dwellings over all the Hcbrid 
 Isles. Yet, moving, not in the ultimate hollow of 
 the valley, but in fighting fashion upon the upper 
 levels, we were out of the way of molestation, and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 313 
 
 in any case it was a valley for the time deserted 
 of men. Women we could see in plenty, drawing 
 water or bearing peats in from the bogs behind their 
 dwellings, or crossing from house to house or toun 
 to toun, with plaids drawn tightly over their heads, 
 their bodies bent to meet the blasts that made their 
 clothing banner and full. Nor children either 
 were there in that most barren country, or they 
 kept within, sheltering the storms assailing, and 
 the want of them (for I have ever loved the little 
 ones) added twenty-fold to my abhorrence of the 
 place. 
 
 We had to hide but rarely, I say : two or three 
 times when down in the valley's depths there showed 
 a small group of men who were going in the same 
 direction as ourselves by the more natural route, at 
 a quarter of a league's distance in advance of us. 
 They were moving with more speed than we, and 
 for a time we had the notion that they might be 
 survivors, like ourselves, of Argile's clan. But 
 at last this fancy was set at flight by the openness 
 of their march, as well as by their stoppage at 
 several houses by the way, from which they seemed 
 to be joined by other men, who swelled their 
 numbers so that after a time there would be over 
 a score of them on the mission, whatever it might 
 be. In that misty rain-swept day the eye could 
 not carry far, and no doubt they were plainer to 
 our view than we were to theirs among the drab 
 vapours of the hillside. But once or twice we 
 thought they perceived us, for they stopped and 
 looked to the left and up the brae-face we were
 
 314 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 on, and then it was we had to seek the shelter of 
 tree or bush. If they saw us, they seemed to sus- 
 pect no evil, for they held on their way, still ahead 
 of us, and making for Tynree. Whoever they were, 
 they became at last so manifest a danger to our 
 escape out of the head of the glen that we fell 
 back anew on the first plan of going through the 
 corries on the south side of the glen and piercing 
 by them to Dalness. In the obscurity of a great 
 shower that set up a screen between us and the 
 company marching to Tynree, we darted down 
 the brae, across the glen, and over to the passage 
 they call the Lairig Eilde that is on the west of the 
 great Little Herd hill of Etive, and between it and 
 Ben Fhada or the Long Mount, whose peaks you 
 will find with snow in their gullies in the height 
 of summer. 
 
 It was with almost a jocund heart I turned my 
 back on Glencoe as we took a drove-path up from 
 the river. But I glanced with a shiver down its 
 terrible distance upon that nightmare of gulf and 
 eminence, of gash, and peaks afloat upon swirling 
 mists. It lay, a looming horror, forgotten of 
 heaven and unfriendly to man (as one might 
 readily imagine), haunted for ever with wailing 
 airs and rumours, ghosts calling in the deeps of 
 dusk and melancholy, legends of horror and 
 remorse. 
 
 " Thank God," said I, as we gave the last look 
 at it — " thank God I was not born and bred yon- 
 der. Those hills would crush my heart against 
 my very ribs."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 315 
 
 " It 's good enough for the people who are 
 in it," said John. " What are they but Mac- 
 Donalds? 'Take and not give' is their motto. 
 They can have Glencoe for me, with M'Millan's 
 right to Knapdale, — as long as wave beats on rock." 
 
 Master Gordon, though we had spoken in the 
 Gaelic, half guessed our meaning. " A black 
 place and mournful," said he ; " but there may 
 be love there too and warm hearts, and soil where 
 the truth might flourish as in the champaign over 
 against Gilgal beside the plains of Moreh." 
 
 Now we were in a tract of country mournful 
 beyond my poor description. I know corries in 
 Argile that whisper silken to the winds with juicy 
 grasses, corries where the deer love to prance 
 deep in the cool dew, and the beasts of far-ofif 
 woods come in bands at their seasons and together 
 rejoice. I have seen the hunter in them and the 
 shepherd, too, coarse men in life and occupation, 
 come sudden among the blowing rush and whis- 
 pering reed, among the bog-flower and the can- 
 noch, unheeding the moor-hen and the cailzie-cock 
 rising, or the stag of ten at pause, while they 
 stood, passionate adventurers in a rapture of the 
 mind, held as it were by the spirit of such places 
 as they lay in a slobcrry bloom of haze, the spirit 
 of old good songs, the baffling surmise of the 
 piper and the bard. To those corries of my 
 native place will be coming in the yellow moon of 
 brock and foumart — the beasts that dote on the 
 autumn eves — the People of Quietness; have I 
 not seen their lanthorns and heard their lau<jhter
 
 3i6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 in the night? — so that they must be blessed 
 corries, so endowed since the days when the gods 
 dwelt in them without tartan and spear in the 
 years of the peace that had no beginning. 
 
 But the corries of Lorn ; black night on them, 
 and the rain rot ! They were troughs of despond 
 as we went struggling through them. The knife- 
 keen rushes whipped us at the thigh, the swamps 
 bubbled in our shoes. Round us rose the hills 
 gray and bald, sown with boulders and crowned 
 with sour mists. Surely in them the sun never 
 peeps even in the long days of summer : the star, 
 I '11 warrant, never rained on them his calm 
 influence ! 
 
 Dolour left us speechless as we trudged, even 
 when for a time we were lost. We essayed in a 
 silence at openings here and there, at hacks and 
 water-currents, wandering off from each other, 
 whistling and calling, peering from rock-brows or 
 spying into wounds upon the hills, so that when 
 we reached Dalness it was well on in the day. If 
 in summer weather the night crawls slowly on the 
 Highlands, the winter brings a fast black rider 
 indeed. His hoofs were drumming on the hills 
 when first we saw sight of Dalness ; he was over 
 and beyond us when we reached the plain. The 
 land of Lorn was black dark to the very roots of 
 its trees, and the rivers and burns themselves got 
 lost in the thick of it, and went through the night 
 calling from hollow to hollow to hearten each other 
 till the dawn. 
 
 Dalness lies in Glen Etive, at a gushet of hills
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 317 
 
 on either side of which he paths known to the 
 drover and the adventurer. The house receded 
 from the passes and lay back in a pleasance walled 
 by whin or granite, having a wattled gate at the 
 entrance. When we were descending the pass we 
 could see a glare of light come from the place 
 even though the mist shrouded, and by the time 
 we got to the gate it was apparent that the house 
 was lit in every chamber. The windows that 
 pierced the tall gables threw beams of light into 
 the darkness, and the open door poured out a yel- 
 low flood. At the time we came on it first we 
 were unaware of our propinquity to it, and this 
 mansion looming on us suddenly through the 
 vapours seemed a cantrip of witchcraft, a dwell- 
 ing's ghost, gray, eerie, full of frights, a phantom 
 of the mind rather than a habitable home. We 
 paused in a dumb astonishment to look at it lying 
 there in the darkness, a thing so different from 
 the barren hills and black bothies behind our 
 shoulders. 
 
 We gathered in a cluster near the wattle gate, 
 the minister perhaps the only man who had the 
 wit to acknowledge the reality of the vision. His 
 eyes fairly gloated on this evidence of civilised 
 state, so much recalling the surroundings in which 
 he was most at home. As by an instinct of 
 decency, he drew up his slack hose and bound 
 them anew with the rushen garters, and pulled his 
 coat-lapels straight upon his chest, and set his 
 dripping peruke upon his head with a touch of the 
 dandy's air, all the time with his eyes on those
 
 3i8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 gleaming windows, as if he feared to relinquish 
 the spectacle a moment, lest it should fly like a 
 dream. 
 
 We had thought first of pushing across the glen, 
 over the river, through Corrie Ghuibhasan, and 
 into the Black Mount; but the journey in a night 
 like what was now fallen was not to be attempted. 
 On the hills beyond the river the dog-fox barked 
 with constancy, his vixen screeching like a child — 
 signs of storm that no one dare gainsay. So we 
 determined to seek shelter and concealment some- 
 where in the policies of the house. But first of all 
 we had to find what the occasion was of this bril- 
 liancy in Dalness, and if too many people for our 
 safety were not in the neighbourhood. I was sent 
 forward to spy the place, while my companions 
 lay waiting below a cluster of alders. 
 
 I went into the grounds with my heart very high 
 up on my bosom, not much put about at any 
 human danger, let me add, for an encounter with 
 an enemy of flesh and blood was a less fearsome 
 prospect than the chance of an encounter with 
 more invulnerable foes, who, my skin told me, 
 haunted every heugh and howe of that still and 
 sombre demesne of Dalness. But I set my teeth 
 tight in my resolution, and with my dirk drawn in 
 my hand — it w'as the only weapon left mc — I 
 crept over the grass from bush to bush and tree to 
 tree as much out of the revelation of the window- 
 lights as their numbers would let me. 
 
 There was not a sound in the place, and yet 
 those lights might have betokened a great festivity.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 319 
 
 with pipe and harp going, and dancers' feet thud- 
 ding on the floor. 
 
 At one of the gables there was a low window, 
 and I made for it, thinking it a possible eye to 
 a lobby or passage, and therefore not so hazard- 
 ous to look in at. I crept up and viewed the 
 interior. 
 
 My window, to my astonishment, looked in on 
 no bare plain lobby, but on a spacious salmanger 
 or hall, very rosy with sconce-light and wood-fire 
 — a hall that extended the whole length of the 
 house, with a bye-ordinar high ceil of black oak 
 carved very handsomely. The walls at the far end 
 were hung with tapestry very like MacCailein's 
 rooms at home in Inneraora; and down the long 
 sides, whose windows streamed the light upon the 
 hall, great stag-heads glowered with unsleeping 
 eyes, stags of numerous tines. The floor was 
 strewn with the skins of the chase, and on the 
 centre of it was a table laden with an untouched 
 meal, and bottles that winked back the flicker of 
 the candle and the hearth. 
 
 The comfort of the place, by contrast with our 
 situation, seemed, as I looked hungrily on it 
 through the thick glass of the lozen, more great 
 and tempting than anything ever I saw abroad in 
 the domains of princes. Its air was charged with 
 peace and order; the little puffs and coils and 
 wisps of silver-gray smoke, coming out of the fire- 
 place into the room, took long to swoon into 
 nothingness in that tranquil interior. 
 
 But the most wonderful thing of all was, that
 
 320 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 though the supper seemed ready waiting for a 
 company, and could not have been long left, I 
 waited five or ten minutes with my face fast set to 
 the pane and no living footstep entered the room. 
 I watched the larger door near the far-off end 
 eagerly ; it lay ajar, smiling a welcome to the parts 
 of the house beyond, but no one came in. 
 
 " Surely they are throng in some other wing," I 
 thought, " and not so hungry as we, or their viands 
 did not lie so long untouched in that dainty 
 room." 
 
 I went round the house at its rear, feeling my 
 way slowly among the bushes. I looked upon 
 parlours and bed-closets, kitchens and corridors ; 
 they were lighted with the extravagance of a mar- 
 riage-night, and as tenantless and silent as the 
 cells of Kilchrist. The beds were straightened 
 out, the hearths were swept, the floors were 
 scrubbed, on every hand was the evidence of 
 recent business, but the place was relinquished to 
 the ghosts. 
 
 How it was I cannot say, but the mj-stery of the 
 house made me giddy at the head. But I was 
 bound to push my searching further, so round 
 with a swithering heart went Elrigmore to the very 
 front door of the mansion of Dalness — open, as T 
 have said, with the light gushing lemon-yellow on 
 the lawn. I tapped softly, my heart this time 
 even higher than my bosom, with a foot back 
 ready to retreat if answer came. Then T rasped 
 an alarm on the side of the yctt with a noise that 
 rang fiercely through the place and brought the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 321 
 
 sweat to my body, but there was even then no 
 answer. 
 
 So in I went, the soft soles of my brogues 
 making no sound on the boards, but leaving the 
 impress of my footsteps in a damp blot. 
 
 Now, to me, brought up in a Highland farm- 
 steading (for the house of Elrigmore is without 
 great spaciousness or pretence), large and ram- 
 bling castles and mansions ever seem eerie. I 
 must in them be thinking, like any boy, of the 
 whisperings of wraiths in their remote upper 
 rooms; I feel strange airs come whipping up 
 their long or crooked lobbies at night; the num- 
 ber of their doors are, to my Highland instinct, 
 so many unnecessary entrances for enemies and 
 things mischancy. 
 
 But to wander over the house of Dalness, lit 
 from tolbooth to garret with lowc — to see the fires 
 not green but at their prime with high-banked 
 peat that as yet had not thrown an ash — to see so 
 fine a supper waiting in a mansion utterly desolate 
 and its doors open to the wilds, seemed a thing so 
 magical that I felt like taking my feet from the 
 place in a hurry of hurries and fleeing with my 
 comrades from so unco a countryside. High and 
 low I ranged in the interior. I had found a nut 
 without a kernel, and at last I stood dumfoundcrcd 
 and afraid, struck solemn by the echo of my own 
 hail as it rang unfamiliar through the interior. 
 
 I might have been there fifteen minutes or half 
 an hour when M'lver, impatient at my delay or 
 fearing some injury to my person, came in and
 
 322 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 joined me. He too was struck with amazement at 
 the desertion of the house. He measured the can- 
 dles, he scrutinised the fires, he went round the 
 building out and in, and he could but conclude 
 that we must be close upon the gate when the 
 house was abandoned. 
 
 " But why abandon it? " I asked. 
 " That 's the Skyman's puzzle ; it would take 
 seven men and seven years to answer it," said he. 
 " I can only say it 's very good of them (if there 's 
 no ambuscade in it) to leave so fine an inn and so 
 bonny a supper with a bush above the door and 
 never a bar against entrance. We '11 just take 
 advantage of what fortune has sent us." 
 
 " The sooner the better," said I, standing up to 
 a fire that delighted my body like a caress. " I 
 have a trick of knowing when good fortune 's a 
 dream, and I '11 be awake and find myself lying on 
 hard heather before the bite 's at my mouth." 
 
 M'lvcr ran out and brought in our companions, 
 none of them unwilling to put this strange free 
 hostel to the test for its warmth and hospitality. 
 We shut and barred the doors, and set ourselves 
 down to such a cold collation as the most fortunate 
 of us had not tasted since the little wars began. 
 Between the savage and the gentleman is but a 
 good night's lodging. Give the savage a peaceful 
 hearth to sit by, a roof to his head, and a copious 
 well-cooked supper, and his savagery will surren- 
 der itself to the sleek content of a Dutch merchant- 
 man. We sat at a table whose load would have 
 rationed a company of twice our number, and I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 323 
 
 could see the hard look of hunting relax in the 
 aspect of us all : the peering, restless sunken eyes 
 came out of their furrowed caverns, turned calm, 
 full, and satisfied ; the lines of the brow and mouth, 
 the contour of the cheek, the carriage of the head, 
 the disposition of the hands, altered and improved. 
 An hour ago, when we were the sport of ferocious 
 nature in the heart of a country infernal, no more 
 than one of us would have swithered to strike a 
 blow at a fellow-creature and to have robbed his 
 corpse of what it might have of food and comfort. 
 Now we gloated in the airs benign of Dalness house, 
 very friendly to the world at large, the stuff that 
 tranquil towns are made of. We had even the 
 minister's blessing on our food, for Master Gordon 
 accepted the miracle of the open door and the 
 vacant dwelling with John Splendid's philosophy, 
 assuring us that in doing so he did no more than 
 he would willingly concede any harmless body of 
 broken men such as we were, even his direst 
 enemies, if extremity like ours brought us to his 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 " I confess I am curious to know how the thing 
 happened, but the hand of the Almighty 's in it 
 anyway," he said ; and so saying he lay back in 
 his chair with a sigh of satisfaction that lost noth- 
 ing of its zest by the influence of the rain that 
 blattered now in drumming" violence on the window- 
 panes. 
 
 John Splendid, at the table-end, laughed shortly 
 between his cups at a flagon of wine. 
 
 " All the same," said he, " I would advise you
 
 324 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 to put some of the Almighty's provand in your 
 pouch, for fear the grace that is ours now may be 
 torn suddenly enough from us." 
 
 Sonachan pointed at Stewart, who had already 
 filled every part of his garments with broken meat, 
 and his wallet as well. " There 's a cautious man," 
 said he, " whatever your notion of sudden ceasing 
 may be. He has been putting bite about in his 
 wallet and his stomach since ever we sat down. 
 Appin ways, no doubt." 
 
 "■ Biadh 1X71 diiigh, cogadJi a mair-eacJi — food 
 to-day, war to-morrow," said the son of kings. 
 " Royal 's my race ! A man should aye be laying 
 in as he goes : if I had not had my wallet on Loch 
 Leven-side, I ken some gentry who would have 
 been as hungry as common herds, and with nothing 
 to help it." 
 
 John Splendid laughed again. " Wise man, 
 Rob!" said he; "you learnt the first principles 
 of campaigning in Appin as nicely as ever I did in 
 the wars of the Invincible Lion (as they called him) 
 of the North. Our reverend comrade here, by the 
 wisdom of his books, never questions, it seems, 
 that we have a leave of Dalncss house as long as 
 we like to stay in it, its pendicles and pertinents, 
 lofts, crofts, gardens, mills, multures, and sequels, 
 as the lawyers say in their damned sheepskins, 
 that have been the curse of the Highlands even 
 more than books have been. Now I 've had an 
 adventure like this before. Once in Rugenwalde, 
 midway between Danzig and Stettin, where we lay 
 for two months, I spent a night with a company of
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 325 
 
 Hepburn's blades in a castle abandoned by the 
 Duke of Pomerania. Roystering dogs ! Stout 
 hearts ! Where are they now, those fine lads in 
 corslet and morgensterne, who played havoc with 
 the casks in the Rugenwalde cellar? Some of them 
 died of the pest in Schiefelbein, four of them fell 
 under old Jock Hepburn at Frankfort, the lave 
 went wandering about the world, kissing and 
 drinking, no doubt, and lying and sorrowing and 
 dying, and never again will we foregather in a 
 vacant house in foreign parts ! For that is the 
 hardship of life, that it 's ever a flux and change. 
 We are here to-day and away to-morrow, and the 
 bigger the company and the more high-hearted 
 the merriment, the less likely is the experience to 
 be repeated. I 'm sitting here in a miraculous 
 dwelling in the land of Lorn, and I have but to 
 shut my eyes and round about me are cavaliers of 
 fortune at the board. I give you the old word, 
 Elrigmore : ' Claymore and the Gael ' ; for the 
 rest — pardon me — you gentlemen are out of the 
 ploy. I shut my eyes and I see Fowlis and Far- 
 quhar, Mackenzie, Obisdell, Ross, the two balbircn 
 and stabknechten, with their legs about the board ; 
 the wind 's howling up from Stettin road ; to-mor- 
 row we may be carrion in the ditch at Gubcn's 
 Gate, or wounded to a death by slow degrees in 
 night scaladoe. That was soldiering. You fought 
 
 your equals with art and science; here's 
 
 Well, well, God's grace for MacCailein Mor ! " 
 
 " God's grace for us all ! " said the minister. 
 
 The man with the want fell fast asleep in his
 
 326 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 chair, with his Hmbs in gawky disposition. Stew- 
 art's bullet-head, with the line of the oval, unbroken 
 by ears, bobbed with affected eagerness to keep 
 up with the fast English utterance and the foreign 
 names of M'lver, while all the time he was finger- 
 ing some metal spoons and wondering if money 
 was in them and if they could be safely got to 
 Inneraora. Sonachan and the baron-bailie dipped 
 their beaks in the jugs, and with lifted heads, as 
 fowls slocken their thirst, they let the wine slip 
 slowly down their throats, glucking in a gluttonous 
 ecstasy. 
 
 " God's grace for us all ! " said the minister 
 again, as in a benediction. 
 
 M'lver pushed back his chair without rising, 
 and threw a leg across its arm with a complacent 
 look at the shapely round of the calf, that his hose 
 still fitted with wonderful neatness considering the 
 stress they must have had from wind and rain. 
 
 " We had grace indeed," said he, " on the banks 
 of Oder River. We came at night, just as now, 
 upon this castle of the cousin of this most noble 
 and puissant lord of Pomerania. It was Palm 
 Sunday, April the third. Old Style. I mind, 
 because it was my birthday; the country all about 
 was bursting out in a most rare green ; the gardens 
 and fields breathed sappy odours, and the birds 
 were throng at the bigging of their homes in bush 
 and eave; the day sparkled, and river and cloud 
 too, till the spirit in a person jigged as to a fiddle ; 
 the nights allured to escapade." 
 
 "What was the girl's name?" I asked M'lver,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 327 
 
 leaning forward, finding his story in some degree 
 had parallel with my own. 
 
 " Her name, Colin — I did not mention the girl, 
 did I? How did you guess there was a girl in it?" 
 said John, perplexed. 
 
 I flushed at my own transparency, and was glad 
 to see that none but the minister (and M'lver a 
 little later) had observed the confession of my 
 query. The others were too busy on carnal appe- 
 tites to feel the touch of a sentiment wrung from 
 me by a moment's illusion. 
 
 " It is only my joke," I stammered ; "you have a 
 reputation among the snoods." 
 
 M'lver smiled on me very warm-heartedly, yet 
 cunningly too. 
 
 " Colin, Colin," he cried. " Do I not know 
 yoii. from boot to bonnet? You think the spring 
 seasons are never so fond and magic as when a 
 man is courting a girl; you are minding of some 
 spring day of your own and a night of twinkling 
 stars. I '11 not deny but there was a girl in my case 
 in the parlour of Pomerania's cousin at Frankfort- 
 on-the-Oder ; and I '11 not deny that a recollection 
 of her endows that season with something of its 
 charm. We had ventured into this vacant house, 
 as I have said ; its larders were well plenished ; its 
 vaults were full of marshalled brigades of bottles 
 and battaglia of casks. Thinking no danger, 
 perhaps careless if there was, we sat late, feasted 
 to the full, and drank deep in a house that like 
 this was empty in every part. It was 163 1 — I '11 
 leave you but that clue to my age at the time —
 
 328 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and, well I was an even prettier lad than I am 
 to-day. I see you smile, Master Gordon ; but 
 that 's my bit joke. Still there 's some relevance 
 to my story in my looks too. Though I was but 
 a sergeant of pikes (with sons of good families 
 below me, as privates, mind you), I was very 
 trim and particular about my apparel. I carried 
 myself with a good chest, as we say, — my feature 
 and my leg speak for themselves. I had sung 
 songs — trifles of my own, foolishly esteemed, 
 I 'm hearing, in many parts of Argile. I '11 
 not deny but I like to think of that, and to fancy 
 young folks humming my ditties by warm fires 
 when I 'm maybe in the cold with the divot at my 
 mouth. And I had told a tale or two — a poor 
 art enough, I'll allow, spoiled by bookcraft. It 
 was a cheery company as you may guess, and at 
 last I was at a display of our Highland dancing. 
 I see dancing to-day in many places that is not the 
 thing as I was taught it by the strongest dancer in 
 all Albainn. The company sat facing as I stepped 
 it over a couple of sword-bladcs, and their backs 
 were to the door. Mackenzie was humming a 
 port-a bJicul with a North Country twang even in 
 his nose, and I was at my last step when the door 
 opened with no noise and a girl looked in, her 
 eyes staring hard at me alone, and a finger on her 
 lips for silence. A man of less discernment would 
 have stopped his dance incontinent and betrayed 
 the presence of the lady to the others, who never 
 dreamt so interesting sight was behind them. But 
 I never let on. I even put an extra flourish on
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 329 
 
 my conclusion, that came just as the girl backed 
 out at the door beckoning me to follow her. Two 
 minutes later, while my friends were bellowing a 
 rough Gaelic chorus, I was out following my lady 
 of silence up a little stair and into a room below 
 the eaves. There she narrated to me the plot that 
 we unhappy lads were to be the victims of. The 
 house was a trap; it was to be surrounded at 
 night, when we had eaten and drunken over-well, 
 and the sword was our doom arranged for. The 
 girl told me all this very quietly in the French she 
 learned I was best master of next to my own Gaelic, 
 and — what a mad thing's the blood in a youth — 
 all the time I was indifferent to her alarum, and 
 pondering upon her charms of lip and eye. She 
 died a twelvemonth later in Glogoe of Silesia, 
 and God give her peace ! " 
 
 " You may save your supplication," said Gor- 
 don ; " her portion 's assigned, a thing fixed and 
 unalterable, and your prayer is a Popish conceit." 
 
 " God give her peace ! I '11 say it, Master Gor- 
 don, and I '11 wish it in the face of every Cove- 
 nanter ever droned a psalm ! She died in Silesia, 
 not careless, I'm thinking, of the memory of one 
 or two weeks we spent in Frankfort, whose outer 
 lanes and faubourgs are in my recollection blos- 
 soming with the almond-flower and scented at eve." 
 
 He rose to his feet and paced the floor beside 
 us, strong, but loosened a little at the tongue by 
 the generous wine of Dalness ; his mien a blending 
 of defiance against the cheatry of circumstances 
 and a display of old ancient grief
 
 330 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Heart of the rose, grauiachrcc, bird-song at the 
 lip, star-eye and wisdom, yet woman to the core. 
 I wish I were so young as then I was, and oc/iaiiic, 
 what availed my teens, if the one woman that ever 
 understood me were no more but a dust in 
 Glogoe ! " 
 
 " Come, come, man," I cried ; " it 's a world full 
 of very choice women." 
 
 " Is it indeed ? " asked he, turning on me a pitiful 
 eye ; " I 'm wrong if you ever met but one that was 
 
 quite so fine as you must have them Tuts, tuts, 
 
 here I 'm on the key of old man's history. I cheat 
 myself at times of leisure into the notion that once 
 I loved a foreign girl who died a spotless maiden. 
 You '11 notice. Master Gordon, I have something 
 of the sentiment you Lowlanders make such show 
 of, or I play-act the thing very well. Believe me, 
 I '11 hope to get a wife out of your parish some day 
 yet ; but I warn you she must have a tocher in her 
 stocking as well as on her father's hill." 
 
 The minister surveyed him through half-shut 
 eyes, leaning back on the rungs of his chair. I 
 think he saw the truth as clearly as I did myself, 
 for he spoke with more than common softness 
 when he answered. 
 
 " I like your tale," he said, " which had a different 
 conclusion and a more noble one than what I 
 looked for at the opening." Then he leaned out 
 and put a hand on John Splendid's sleeve. 
 " Human nature," said he, " is the most baffling of 
 mysteries. I said I knew you from boot to bon- 
 net, but there 's a corner I have still to learn the 
 secret of"
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 331 
 
 " Well, well," cried M'lvcr, lifting a glass con- 
 fusedly, and seating himself again at the board, 
 " here 's a night-cap — MacCailein Mor and the 
 Campbell cause ! " " And a thought of the lady 
 of Frankfort," I whispered, pressing his foot with 
 my toe beneath the table, and clinking my glass 
 with his. 
 
 We drank, the two of us, in a silence, and threw 
 the glasses on the hearth. 
 
 The windows, that now were shuttered, rattled 
 to gowsty airs, and the rain drummed on. All 
 about the house, with its numerous corners, turrets, 
 gushets, and corbie-stepped gables, the fury of the 
 world rose and wandered, the fury that never rests 
 but is ever somewhere round the ancient universe, 
 jibing night and morning at man's most valiant 
 effort. It might spit and blow till our shell shook 
 and creaked, and the staunch walls wept, and the 
 garden footways ran with bubbling waters, but we 
 were still to conquer. Our lanthorn gleamed 
 defiance to that brag of night eternal, that pattern- 
 piece of the last triumph of the oldest enemy of 
 man — Blackness the Rider, who is older than the 
 hoary star. 
 
 Fresh wood hissed on the fire, but the candles 
 burned low in their sockets. Sonachan and the 
 baron-bailie slept with their heads on the table ; 
 and the man with the want, still sodden at the eyes, 
 turned his wet hose upon his feet with a madman's 
 notion of comfort. 
 
 " I hope," said MTver, "there's no ambuscade 
 here, as in the house of the cousin of his Grace of
 
 332 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Pomerania. At least we can but bide on, whatever 
 comes, and take the night's rest that offers, keep- 
 ing a man-about watch against intrusion." 
 
 " There 's a watch more pressing still," said 
 Master Gordon, shaking the slumber off him and 
 jogging the sleeping men upon the shoulders. 
 " My soul watcheth for the Lord more than they 
 that watch for the morning. We have been wet 
 with the showers of the mountain, like Job, and 
 embracing the rock for the want of a shelter. We 
 are lone-haunted men in a wild land encompassed 
 by enemies; let us thank God for our safety thus 
 far, and ask His continued shield upon our flight." 
 
 And in the silence of that great house, dripping 
 and rocking in the tempest of the night, the min- 
 ister poured out his heart in prayer. It had 
 humility and courage too; it was imbued with a 
 spirit strong and calm. For the first time my 
 heart warmed to the man who in years after was 
 my friend and mentor — Alexander Gordon, Mas- 
 ter of the Arts, the man who wedded me and gave 
 my children Christian baptism, and brought solace 
 in the train of those little ones lost for a space to 
 me among the grasses and flowers of Kilmalieu.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 333 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 It may seem, in my recounting of these cold wan- 
 derings, of days and nights with nothing but snow 
 and rain, and always the hounds of fear on every 
 hand, that I had forgotten to exercise my mind 
 upon the blunder and the shame of Argile's defeat 
 at Inverlochy. So far is this from the fact that 
 M'lver and I on many available occasions disputed 
 — as old men at the trade of arms will do — the 
 reasons of a reverse so much unexpected, so little 
 to be condoned, considering the advantage we 
 had in numbers compared with the fragments of 
 clans Alasdair MacDonald brought down from 
 the gorges of Lochaber to the waters of Loch 
 Linnhe and Locheil. It was useless to bring 
 either the baron-bailie or Sonachan into our delib- 
 erations ; neither of them had any idea of how the 
 thing had happened, though they were very well in- 
 formed indeed about certain trivial departures from 
 strict forms of Highland procedure in the hurried 
 marshalling of the troops. 
 
 " Cheap trash of pcnnyland men from Lochow- 
 side were put on the right of gentlemen cadets of 
 the castle and Loch Finne-side lairds," was the 
 baron-bailie's bitter protestation. 
 
 Sonachan, who was naturally possessed of a 
 warm side to the people, even common quality,
 
 334 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 of his own part of the country, would sniff at this 
 with some scorn. 
 
 " Pennyland here, pennyland there, they were 
 closer in blood on Black Duncan than any of your 
 shore-side partans, who may be gcntrice by sheep- 
 skin right but never by the glaive." 
 
 So the two would be off again into the tangle- 
 ments of Highland pedigree. 
 
 The mind of the man with the want was, of 
 course, a vacant tablet, washed clean of every rec- 
 ollection by the copious tears he had wept in his 
 silliness since ever the shock of the battle came on 
 him ; Stewart was so much of an unscrupulous 
 liar that no word of his could be trusted, and the 
 minister alone could give us any idea of what had 
 been the sentiment in the army when the men of 
 Montrose (who were really the men of Sir Alas- 
 dair, his major-general) came on them. But for 
 reasons every true Gael need not even have a 
 hint of, we were averse from querying this dour, 
 sour Lowland cleric on points affecting a Highland 
 retreat. 
 
 So it was, I say, that the deliberations of M'lver 
 and myself were without any outside light in some- 
 what dark quarters; we had to guide us only yon 
 momentary glimpse of the stricken field witli its 
 flying men, seen in a stupid blur of the senses, as 
 one lying by a dark hill tarn at night waiting for 
 mallard or teal, sees the birds wheeling above the 
 water ere he has appreciated the whirr of their 
 presence, lets bang his piece at the midst of them, 
 and is in a dense stillness again before he comprc-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 335 
 
 hends that what he has waited for in the cold night 
 has happened. 
 
 " The plan of old Gustavus did it, I '11 wager my 
 share of the silver-mine," would John insist; "and 
 who in heaven's name would think Alasdair DiosacJi 
 knew the trick of it? I saw his horsemen fire one 
 pistol-shot and fall on at full speed. That 's old 
 Gustavus for you, isn't it? And yet,'' he would 
 continue, reflecting, " Auchinbrcck knew the 
 Swedish tactics, too. He had his musketeers and 
 pikemen separate, as the later laws demand ; he 
 had even a hint from myself of the due proportion 
 of two pikes to three muskets." 
 
 "But never a platoon fired a volley," I recalled. 
 " It was to steel and targe from the onset." And 
 then I would add, " What 's to be said for 
 MacCailein? " 
 
 On this John Splendid would ruffle up wrothily 
 with blame for my harping on that incident, as if 
 it were a crime to hint at any weakness in his chief. 
 
 " You are very much afraid of a waff of wind 
 blowing on your cousin's name," I would cry. 
 
 " My chief, Elrigmore, my chief. I make no 
 claim to consideration for a cousin, but I '11 stand 
 up for Argile's name so long as the gyrony of 
 eight and the galley for Lorn are in his coat of 
 arms." 
 
 Inverlochy, Inverlochy, Invcrlochy — the black 
 name of it rang in my head like a tolling bell as I 
 sought to doze for a little in Dalness house. The 
 whole events of the scandalous week piled up on 
 me ; I no sooner wandered one thought away in
 
 336 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the mists of the nether mind than a new one, 
 definite and harassing, grew in its place, so that I 
 was turning from side to side in a torture-rack of 
 reflection when I should be lost in the slumber 
 my travel and weariness so well had earned me. 
 Something of an eeriness at our position in that 
 genteel but lonely house lay heavy on me, too ; it 
 had no memories of friendship in any room for 
 me; it was haunted, if haunted at all, with the 
 ghosts of people whose names we onl}' breathed 
 with bitterness in the shire of Argile. And con- 
 stantly the wind would be howling in it, piping 
 dismally in the vent of the room the minister and 
 I were in together ; constant the rain would be 
 hissing on the embers of the fire ; at a long distance 
 off a waterfall, in veering gusts of greater vehe- 
 mence, crashed among its rocks and thundered in 
 its linn. 
 
 M'lver, who was the first to take watch for the 
 night, paced back and forth along the lobbies or 
 stood to warm himself at the fire he fed at intervals 
 with peat or pine-root. Though he had a soldier's 
 reverence for the slumbers of his comrades, and 
 made the least of noise as he moved around in his 
 deer-skins, the slightest movement so advertised 
 his zeal, and so clearly recalled the precariousncss 
 of our position, that I could not sleep. In an hour 
 or more after I lay down — with my clothing still 
 on, I need hardly say — M'lver alarmed the ad- 
 vance-guard of my coming sleep by his uncon- 
 scious whistle of a pibroch, and I sat up to find 
 that the cleric was sharing my waukrife rest. He
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 337 
 
 had cast his peruke. In the light of a cruisie that 
 hung at the mantel-breast he was a comical-look- 
 ing fellow with a high bald head, and his eyes, that 
 were very dark and profound, surrounded by the 
 red rings of weariness, all the redder for the pallor 
 of his face. He stretched his legs and rubbed his 
 knees slowly, and smiled on me a little mournfully. 
 
 " I 'm a poor campaigner," said he ; "I ought 
 to be making the best of the chance we have ; but 
 instead I must be thinking of my master and patron, 
 and about my flock in Inneraora town." 
 
 I seized the opportunity as a gled would jump 
 at a dove. 
 
 " You 're no worse than myself," I said, rising to 
 poke up the fire ; " I 'm thinking of Argile, too, 
 and I wish I could get his defalcation — if that 
 it may be called — out of my mind. Was it a — • 
 was it — what you might call a desertion without 
 dignity, or a step with half an excuse in policy? 
 I know MacCailein had an injured arm." 
 
 Gordon rose and joined me at the fireside. He 
 seemed in a swither as to whether I was a fit con- 
 fidant or not in such a matter, but at last would 
 appear to decide in my favour. 
 
 " You have heard me speak well of Argile," he 
 said, quietly. " I never said a word in his praise 
 that was not deserved ; indeed, I have been limited 
 in my valuation of his virtues and ornaments, lest 
 they should think it the paid chaplain who spoke 
 and not the honest acquaintance. 1 know pious 
 men. Highland and Lowland, but my lord of 
 Argile has more than any of them the qualities of
 
 338 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 perfection. At home yonder, he rises every morn- 
 ing at five and is in private till eight. He prays 
 in his household night and morning, and never 
 went abroad, though but for one night, but he 
 took his vvrite-book, standish, and English New 
 Bible, and Newman's Concordance with him. Last 
 summer, playing one day with the bullats with some 
 gentlemen, one of them, when the Marquis stopped 
 to lift his bullat, fell pale, and said to them about 
 him, ' Bless me, it is that I see my lord with his 
 head off and all his shoulder full of blood.' A 
 wicked man would have counted that the most 
 gloomy portent and a fit occasion for dread, for 
 the person who spoke was the Laird of Drimmin- 
 dorren's seventh son, with a reputation for the 
 second sight. But Argile laughed at the thing, no 
 way alarmed, and then with a grave demeanour he 
 said, said he, 'The wine's in your head, sir; and 
 even if it was an omen, what then? The axe in 
 troublous times is no disgrace, and a chief of Clan 
 Diarmaid would be a poor chief indeed if he failed 
 to surrender his head with some show of dignity.' " 
 
 " But to leave his people twice in one war with 
 no apparent valid excuse must look odd to his 
 unfriends," I said, and 1 toasted my hose at the 
 fire. 
 
 " 1 wish I could make up my mind whether an 
 excuse is valid or not," said the cleric ; " and I 'm 
 willing to find more excuses for MacCailein than 
 I '11 warrant he can find for himself this morning, 
 wherever he may happen to be. It is the humour 
 of God Almighty sometimes to put two men in the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 339 
 
 one skin. So far as I may humbly judge, Argile 
 is the poor victim of such an economy. You 
 have seen the sort of man I mean ; to-day gener- 
 ous to his last plack, to-morrow the widow's op- 
 pressor; Sunday a soul humble at the throne of 
 grace, and writhing with remorse for some child's 
 sin, Monday riding vaingloriously in the glaur on 
 the road to hell, bragging of filthy amours, and 
 inwardly gloating upon a crime anticipated. Oh, 
 but were the human soul made on less devious 
 plan, how my trade of Gospel messenger were 
 easy ! And valour, too, is it not in most men a 
 fever of the moment; at another hour the call for 
 courage might find them quailing and flying like 
 the coney of the rocks." 
 
 " Then Argile, you think, was on those occa- 
 sions the sport of his weaker self? " I pushed. I 
 found so many obstacles in the way of satisfaction 
 to my natural curiosity that I counted no per- 
 sistence too rude now. 
 
 " He was the result of his history," said the min- 
 ister quickly, his face flushing with a sudden inspi- 
 ration. " From the start of time those black 
 moments for the first Marquis of Argile have been 
 preparing. I can speak myself of his more recent 
 environment. He has about him ever flatterers of 
 the type of our friend, the sentinel out there, well- 
 meaning but a woeful influence, keeping from him 
 every rumour that might vex his ear, colouring 
 every event in such a manner as will please him. 
 They kept the man so long in a delusion that fate 
 itself was under his heel, that when the stress of 
 things came "
 
 340 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Not another word ! " cried M'lver from the 
 doorway. 
 
 We turned round and found him standing there 
 wrapped up in his plaid, his bonnet over a frown- 
 ing brow, menace in his eye. 
 
 " Not another word, if it must be in that key. 
 Has Archibald, Marquis of Argile and Lord of 
 Lochow, no friends in this convocation? I would 
 have thought his own paid curate and a neighbour 
 so close as Elrigmore would never waste the hours 
 due to sleep upon treason to the man who deserved 
 better of them." 
 
 " You should have eavesdropped earlier and 
 you would have learned that there was no treason 
 in the matter. I 'm as leal friend to my lord of 
 Argile as you or any of your clan. What do I 
 care for your bubbly-jock Highland vanity? " said 
 Gordon. 
 
 " We were saying nothing of MacCailein that 
 we would not say to you," I explained to M'lver, 
 annoyed in some degree by his interference, 
 
 " Ay, ay," said he, with a pit)-ing shrug of the 
 shoulder, and throwing off his last objection to my 
 curiosity; "you're on the old point again. Man, 
 but you 're ill to satisfy ! And yet we must have 
 the story sooner or later, I suppose. I would 
 rather have it an}-whcre tlian in this wauf and 
 empty foreign domicile, that is a melancholy in 
 itself enough for any man. But since the minis- 
 ter 's in a key for history let him on." 
 
 " I 'm in no key for history at all," said Master 
 Gordon, very shortly. " If you would have the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 341 
 
 truth, I 'm searching my wits for some accounting 
 for the conduct of a nobleman I love more than a 
 brother." 
 
 "And that's no great credit to you; hav^e you 
 ever known his equal?" cried M'lver, always in 
 the mood for bickering with this Lowland scholar, 
 the only person or almost the only person I found 
 him unwilling to pick and choose words for. 
 
 " You 're speaking there as a kinsman and clans- 
 man," said Master Gordon ; " I 'm speaking as 
 man of man. I like this one for his struggle, 
 sometimes successful, sometimes not all that way, 
 to keep a manly and religious front before those 
 contending passions within him. He is a remnant 
 of the old world of Highland sturt and strife, and 
 still to a degree in the midst of it, and at the same 
 time a man endowed by heaven with a genius of 
 peace and intellect. Fighting with a horde of 
 savages against reivers no more dishonest than his 
 own clans, is it a wonder that sometimes Mac- 
 Cailein's spirit, the spirit of the thinker and the 
 scholar, should sink at the horror of his position? 
 For all that, he has a courageous front nine times 
 out of ten, and it would have beei; a miracle itself 
 if he had not taken to the galley at Inverlochy 
 yesterday morning." 
 
 " Yesterday morning ! " I cried. " Good God ! 
 I thought it was years ago, or something in a 
 dream." 
 
 " And it was just yesterday morning," spoke on 
 the cleric, " and to-day there 's a marquis on his 
 way south somewhere thinking of yesterday (I
 
 342 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 make no doubt) even on, with every recollection 
 of his life lost for a space below that salt sea of 
 remorse. And so simple the thing, too, like every 
 pregnant moment of life. We lay on the flat land 
 yonder as you left us on your reconnoitre, changed 
 shots on the Saturday night with wandering mal- 
 contents as we thought them, and found Montrose 
 on the braes above us as the dawn broke. We 
 had but a shot or two apiece to the musket, they 
 tell me. Dunbarton's drums rolled, the pipes 
 clamoured, the camp rose from its sleep in a con- 
 fusion, and a white moon was fainting behind us. 
 Argile, who had slept in a galley all night, came 
 ashore in a wherry with his left arm in a sling. 
 His face was like the clay, but he had a firm lip, 
 and he was buckling a hauberk with a steady hand 
 as the men fell under arms. Left alone then, I 
 have a belief that he would have come through 
 the affair gallantly ; but the Highland double- 
 dealings were too much for him. He turned to 
 Auchinbreck, and ' Shall I take the command, 
 
 or ' leaving an alternative for his relative to 
 
 guess at. Auchinbreck, a stout soldier but a 
 vicious, snappqd him very short. ' Leave it to 
 me, leave it to me,' he answered, and busied him- 
 self again in disposing his troops, upon whom I 
 was well aware he had no great reliance. Then 
 Sir James Rollock-Niddry and a few others pushed 
 the Marquis to take his place in his galley again, 
 but would he? Not till Auchinbreck came up a 
 second time, and seeing the contention of his 
 mind, took your Highland way of flattering a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 343 
 
 chief, and made a poltroon act appear one of 
 judgment and necessity. ' As a man and soldier 
 only, you might be better here at the onset,' said 
 Auchinbreck, who had a wily old tongue ; ' but 
 you are disabled against using sword or pistol ; 
 you are the mainstay of a great national move- 
 ment, depending for its success on your life, free- 
 dom, and continued exertion.' Argile took to the 
 galley again, and Auchinbreck looked after him 
 with a shamed and dubious eye. Well, well, Sir 
 Duncan has paid for his temporising; he's in his 
 place appointed. I passed the knowe where he 
 lay writhing to a terrible end, with a pike at his 
 vitals, and he was moaning for the chief he had 
 helped to a shabby flight." 
 
 "A shabby flight!" said M'lver, with a voice 
 that was new to mc, so harsh was it and so high- 
 set. 
 
 " You can pick the word for yourself," said the 
 minister ; " if by heaven's grace I was out of this, 
 in Inneraora I should have my own way of putting 
 it to Argile, whom I love and blame." 
 
 " Oh, you Lowland dog ! " cried John Splendid, 
 more high-keyed than ever, '^ yoic to criticise 
 Argile ! " And he stepped up to the cleric, who 
 was standing by the chimney-jambs, glowered 
 hellishly in his face, then with a fury caught his 
 throat in his fingers, and pinned him up against 
 the wall.
 
 344 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 I CAUGHT M'lver by the coat-lapels and took him 
 off the gasping cleric. 
 
 " Oh, man ! " I cried, " is this the Highland 
 brigadier to be throttling an old soldier of Christ? " 
 
 "Let me get at him, and I '11 set him in the way 
 of putting the last truth of his trade to its only 
 test," said he, still with a face corp-white, tugging 
 at my hold and eyeing Master Gordon with a 
 very uplifted and ferocious demeanour. 
 
 I suppose he must, in the midst of his fury, have 
 got just a glisk of the true thing before him — not 
 a w^orthy and fair opponent for a man of his own 
 years, but an old, wearied man of peace, with a 
 flabby neck, and his countenance blotched, and 
 his wig ajee upon his head so that it showed the 
 bald pate below, for he came to himself as it were 
 with a start. Then he was ashamed most bitterly. 
 He hung his head and scraped with an unconscious 
 foot upon the floor. The minister recovered his 
 wind, looked with contempt in every line at the 
 man who had abused him, and sat down without a 
 word before the fire. 
 
 " I 'm sorry about this," said MTvcr, fumbling 
 about his waistbclt with nervous fingers; "I'm 
 sorry about this, Master Gordon. A Highlander
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 345- 
 
 cannot be aye keeping God's gift of a temper in 
 leash, and yet it 's my disgrace to have laid a hand 
 on a gentleman of your age and calling, even for 
 the name of my chief. Will you credit me when 
 I say I was blind to my own act? Something in 
 me rose uncontrollable, and had you been Hector 
 in armour, or my grandfather from the grave, I was 
 at your neck." 
 
 " Say no more about it," answered Gordon. 
 " I have seen the wolf so often at the Highlander's 
 heart that I need not be wondering to find him 
 snarling and clawing now. And still — from a 
 gentleman — and a person of travel " 
 
 "Say away, sir," said M'lver, bitterly; "you 
 have the whole plea with you this time, and I 'm 
 a rogue of the blackest. I can say no more than 
 I 'm sorry for a most dirty action." 
 
 Gordon looked at him, and seemed convinced 
 that here was a genuine remorse; at least his mien 
 softened and he said quietly, " You '11 hear no 
 more of it from me." 
 
 We were standing, M'lver and I, in front of the 
 hearth, warming to the peat glow, and the cleric 
 sat in an oak arm-chair. Out in the vacant night 
 the rain still pattered and the gale cried. And all 
 at once, above the sound of wind and water, there 
 came a wild rapping at the main door of the 
 house, the alarm of a very crouse and angr)' 
 traveller, finding a hostel barred against him at 
 unseasonable hours. A whole childhood of fairy 
 tale rose to my mind in a second ; but the plain 
 truth followed with more conviction, that there
 
 346 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 was no witch, warlock, nor fairy, but some one with 
 a better right to the tenancy of Dalness than seven 
 broken men with nor let nor tack. We were 
 speedily together, the seven of us, and gathered 
 in the hall, and listening with mouths open and 
 hearts dunting, to the rapping that had no sign 
 of ceasing. 
 
 " I '11 have a vizzy from an upper window of 
 who this may be," said John, sticking a piece of 
 pine in the fire till it flared at the end, and hurry- 
 ing with it thus lighted up the stair. I followed 
 at his heels, while the rest remained below ready 
 to give whatever reception was most desirable to 
 the disturbers of our night's repose. The window 
 we went to looked out on the most utter blackness, 
 a blackness that seemed to stream in at the win- 
 dow as we swung it softly back on its hinge. 
 MTver put out his head and his torch, giving a 
 warder's keek at the door below where the knock- 
 ing continued. He drew in his head t[uickly and 
 looked at me with astonishment. 
 
 " It 's a woman," said he. " I never saw a cam- 
 paign where so many petticoats of one kind or 
 another were going. Who, in God's name, can 
 this one be, and what 's her errand to Dalness at 
 this hour? One of its regular occupants would 
 scarcely make such to-do about her summons." 
 
 " The quickest answer could be got by asking 
 her," I said. 
 
 " And about a feint? " he said, musing. " Well, 
 we can but test it." 
 
 We went down and reported to our companions,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 347 
 
 and Gordon was for opening the door on the 
 moment. " A wanderer hke ourselves," said he, 
 " perhaps a widow of our own making from Glen- 
 coe. In any case, a woman, and out in the 
 storm." 
 
 We stood round the doors while M'lver put 
 back the bars and opened as much as would give 
 entry to one person at a time. There was a loud 
 cry, and in came the Dark Dame, a very spectacle 
 of sorrow ! Her torn garments clung sodden to 
 her skin, her hair hung stringy at her neck, the 
 elements had chilled and drowned the frenzied 
 gleaming of her eyes. And there she stood in 
 the doorway among us, poor woman, poor wretch, 
 with a frame shaking to her tearless sobs. 
 
 " You have no time to lose," she said to our 
 query, " a score of Glencoe men are at my back. 
 They fancy they '11 have you here in the trap this 
 house's owner left you. Are you not the fools 
 to be advantaging yourselves of comforts }-ou 
 might be sure no fairy left for Campbells in Dal- 
 ness? You may have done poorly at Inverlochy 
 — though I hear the Lowlanders and not you were 
 the poltroons — but blood is thicker than water, 
 and have we not the same hills beside our doors 
 at home, and I have run many miles to warn \ou 
 that MacDonald is on his way." She told her 
 story with sense and straightness, her frenzy sub- 
 dued by the day's rigour. Our flight from her 
 cries, she said, had left her a feeling of lonely 
 helplessness; she found, as she sped, her heart 
 truer to the tartan of her name than her ancrcr had
 
 348 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 let her fancy, and so she followed us round Loch 
 Linnhe-head and over the hills to Glencoe. At 
 the blind woman's house in the morning, where 
 she passed readily enough for a natural, she learned 
 that the eldest son in the bed had set about word 
 of our presence before we were long out of his 
 mother's door. The men we had seen going down 
 in the airt of Tynree were the lad's gathering, 
 and they would have lost us but for the beetle- 
 browed rogue, who, guessing our route through 
 the hills to Dalness, had run before them, and, 
 unhampered by arms or years, had reached the 
 house of Dalness a little before we came out of 
 our journey in swamp and corry. A sharp blade, 
 certes ! he had seen that unless something brought 
 us to pause a while at Dalness we would be out 
 of the reach of his friends before they had gained 
 large enough numbers and made up on him. So 
 he had planned with the few folk in the house to 
 leave it temptingly open in our way, with the 
 shrewd guess that starved and wearied men would 
 be found sleeping beside the fire when the Mac- 
 Donalds came round the gusset. All this the 
 Dame Dubh heard and realised even in her half 
 frenzy as she spent some time in the company of 
 the marching MacDonalds, who never dreamed 
 that her madness and her denunciations of Clan 
 Diarmaid were mi.Kcd in some degree with a 
 natural interest in the welfare of every member 
 of that clan. 
 
 M'lver scrutinised the woman sharply, to assure 
 himself there was no cunning effort of a mad
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 349 
 
 woman to pay off the score her evil tongue of the 
 day before revealed she had been reckoning; but 
 he saw only her dementia gone to a great degree, 
 a friend anxious for our welfare, so anxious, in- 
 deed, that the food Master Gordon was pressing 
 upon her made no appeal to her famishing body. 
 
 "You come wonderfully close on my Frankfort 
 story," said M'lver, whimsically. " I only hope 
 we may win out of Dalness as snugly as we won 
 out of the castle of the cousin of Pomerania." 
 
 For a minute or two we debated on our tactics. 
 We had no muskets, though swords were rife 
 enough in Dalness, so a stand and a defence by 
 weapons was out of the question. M'lver struck 
 on a more pleasing and cleanly plan. It was to 
 give the MacDonalds tit for tat and decoy them 
 into the house as their friends had decoyed us into 
 it, and leave them there in durance while we went 
 on our own ways. 
 
 We jammed down the iron pins of the shutters 
 in the salmanger, so that any exit or entrance by 
 this way was made a task of the greatest difficulty; 
 then we lit the upper flats, to give the notion that 
 we were lying there. M'lver took his place be- 
 hind a door that led from the hall to other parts 
 of the house, and was indeed the only way there, 
 while the rest of us went out into the night and 
 concealed ourselves in the dark angle made by a 
 turret and gable, a place where we could sec, 
 without being seen, any person seeking entry to 
 the house. 
 
 All the paths about the mansion were strewn
 
 350 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 with rough sand or gravel from the river, and the 
 rain, in slanting spears, played hiss upon them 
 with a sound I never hear to-day but my mind 's 
 again in old Dalness. And in the dark, vague 
 with rain and mist, the upper windows shone blear 
 and ghostly, dull vapours from a swamp, corp-can- 
 dles on the sea, more than the eyes of a habitable 
 dwelling warm and lit within. We stood the 
 seven of us against the gable (for the woman 
 joined us and munched a dry crust between the 
 chittering of her teeth) waiting the coming of the 
 MacDonalds. 
 
 I got to my musing again, puzzled in this cold 
 adventure, upon the mystery of life. I thought 
 it must be a dream such as a man has lying 
 in strange beds, for my spirit floated and cried 
 upon that black and ugly air, lost and seeking as 
 the soul of a man struggling under sleep. I had 
 been there before, I felt, in just such piteous case 
 among friends in the gable of a dwelling, yet all 
 alone, waiting for visitors I had no welcome for. 
 And then again (I would think), is not all life a 
 dream, the sun and night of it, the seasons, the 
 faces of friends, the flicker of fires and the nip of 
 wine ; and am not I now stark awake for the first 
 time, the creature of God, alone in His world 
 before the dusk has been divided from the day 
 and bird and beast have been let loose to wander 
 about a new universe? Or again (I would think), 
 am I not dead and done with? Surely I fell in 
 some battle away in Low Germanic, or later in 
 the sack of Inneraora town, that was a town
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 351 
 
 long, long ago before the wave threshed in upon 
 Dunchuach? 
 
 The man with the want, as usual, was at his 
 tears, whispering to himself reproach and memory 
 and omens of fear, but he was alert enough to be 
 the first to observe the approach of our enemy. 
 Ten minutes at least before they appeared on the 
 sward lit by the lights of the upper windows, he 
 lifted a hand, cocked an ear, and told us he heard 
 their footsteps. 
 
 There were about a score and a half of the 
 MacDonalds altogether, of various ages, some of 
 them old gutchers that had been better advised to 
 be at home snug by the fire in such a night or 
 saying their prayers in preparation for the loom- 
 ing grave, some of them young and strapping, all 
 well enough armed with everything but musketry, 
 and guided to the house by the blind woman's son 
 and a gentleman in a laced coat, whom we took to 
 be the owner of Dalness because two men of the 
 bearing and style of servants were in his train and 
 very pretentious about his safety in the course of 
 a debate that took place a few yards from us as 
 to whether they should demand our surrender or 
 attack and cut us down without quarter. 
 
 The gentleman sent his two lackies round the 
 house, and they came back reporting (what we 
 had been very careful of) that every door was 
 barred. 
 
 " Then," said the gentleman, " we '11 try a bland 
 knock, and if need be, force the main door." 
 
 He was standing now in a half dusk, clear of the
 
 352 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 light of the windows, with a foot on the step of 
 the door; behind him gathered the MacDonalds 
 with their weapons ready, and I daresay, could 
 we have seen it, with no very pretty look on their 
 faces. As he spoke, he put his hand on the hasp, 
 and to his surprise, the heavy door was open. 
 We had taken good care of that too. 
 
 The band gathered themselves together and 
 dived into the place, and the plaiding of the last 
 of them had scarcely got inside the door than 
 Stewart ran up with the key and turned the lock, 
 with a low whistle for the guidance of M'lver at 
 the inner door. In a minute or less, John was 
 round in our midst again with his share of the 
 contract done, and our rats were squealing in 
 their trap. 
 
 For a little there was nothing but crying and 
 cursing, wild beating against the door, vain attack 
 on the windows, a fury so futile that it was sweet 
 to us outsiders, and we forgot the storm and the 
 hardship. 
 
 At last M'lver rapped on the door and de- 
 manded attention. 
 
 "Is there any one there with the English?" he 
 asked. 
 
 The gentleman of Dalness answered that he 
 could speak English with the best catcran ever 
 came out of MacCailein Mor's country, and he 
 called for instant release, with a menace added 
 that Hell itself could not excel the punishment 
 for us if they were kept much longer under lock 
 and bar. " We are but an adwinced guard," said
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 353 
 
 he, with a happy thought at lying, " and our 
 friends will be at your back before long." 
 
 M'lver laughed pawkily. 
 
 " Come, come, Dalness," said he, " do you take 
 us for girls? You have every man left in Glencoe 
 at your back there ; you 're as much ours as if 
 you were in the tolbooth of Inneraora O ; and 
 I would just be mentioning that if I were in 
 your place I would be speaking very soft and 
 soothing." 
 
 " I '11 argue the thing fairly with you if you let 
 us out," said Dalness, stifling his anger behind the 
 door, but still with the full force of it apparent in 
 the stress of his accent. 
 
 M'lver laughed again. 
 
 " You have a far better chance where you are," 
 said he. " You are very snug and warm there ; 
 the keg of brandy 's on the left-hand side of the 
 fire, though I 'm afraid there 's not very much left 
 of it now that my friend of Achnatra here has 
 had his will of it. Tell those gentry with you that 
 we intend to make ourselves cosy in other parts of 
 the house till the morn's morning, and that if they 
 attempt to force a way out by door or window 
 before we let them we '11 have sentinels to blow 
 out the little brains they have. I 'm putting it to 
 you in the English, Dalness — and I cry pardon 
 for making my first gossip with a Highland gentle- 
 man in such a tongue — but I want you to put my 
 message in as plausible a way as suits you best to 
 the lads and bodachs with you." 
 
 The man drew away from the neighbourhood of 
 
 2i
 
 354 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the door ; there was a long silence, and we con- 
 cluded they were holding parley of war as to what 
 was next to be done. Meantime we made prepara- 
 tions to be moving from a place that was neither 
 safe nor homely. We took food from the pantries, 
 scourged Stewart from a press he was prying in 
 with clawing fingers and bulging pockets, and had 
 just got together again at the rear of the house 
 when a cry at the front told us that our enemies, 
 in some way we never learned the manner of, had 
 got the better of our bolted doors and shutters. 
 
 Perhaps a chance of planning our next step 
 would have been in our favour; perhaps, on the 
 other hand, it would have been the worse for us, 
 because in human folly we might have determined 
 on staying to face the odds against us, but there 
 was no time for balancing the chances ; whatever 
 was to be done was to be done quickly. 
 
 " Royal 's my race ! " cried Stewart, dropping a 
 pillow-slip full of goods he carried with him — 
 "Royal's my race — and here's one with great 
 respect for keeping up the name of it." And he 
 leaped to a thicket on his left. The man with the 
 want ran weeping up to the Dark Dame and clung 
 to her torn gown, a very child in the stupor of his 
 grief and fear. The baron-bailie and Sonaciian 
 and the minister stood spellbound, and I cursed 
 our folly at the weakness of our trap. Only M'lver 
 kept his wits about him. 
 
 "Scatter," said he in luiglish — "Scatter \\'ith- 
 out adicux, and all to the fore by morning search 
 back to the Brig of Urchy, comrades there till the
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 335 
 
 middle of the day, then the devil take the hind- 
 most." 
 
 More than a dozen MacDonalds came running 
 round the gable end, lit by the upper windows, 
 and we dispersed like chaff to the wind before 
 M'lver's speech concluded. He and I ran for a 
 time together, among the bushes of the garden, 
 through the curly kail, under low young firs that 
 clutched at the clothing. Behind us the night 
 rang with pursuing cries, with challenge and call, 
 a stupid clamour that gave a clue to the track we 
 could follow with greatest safety. M'lver seem- 
 ingly stopped to listen, or made up his mind to 
 deviate to the side after a little ; for I soon found 
 myself running alone, and two or three men 
 — to judge by their cries — keeping as close on 
 me as they could by the sound of my plunging 
 among twig and bracken. At last, by striking to 
 an angle down a field that suddenly rolled down 
 beside me, I found soft carpeting for my feet, and 
 put an increasing distance between us. With no 
 relaxation of my step, however, I kept running till 
 I seemed a good way clear of Dalness policies, 
 and on a bridle-path that led up the glen, the very 
 road, as I learned later, that our enemy had taken 
 on their way from Tynree. I kept on it for a little 
 as well as I could, but the night was so dark (and 
 still the rain was pouring, though the wind had 
 lowered) that by-and-by I lost the path, and 
 landed upon rough water-broken rocky land, bare 
 of tree or bush. The tumult behind me was long 
 since stilled in distance, the storm itself had abated,
 
 356 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and I had traversed for less than an hour .when 
 the rain ceased. But still the night was solemn 
 black, though my eyes, by usage, had grown apt 
 and accustomed to separate the dense black of the 
 boulder from the drab air around it. The country 
 is one threaded on every hand by eas and brook 
 that drop down the mountain sides at almost 
 every yard of the way. Nothing was to hear but 
 the sound of running and falling waters, every 
 brook with its own note, a tinkle of gold on a 
 marble stair as I came to it, declining to a mur- 
 mur of sweethearts in a bower as I put its banks 
 behind me after wading or leaping; or a song 
 sung in a clear spring morning by a girl among 
 heather hills, muffling behind me to the black- 
 guard discourse of banditti waiting with poignards 
 out upon a lonely highway. 
 
 I was lost somewhere north of Glen Etive ; near 
 me I knew must be Tynree, for I had been walk- 
 ing for two hours and yet I dare not venture back 
 on the straight route to to-morrow's rendezvous 
 till something of daylight gave me guidance. At 
 last I concluded that the way through the Black 
 Mount country to Bredalbane must be so close at 
 hand it would be stupidity of the densest to go 
 back by Dalness. There was so much, level land 
 round me that I felt sure I must be rounding the 
 Bredalbane hills, so I chanced a plunge to the 
 left. I had not taken twenty steps when I ran up 
 against the dry-stone dyke that bordered the Inns 
 of Tynree.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 357 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 TVNREE is the Gaelic of a name that in the Eng- 
 Hsh is King's House. What humour gave so 
 gaudy a title to so humble a place I have been 
 always beat to know. For if the poorest of the 
 chiefs of the poor isles had his choice of the gal- 
 lows at once or Tynree for a long habitation, I 'm 
 thinking he would cry, " Out with your rope." 
 Standing all its lee lone on the edge of the wild- 
 est moor of all the Scottish kingdom, blustered 
 on by the winds of Glencoe and Glen Etive, the 
 house, far apart from any other (even a hunter's 
 bothy among the corries), must be eerie, empty 
 of all but its owner at most seasons of the year. 
 He will have nothing about him but the fl)'ing 
 plover that is so heart-breaking in its piping at 
 the gray of morn, for him must the night be a 
 dreariness no rowth of cruisie or candle may miti- 
 gate. I can fancy him looking out day after day 
 upon plains of snow and cruel summits, blanching 
 and snarling under sodden skies, and him wishing 
 that God so good was less careless and had given 
 him a home and trade back among the cosy little 
 glens if not in the romping towns. But they tell 
 me — people who rove and have tried Tynree in 
 all weathers — that often it is cheerful with song 
 and story, and there is a tale that once upon a
 
 358 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 time a little king, out adventuring in the kingly 
 ways of winter stories, found this tavern in the 
 wilds so warm, so hospitable, so resounding with 
 the songs of good fellows that he bided as a guest 
 for a week of the winter weather. 
 
 When I came on Tynree, it was sounding with 
 music, just it might be as in the day of the king 
 in the story. Three of the morning, yet the hostel 
 sent out a most hearty reek and firelight, the 
 odours of stewing meats and of strong waters, and 
 the sound of piping and trumping and laughing. 
 
 I stood back a piece from the house and de- 
 bated with myself whether or not it was one 
 where the tartan of Diarmaid would be sure of a 
 welcome even if his sporran jingled with gold to 
 the very jaws. All I wanted was shelter till the 
 day broke and — this may seem odd to any one 
 who has not known the utter wearisomeness of 
 being a hunted man jinking in the dark among 
 woods and alleys — the easy conversation of some 
 human beings with no thought bothering them 
 but what would be for the next meal, or the 
 price of cattle at a town tryst. And song and 
 trump — come, I'll tell the God's own truth upon 
 that! They called me Sobersides in those days; 
 M'lver gave me the name and kept it on me till 
 the very last, and yet sobriety of spirit (in one 
 way) was the last quality in those old days of 
 no grace to find in my nature. I liked to sit in 
 taverns, drinking not deeply, but enough to keep 
 the mood from flagging with people of the young 
 heart, people fond of each other, adrift from all
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 359 
 
 commercial cunning, singing old staves and letting 
 their fancy go free to a tune twanged on a Jew's- 
 trump or squeezed upon a bagpipe or zigged 
 upon a fiddle. So the merriment of Tynree held 
 me like a charm, and a mad whim at last seized 
 me, and in I went, confident that my instinct of 
 comradery would not deceive me, and that at 
 least I had the boon-companion's chance. 
 
 The company never even stojDped their clamour 
 to look at me; the landlord put a jug at my 
 elbow, and a whang of bread and cheese, and 
 I was joining with an affected gusto in a chorus 
 less than ten minutes after I had been a hunted 
 man on the edge of Moor Rannoch, ready to 
 toss up a bawbee to learn whither my road 
 should be. 
 
 It was an orra and remarkable gathering, con- 
 vened surely by the trickery of a fantastic and 
 vagabond providence, " not a great many, but 
 well picked," as Macgregor the Mottled said of 
 his band of thieves. There were men and women 
 to the number of a score, two or three travelling 
 merchants (as they called themselves, but I think 
 in my mind they were the kind of merchants who 
 bargain with the dead corp on the abandoned bat- 
 tlefield, or follow expeditions of war to glean the 
 spoil from burning homesteads) ; there were sev- 
 eral gangrels, an Irishman with a silver eye, a 
 strolling piper with poor skill of his noble in- 
 strument, the fiddler who was a drunken native 
 of the place, a gipsy and his wife and some 
 randy women who had dropped out of the march
 
 360 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 of Montrose's troops. Over this notable congre- 
 gation presided the man of the house, none of 
 your fat and genial-looking gentlemen, but a long, 
 lean personage with a lack-lustre eye. You would 
 swear he would dampen the joy of a penny wed- 
 ding, and yet (such a deceit is the countenance) he 
 was a person of the finest wit and humour, other- 
 wise I daresay Tynree had no such wonderful 
 party in it that night. 
 
 I sat by the fire-end and quaffed my ale, no one 
 saying more to me for a little than " There you 
 are ! " Well enough they knew my side in the 
 issue — my tartan would tell them that — but 
 wandering bodies have no politics beyond the 
 conviction that the world owes them as easy a 
 living as they can cheat it out of, and they never 
 mentioned war. The landlord's dram was on, 
 and 'twas it I had shared in, and when it was 
 over I pulled out a crown and bought the hearti- 
 est good-will of a score of rogues with some flagons 
 of ale. 
 
 A beetle-browed chamber, long, narrow, stifling 
 with the heat of a great fire, its flagged floor at 
 intervals would slap with bare or bauchlcd feet 
 (.lancing to a short reel. First one gangrel would 
 sing a verse or two of a Lowland ballant, not very 
 much put out in its sentiment by the presence of 
 the random ladies, then another would pluck a 
 tune upon the Jew's-trump, a chorus would rise 
 like a sudden gust of wind, a jig would shake 
 upon the fiddle. I never saw a more happy crew 
 nor yet one that — judging from the doctrine that
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 361 
 
 thrift and sobriety have their just reward — de- 
 served it less. I thought of poor Master Gordon 
 somewhere dead or alive in or about Dalness, a 
 very pupil of Christ, and yet with a share of His 
 sorrows, with nowhere to lay his head, but it did 
 not bitter me to my company. 
 
 By-and-by the landlord came cannily up to me 
 and whispered in my ear a sort of apology for the 
 rabble of his house. 
 
 "You ken, sir," said he in very good English — 
 "you ken yourself what the country's like just 
 now, given over to unending brawl, and I am 
 glad to see good-humoured people about me, even 
 if they are penniless gangrels." 
 
 "My own business is war," I acknowledged; 
 " I '11 be frank enough to tell you I 'm just now 
 making my way to Inneraora as well as the 
 weather and the MacDonalds will let me." 
 
 He was pleased at my candour, I could see ; con- 
 fidence is a quality that rarely fails of its purpose. 
 He pushed the bottle towards me with the friend- 
 liest of gestures, and took the line of the fellow- 
 conspirator. 
 
 " Keep your thumb on that," said he, " I 'm not 
 supposed to precognosce every lodger in Tynrcc 
 upon his politics. I 'm off Clan Chattan myself, 
 and not very keen on this quarrel ; that 's to sa\\ 
 I '11 take no side in it, for my trade is feeding folk 
 and not fighting them. Might I be asking if you 
 were of the band of Campbells a corps of Mac- 
 Donalds were chasing down the way last night?" 
 
 I admitted I was.
 
 362 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " I have nothing to do with it," said he, " and 
 I '11 do a landlord's duty by any clan coming my 
 way. As for my guests here, they 're so pleased 
 to sec good order broken in the land and hamlets 
 half-harried that they'll favour any man whose 
 trade is the sword, especially if he 's a gentle- 
 man," he added. " I 'm one myself, though I 
 keep a sort of poor hostel here. I 'm a young 
 son." 
 
 We were joined by the gipsy, a bold, tall man, 
 with very black and lambent eyes, hiccoughing 
 with drink, but not by an}' means drunken, who 
 took out a wallet and insisted on my joining now 
 in his drink. I dared not refuse the courtesy. 
 
 "Would you like your fortune spaed, sir?" 
 asked my black friend, twitching his thumb in 
 the direction of his wife, who was leering on mc 
 with a friendliness begot of the bottle. The place 
 was full of deafening noises and peat-smoke. 
 Fiddle jigged and pipes snored in the deep notes 
 of debauchery, and the little Jew's-trump twanged 
 between the teeth of a dirty-faced man in a saffron 
 shirt and hodden brceks, wanting jacket or hose, 
 a wizen little old man going around the world 
 living like a poet in realms whereto trump and 
 tipi)le could readily bring him. 
 
 " Spae my fortune!" said I, laughing; "such 
 swatches of the same as I had in the past were of 
 no nature to make me eager to see what was to 
 follow." 
 
 " Still and on," said he, " who knows but you 
 may find a wife and a good fortune in a little lurk
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 363 
 
 of the thumb? Jean! Jean! woman," he cried, 
 across the chamber to his callet, and over she 
 came to a very indifferent and dubious chent. 
 
 I had got my hand read a score of times ere 
 this (for I am of a nature curious and prying), and 
 each time the reading was different, but it did not 
 altogether shake my faith in wise women, so half 
 for the fun of it, I put some silver pieces in the 
 loof of my hand and held it before the woman, the 
 transaction unnoticed by the company. She gave 
 the common harangue to start with. At last, 
 " There 's a girl with a child," said she. 
 
 " Faith, and she never went to the well with the 
 dish-clout then," said the black man, using a well- 
 known Gaelic proverb, meaning a compliment in 
 his dirty assumption. 
 
 "She's in a place of many houses now," went 
 on the woman, busy upon the lines of my hand, 
 " and her mind is taken up with a man in the ranks 
 of Argile." 
 
 " That 's not reading the hand at all, good wife," 
 said I ; " those small facts of life are never written 
 in a line across the loof" 
 
 " Jean is no apprentice at the trade," said her 
 man across her shoulder. " She can find a life's 
 history in the space of a hair." 
 
 " The man found the woman and the child under 
 a root of fir," said the woman, " and if the man is 
 not very quick to follow her, he may find kinship's 
 courting get the better of a far-off lover's fancy." 
 
 "' Dhc !" said I; "you have your story most 
 pat. And what now, would you say, would be the
 
 364 JOHN Sl'LKNDID 
 
 end of it all — coming to the real business of the 
 palmist, which, I take it, is not to give past history 
 but to forecast fate? " 
 
 I '11 not deny but I was startled by the woman's 
 tale, for here was Betty and here was MacLachlan 
 put before me as plainly as they were in my own 
 mind day and night since we left Inneraora. 
 
 The woman more closely scrutinised my hand, 
 paused a while and seemed surprised herself at its 
 story. 
 
 " After all," said she, " the woman is not going 
 to marry the man she loves." 
 
 I plucked my hand away with a " Pshaw ! what 
 does it matter? If I doubled your fee you would 
 give me the very best fortune in your wit to 
 devise." 
 
 The Irishman with the silver eye here jostled a 
 merchantman, who drew his gully-knife, so that 
 soon there was a fierce quarrel that it took all the 
 landlord's threats and vigour of arm to put an end 
 to. By this time I was becoming tired of my com- 
 pany ; now that the spac-wife had planted the seed 
 of distress in my mind, those people were tawdry, 
 unclean, wretched. They were all in rags, foul 
 and smelling; their music was but noise demented. 
 I wondered at myself there in so vicious a com- 
 pany. And Betty — home — love — peace — how 
 all the tribe of them suddenly took up every 
 corner of my mind. Oh ! fool, fool, I called my- 
 self, to be thinking your half-hearted wooing of 
 the woman had left any fondness behind it. From 
 the beginning you were second in the field, and
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 365 
 
 off the field now — a soldier of a disgraced army, 
 has the cousin not all the chances in the world? 
 He '11 be the true friend in trouble, he '11 console 
 her loneliness in a sacked burgh town ; a woman's 
 affection is so often her reward for simple kindness 
 that he has got her long ago at no greater cost 
 than keeping her company in her lonely hours. 
 And you are but the dreamer, standing off trem- 
 bling and flushing like a boy when you should be 
 boldly on her cheek, because you dare not think 
 yourself her equal. The father's was the true 
 word : " There 's one thing a woman will not 
 abide, that her lover should think lightly either of 
 himself or her." 
 
 All that black stream of sorry thought went 
 rushing through me as I sat with an empty jug in 
 my hand in a room that was sounding like a 
 market-place. With a start I wakened up to find 
 the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance 
 in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew's- 
 trump, a transparent trick to restore the good 
 humour of his roysterers, and the black man who 
 had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side 
 surveying me closely out at the corner of his eyes. 
 I stood to my feet and ganted with great delibera- 
 tion to pretend I had been half-sleeping. He 
 yawned, too, but with such obvious pretence that 
 I could not but laugh at him, and he smiled 
 knowingly back. 
 
 " Well," said he in English, " you '11 allow it 's a 
 fair imitation, for I never heard that a put-on gant 
 was smittal. I see that you are put about at my
 
 366 JOHN SP^LENDID 
 
 wife's fortune; she's a miracle at the business, as 
 I said ; she has some secrets of fate I would rather 
 with her than me. But I would swear a man may 
 sometime get the better even of fate if he has a 
 warning of its approach." 
 
 " I can scarcely see that by the logic of Por- 
 phyrius or Peter Hispanus with the categories, two 
 scholars I studied at Glascow. But you are surely 
 a queer man to be a vagabond at the petticoat-tails 
 of a spae-wife," said I. 
 
 " I 've had my chance of common life, city and 
 town, and the company of ladies with broidery and 
 camisole and washen faces," he answered, with no 
 hesitation, "and give me the highroad and freedom 
 and the very brute of simplicity. I 'm not of these 
 parts. I 'm not of the Highlands at all, as you 
 may guess, though I 've been in them and through 
 them for many a day. I see you 're still vexed 
 about my woman's reading of your palm. It 
 seems to have fitted in with some of your expe- 
 rience." 
 
 I confessed her knowledge of my private affairs 
 surprised me, and his black eyes twinkled with 
 humour. 
 
 " I '11 explain the puzzle for just as much money 
 as you gave her," said he, " and leave you more 
 satisfied at the end than she did. And there 's no 
 black art at the bottom of my skill, either." 
 
 " Very well," said I ; " here 's your drink-money ; 
 now tell mc the trick of it, for trick I suppose 
 it is." 
 
 He pocketed the mono}- after a vagabond's spit
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 367 
 
 on the coin for luck, and in twenty words exposed 
 his by-love's device. They had just come from 
 Inneraora two or three days before, and the tale of 
 the Provost's daughter in Strongara had been the 
 talk of the town. 
 
 " But how did your wife guess the interest of the 
 lady in a man of Argile's army?" I asked. 
 
 " Because she spaed the lady's fortune too," he 
 answered, " and she had to find out in the neigh- 
 bourhood what it was like to be before she did so ; 
 you know that is half the art of the thing." 
 
 " Yet your woman's guess that I was the man — 
 that 's beyond me ! " 
 
 " I was struck myself when she out with that," 
 he confessed. " Oh, she 's a deep one, Jean ! But 
 your manner and tongue betrayed the returned 
 soldier of fortune ; of such officers in the ranks of 
 Argile there are not so many that it was risking 
 too much to believe all of them knew the story of 
 the Provost's daughter, and your conduct, once she 
 got that length, did the rest." 
 
 "And about kinship's courting?" I asked, 
 amazed at the simplicity of the thing. 
 
 The man dashed his fee on the board and 
 ordered more liquor. 
 
 " Drink up," said he, " and drown care if you 're 
 the man my good wife thought you, for faith there 's 
 a little fellow from over the loch making himself 
 very snug in the lady's company in your absence." 
 
 There was no more drinking for me ; the fumes 
 of this wretched company stank in my nostrils and 
 I must be off to be alone with melancholy. Up I
 
 368 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 got and walked to the door with not fair-good-e'cn 
 nor fair-good-day, and I walked through the be- 
 ginnings of a drab disheartening dawn in the direc- 
 tion that I guessed would lead me soonest to 
 Bredalbane. I walked with a mind painfully 
 downcast, and it was not till I reached a little hill- 
 ock a good distance from the inns at Tynree, a 
 hillock clothed with saugh saplings and conspic- 
 uously high over the flat country-side, that I 
 looked about me to see where I was.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 369 
 
 CHAPTER XXVni 
 
 I STOOD on the hillock clothed with its stunted 
 saugh-trees and waited for the day that was 
 mustering somewhere to the east, far by the 
 frozen sea of moss and heather tuft. A sea 
 more lonely than any ocean the most wide and 
 distant, where no ship heaves, and no isle lifts 
 beckoning trees above the level of the waves ; a 
 sea soundless, with no life below its lamentable 
 surface, no little fish or proud leviathan plunging 
 and romping and flashing from the silver roof of 
 fretted wave dishevelled to the deep profound. 
 The moorfowl does not cry there, the coney has 
 no habitation. It rolled, that sea so sour, so 
 curdled, from my feet away to mounts I knew by 
 day stupendous and not so far, but now in the 
 dark so hid that they were but troubled clouds 
 upon the distant marge. There was a day surely 
 when, lashing up on those hills around, were waters 
 blue and stinging, and some plague-breath blew 
 on them and they shiv^ercd and dried and cracked 
 into this parched semblance of what they were in 
 the old days when the galleys sailed over. No 
 galleys now. No white birds calling eagerly in 
 the storm. No silver bead of spray. Only in its 
 season the cannoch tuft, and that itself but sparsely; 
 
 -4
 
 370 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 the very bluebell shuns a track so desolate, the 
 sturdy gall itself finds no nourishment here. 
 
 The gray day crept above the land. I watched 
 it from my hillock, and I shrunk in my clothing 
 that seemed so poor a shielding in a land so chill. 
 A cold, clammy dawn, that nev^er cleared even as 
 it aged, but held a hint of mist to come that should 
 have warned me of the danger I faced in venturing 
 on the untravcllcd surface of the moor, even upon 
 its safer verge. But it seemed so simple a thing to 
 keep low to the left and down on Glenurchy that I 
 thought little of the risk, if I reflected upon it 
 at all. 
 
 Some of the stupidity of my venturing out on 
 the surface of Rannoch that day must have been 
 due to my bodily state. I was not all there, as the 
 saying goes. I was suffering mind and body from 
 the strain of my adventures, and most of all from 
 the stormy thrashings of the few days before; the 
 long journey, the want of reasonable sleep and food. 
 There had come over all my spirit a kind of dwam, 
 so that at times my head seemed as if it were 
 stuffed with wool; what mattered was of no ac- 
 count, even if it were a tinker's death in the shcuch. 
 No words will describe the feeling except to such 
 as themselves have known it; it is the condition of 
 the man dead with care and weariness so far as 
 the body is concerned, and his spirit, sorry to 
 part company, goes lugging his flesh about the 
 highwa\'s. 
 
 I was well out on Rannoch before the day was 
 full awake on the country, walking at great trouble
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 371 
 
 upon the coarse barren soil, among rotten bog- 
 grass, lichened stones, and fir-roots that thrust from 
 the black peat-like skeletons of antiquity. And 
 then I came on a cluster of lochs — gray, cold, 
 vagrant lochs — still to some degree in the thrall 
 of frost Here 's one who has ever a fancy for 
 such lochans, that are lost and sobbing, sobbing, 
 even on among the hills, where the reeds and the 
 rushes hiss in the wind, and the fowls with sheeny 
 feather make night and day cheery with their call. 
 But not those lochs of Rannoch, those black basins 
 crumbling at the edge of a rotten soil. I skirted 
 them as far off as I could, as though they were the 
 lochans of a nightmare that drag the traveller to 
 their kelpie tenants' arms. There were no birds 
 among those rushes ; I think the very deer that 
 roamed in the streets of Inneraora in the Novem- 
 ber's blast would have run far clear of so stricken 
 a territory. It must be horrible in snow, it must 
 be lamentable in the hottest days of summer, when 
 the sun rides over the land, for what does the most 
 kindly season bring to this forsaken place except a 
 scorching for the fugitive wild flower, if such there 
 be? 
 
 These were not my thoughts as I walked on my 
 way; they are what lie in my mind of the feelings 
 the Moor of Rannoch will rouse in every stranger. 
 What was in my mind most when I was not 
 altogether in the swound of wearied flesh was the 
 spae-wife's story of the girl in Inneraora, and a 
 jealousy so strong that I wondered where, in all 
 my exhausted frame, the passion for it came from.
 
 372 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 I forgot my friends left in Dalncss, I forgot that 
 my compact and prudence itself called for my 
 hurrying the quickest way I could to the Brig of 
 Urchy; I walked in an indifference until I saw 
 a wan haze spread fast over the country in the 
 direction of the lower hills that edged the desert. I 
 looked with a careless eye on it at first, not reflect- 
 ing what it might mean or how much it might 
 lead to. It spread with exceeding quickness, a 
 gray silver smoke rolling out on every hand, as if 
 puffed continually from some glen in the hills. I 
 looked behind me, and saw that the same was 
 happening all around. Unless I made speed out 
 of this sorrowful place I was caught in the mist. 
 Then I came to the full understanding that trouble 
 was to face. I tightened the thongs of my shoes, 
 pinched up a hole in my waistbelt, scrugged my 
 bonnet, and set out at a deer-stalker's run across 
 the moor. I splashed in hags and stumbled among 
 roots ; I made wild leaps across poisonous-looking 
 holes stewing to the brim with coloured water ; I 
 made long detours to find the most fordable part of 
 a stream that twisted back and forth, a very devil's 
 can'.rip, upon my way. Then a smirr of rain came 
 at my back and chilled me to the marrow, though the 
 sweat of travail a moment before had been on every 
 part of me, and even dripping in beads from my chin. 
 At length I lifted my eyes from the ground that I 
 had to scan most carefully in my running, and be- 
 hold ! I was swathed in a dense mist that cut off 
 every view of the world within ten yards of where 
 I stood. This cruel experience dashed me more
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 373 
 
 than any other misadventure in all my wanderings, 
 for it cut me off, without any hope of speedy 
 betterment, from the others of our broken band. 
 They might be all at Urchy Bridge by now, on the 
 very selvedge of freedom, but I was couped by the 
 heels more disastrously than ever. Down I sat on 
 a tuft of moss, and I felt cast upon the dust by a 
 most cruel providence. 
 
 How long I sat there I cannot tell ; it may have 
 been a full hour or more ; it may have been but a 
 pause of some minutes, for I was in a stupor of 
 bitter disappointment. And when I rose again I 
 was the sport of chance, for whether my way lay 
 before me or lay behind me, or to left or right, was 
 altogether beyond my decision. It was well on in 
 the day ; high above this stagnant plain among tall 
 bens there must be shining a friendly and constant 
 sun; but Elrigmore, gentleman and sometimes 
 cavalier of Mackay's Scots, was in the very gullet 
 of night for all he could see around him. It was 
 folly, I knew; but on somewhere I must be going, 
 so I took to where my nose led, picking my way 
 with new caution among the bogs and boulders. 
 The neighbourhood of the lochs was a sort of 
 guidance in some degree, for their immediate 
 presence gave to a nostril sharpened by life in the 
 wild a moist and peaty odour fresh from the 
 corroding banks. I sought them and I found 
 them, and finding them I found a danger even 
 greater than my loss in that desolate plain. For 
 in the gray smoke of mist those treacherous pools 
 crept noiselessly to my feet, and once I had almost
 
 374 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 walked blindly into an ice-clear turgid little lake. 
 My foot sank in the mire of it almost up to the 
 knees ere I jumped to the nature of my neighbour- 
 hood, and with an effort little short of miraculous 
 in the state of my body, threw myself back on the 
 safe bank, clear of the death-trap. And again I 
 sat on a hillock and surrendered to the most dole- 
 ful meditations. Noon came and went, the rain 
 passed and came again, and passed once more, 
 and still I was guessing" my way about the lochs, 
 making no headway from their neighbourhood, and, 
 to tell the truth, a little glad of the same, for they 
 were all I knew of the landscape in Moor Rannoch, 
 and something of friendship was in their treacher- 
 ous presence, and to know they were still beside 
 me, though it said little for my progress to Glen- 
 urchy, was an assurance that I was not making my 
 position worse by going in the wrong airt. 
 
 All about mc, when the rain was gone for the 
 last time, there was a cry of weeping and wailing 
 waters, the voices of the burns running into the 
 lochans, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling merrily, and all 
 out of key with a poor wretch in draggled tartans, 
 fleeing he knew not whither, but going about in 
 shortened circles, like a hedgehog in the sea. 
 
 The mist made no sign of lifting all this time, 
 but shrouded the country as if it were come to 
 stay for ever, and I was doomed to remain till the 
 end, guessing my way to death in a silver-gray 
 reek. I strained my ears, and far off to the right 
 I heard the sound of cattle bellowing, the snorting 
 low of a stirk upon the hillside wlien he wondens
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 375 
 
 at the lost pastures of his calfhood in the merry 
 summer before. So out I set in that direction, 
 and more bellowing arose, and by-and-by, out of 
 the mist but still far off, came a long, low wail that 
 baffled me. It was like no sound nature ever con- 
 ferred on the Highlands, to my mind, unless the 
 rare call of the Benderloch wolf in rigorous 
 weather. I stopped and listened, with my inner 
 head cracking to the strain, and as I was thus 
 standing in wonder, a great form leaped out at me 
 from the mist, and almost ran over me ere it 
 lessened to the semblance of a man, and I had 
 John M'lver of Barbreck, a heated and hurried 
 gentleman of arms, in my presence. 
 
 He drew up with a shock, put his hand to his 
 vest, and I could see him cross himself under the 
 jacket. 
 
 " Not a bit of it," I cried ; " no wraith nor war- 
 lock this time, friend, but flesh and blood. Yet 
 I 'm bound to say I have never been nearer ghost- 
 dom than now; a day of this moor would mean 
 death to me." 
 
 He shook me hurriedly and warmly by the 
 hand, and stared in my face, and stammered, and 
 put an arm about my waist as if I were a girl, and 
 turned me about and led me to a little tree that 
 lifted its barren branches above the moor. He 
 was in such a confusion and hurry that I knew 
 something troubled him, so I left him to choose 
 his own time for explanation. When we got to 
 the tree, he showed me his black knife — an extra 
 long and deadly weapon — laid along his waist.
 
 376 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and " Out dirk," said he, " there 's a dog or two of 
 Italy on my track here." His mind, by the stress 
 of his words, was Hke a hurricane. 
 
 Now, I knew something of the Black Dogs of 
 Italy, as they were called, the abominable hounds 
 that were kept by the Cameron s and others mainly 
 for the hunting down of the Gregarich. 
 
 " Were they close on you ? " I asked, as wc 
 prepared to meet them. 
 
 " Don't you hear them bay? " said he. " There 
 were three on my track ; I struck one through the 
 throat with my knife and ran, for two Italian 
 hounds to one knife is a poor bargain. Between 
 us we should get rid of them before the owners 
 they lag for come up on their tails." 
 
 " You should thank God who got you out of a 
 trouble so deep," I said, astounded at the miracle 
 of his escape so far. 
 
 " Oh, ay ! " said he ; " and indeed I was pretty 
 clever myself, or it was all by with me when one 
 of the black fellows set his fangs in my hose. Here 
 are his partners ; short work with it, on the neck 
 or low at the bi:lly with an up-cut, and ward your 
 throat." 
 
 The two dogs ran with ferocious growls at us as 
 we stood by the little tree, their faces gaping and 
 their quarters streaked with foam. Strong, cruel 
 brutes, they did not swither a moment, but both 
 leaped at M'lver's throat. With one swift slash of 
 the knife, my companion almost cut the head off 
 the body of the first, and I reckoned with the 
 second. They rolled at our feet, and a silence fell
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 377 
 
 on the country. Up M'lver put his shoulders, 
 dighted his blade on a tuft of bog-grass, and 
 whistled a stave of the tune they call " The Des- 
 perate Battle." 
 
 " If I had not my lucky penny with me I would 
 wonder at this meeting," said he at last, eyeing me 
 with a look of real content that he should so soon 
 have fallen into my company at a time when a 
 meeting was so unlikely. " It has failed me once 
 or twice on occasions far less important; but that 
 was perhaps because of my own fumbling, and I 
 forgive it all because it brought two brave lads 
 together like barks of one port on the ocean. ' Up 
 or down?' I tossed when it came to putting fast 
 heels below me, and * up' won it, and here 's the 
 one man in all broad Albainn I would be seeking 
 for, drops out of the mist at the very feet of me. 
 Oh, I 'm the most wonderful fellow ever stepped 
 heather, and I could be making a song on myself 
 there and then if occasion allowed. Some people 
 have genius, and that, I 'm telling you, is well 
 enough so far as it goes ; but I have luck too, and 
 I 'm not so sure but luck is a hantle sight better 
 than genius. I 'm guessing you have lost your way 
 in the mist now? " 
 
 He looked quizzingly at me, and I was almost 
 ashamed to admit that I had been in a maze for 
 the greater part of the morning. 
 
 " And no skill for getting out of it? " he asked. 
 
 " No more than you had in getting into it," I 
 confessed. 
 
 " My good scholar," said he, " I could walk you
 
 378 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 out into a drove-road in the time )'on would be 
 picking the bog from your feet. I 'm not making 
 any brag of an art that 's so common among old 
 hunters as the snaring of conies ; but give me a 
 bush or a tree here and there in a flat land like 
 this, and an herb here and there at my feet, and 
 while winds from the north blow snell, I '11 pick 
 my way by them. It 's my notion that they learn 
 one many things at colleges that are no great 
 value in the real trials of life. You, I make no 
 doubt, would be kenning the name of an herb in 
 the Latin, and I have but the Gaelic for it, and 
 that 's good enough for me ; but I ken the use of 
 it as a traveller's friend whenever rains are smirring 
 and mists are blowing." 
 
 " I daresay there 's much in what you state," 
 I confessed, honestly enough ; " I wish I could 
 change some of my schooling for the art of winning 
 off Moor Rannoch." 
 
 He changed his humour in a flash. " Man," 
 said he, " I 'm maybe giving myself over-much 
 credit at woodcraft ; it 's so seldom I put it to the 
 trial that if we get clear of the Moor before night 
 it'll be as much to your credit as to mine." 
 
 As it happened his vanity about his gift got but 
 a brief gratification, for he had not led me by his 
 signs more than a mile on the way to the south 
 than we came again to a cluster of lochans, and 
 among them a large fellow called Loch Ba, where 
 the mist was lifting quickly. Through the cleared 
 air wc travelled at a good speed, off the Moor, 
 among Bredalbane braes, and fast though we went
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 379 
 
 it was a weary march, but at last wc reached Loch 
 Tulla, and from there to the Bridge of Urchy was 
 no more than a meridian daimder. 
 
 The very air seemed to change to a kinder feel- 
 ing in this, the frontier of the home-land. A scent 
 of wet birk was in the wind. The river, hurrying 
 through grassy levels, glucked and clattered and 
 plopped most gaily, and bubble chased bubble as 
 if all were in a haste to reach Lochow of the bosky 
 isles and holy. Oh ! but it was heartsome, and as 
 we rested ourselves a little on the banks we were 
 full of content to think we were now in a friendly 
 country, and it was a fair pleasure to think that 
 the dead leaves and broken branches we threw in 
 the stream would be dancing in all likelihood round 
 the isle of Innishael by nightfall. 
 
 We ate our chack with exceeding content and 
 waited for a time on the chance that some of our 
 severed company from Dalness would appear, 
 though MTver's instruction as to the rendezvous 
 had been given on the prospect that they would 
 reach the Brig earlier in the day. But after an 
 hour or two of waiting there was no sign of them, 
 and there was nothing for us but to assume that 
 they had reached the Brig by noon as agreed on 
 and passed on their way down the glen. A signal 
 held together by two stones on the glen-side of the 
 Brig indeed confirmed this notion almost as soon 
 as we formed it, and we were annoyed that we had 
 not observed it sooner. Three sprigs of gall, a 
 leaf of ivy from the bridge arch where it grew in 
 dark green sprays of glossy sheen, and a bare
 
 38o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 twig of oak standing up at a slant were held down 
 on the parapet by a peeled willow withy, one end 
 of which pointed in the direction of the glen. 
 
 It was M'lver who came on the symbols first, 
 and " We 're a day behind the fair," said he. 
 " Our friends are all safe and on their way before 
 us ; look at that." 
 
 I confessed I was no hand at puzzles. 
 
 " Man," he said, " there 's a whole history in it ! 
 Three sprigs of gall mean three Campbells, do 
 they not? and that's the baron-bailie and Sona- 
 chan, and this one with the leaves off the half side 
 is the fellow with the want. And oak is Stewart — • 
 a very cunning clan to be fighting or fraying or 
 travelling with, for this signal is Stewart's work, or 
 I 'm a fool ; the others had not the gumption for 
 it. And what 's the ivy but Clan Gordon, and the 
 peeled withy but hurry, and — surely that will be 
 doing for the reading of a very simple tale. Let 
 us be taking our ways. I have a great admiration 
 for Stewart that he managed to do so well with this 
 thing, but I could have bettered that sign if it were 
 mine by a chapter or two more." 
 
 " It contains a wonderful deal of matter for the 
 look of it," I confessed, 
 
 " And yet," said he, " it leaves out two points I 
 consider of the greatest importance. Where 's the 
 Dark Dame, and when did our friends pass this 
 way? A few chucky-stones would have left the 
 hour plain to our view, and there 's no word of the 
 old lady." 
 
 I thought for a second, then, " I can read ?• bit
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 381 
 
 further myself," said I; "for there's no hint here 
 of the Dark Dame because she was not here. 
 They left the s?iaichcantas just of as many as 
 escaped from " 
 
 " And so they did ! Where are my wits to miss 
 a tale so plain? " said he. " She '11 be in Dalness 
 yet, perhaps better off than scouring the wilds, for 
 after all even the MacDonalds are human, and a 
 half-wit widow woman would be sure of their 
 clemency. It was very clever of you to think of 
 that now." 
 
 I looked again at the oak-stem, still sticking up 
 at the slant. " It might as well have lain flat under 
 the peeled wand like the others," I thought, and 
 then the reason for its position flashed on me. 
 It was with just a touch of vanity I said to my 
 friend, " A little coUeging may be of some use at 
 woodcraft, too, if it sharpens Elrigmore's wits 
 enough to read the signs that Barbreck's eagle eye 
 can find nothing in. I could tell the very hour our 
 friends left here." 
 
 " Not on their own marks," he replied sharply, 
 casting his eyes very quickly again on twig and 
 leaf 
 
 " On nothing else," said I. 
 
 He looked again, flushed with vexation, and 
 cried himself beat to make more of it than he had 
 done. 
 
 " What 's the oak branch put so for, with its 
 point to the sky, if ?" 
 
 " I have you now ! " he cried ; " it 's to show the 
 situation of the sun when they left the rendezvous.
 
 382 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Three o'clock, and no mist with them ; good lad, 
 good lad ! Well, we must be going. And now 
 that we 're on the safe side of Argile there 's only 
 one thing vexing me, that we might have been 
 here and all together half a day ago if yon whelp 
 of a whey-faced MacDonald in the bed had been 
 less of the fox." 
 
 " Indeed and he might have been," said I, as 
 we pursued our way. " A common feeling of 
 gratitude for the silver " 
 
 " Gratitude ! " cried John, " say no more ; you 
 have fathomed the cause of his bitterness at the 
 first trial. If I had been a boy in a bed myself, 
 and some reckless soldiery of a foreign clan, out 
 of a Sassenach notion of decency, insulted my 
 mother and my home with a covert gift of coin to 
 pay for a night's lodging, I would throw it in their 
 faces and follow it up with stones." 
 
 Refreshed by our rest and heartened by our 
 meal, we took to the drove-road almost with 
 lightness, and walked through the evening till the 
 moon, the same that gleamed on Loch Linnhe and 
 Lochiel, and lighted Argile to the doom of his 
 reputation for the time being, swept a path of gold 
 upon Lochow, still hampered with broken ice. 
 The air was still, there was no snow, and at Corry- 
 ghoil, the first house of any dignity wc came to, 
 we went up and stayed with the tenant till the 
 morning. And there we learned that the minister 
 and the three Campbells and Stewart, the last with 
 a bullet in his shoulder, had passed through early 
 in the afternoon on their way to Cladich.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 383 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 We got a cold welcome from the women of our 
 own clan and country. They had been very warm 
 and flattering as we passed north; the best they 
 had was not good enough for us ; now they eyed 
 us askance as we went among them in the morn- 
 ing. Glenurchy at its foot was wailing with one 
 loud unceasing coronach made up of many lamen- 
 tations, for no poor croft, no keep, no steading 
 in all the countryside almost, but had lost its 
 man at Inverlochy. It was terrible to hear those 
 sounds and see those sights of frantic women set- 
 ting every thought of life aside to give themelves 
 wholly to their epitaphs for the men who would 
 come no more. 
 
 For ordinary our women keen but when they 
 are up in years and without the flowers of the 
 cheek that the salt tear renders ugly; women who 
 have had good practice with grief, who are so far 
 off from the fore-world of childhood where heaven 
 is about the dubs of the door that they find some- 
 thing of a dismal pleasure in making wails for a 
 penny or two or a cogie of soldier's brose. They 
 would as -soon be weeping as singing; have you 
 not seen them hurrying to the hut to coronach 
 upon a corpse, with the eager step of girls going 
 to the last dance of the harvest ? Beldames,
 
 384 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 witches, I hate your dirges, that arc but an old 
 custom of lamentation ! But Glenurchy and 
 Lochow to-day depended for their sorrow upon 
 no hired mourners, upon no aged play-actors at 
 the passion of grief; cherry-cheeked maidens 
 wept as copiously as their grand-dames, and so 
 this universal coronach that rose and fell on the 
 wind round by Stronmealachan and Inishtrynich, 
 and even out upon the little isles that snuggle in 
 the shadow of Cruachan Ben had many an unac- 
 customed note ; many a cry of anguish from the 
 deepest well of sorrow came to the ear. To walk 
 by a lake and hear grief's chant upon neighbour- 
 ing isles is the chief of the Hundred Dolours. 
 Of itself it was enough to make us melancholy 
 and bitter, but it was worse to sec in the faces of 
 old women and men who passed us surly on the 
 road, the grudge that we had been spared, we 
 gentlemen in the relics of fine garments, while 
 their own lads had been taken. It was half envy 
 that we, and not their own, still lived, and half 
 anger that we had been useless in preventing the 
 slaughter of their kinsmen. As we walked in 
 their averted or surly looks, we had no heart to 
 resent them, for was it not human nature.'' Even 
 when a very old crooked man with a beard like 
 the foam of the linn, and eyes worn deep in their 
 black sockets by constant staring upon care, and 
 through the black mystery of life, stood at his 
 door among his wailing daughters, and added to 
 his rhyming a scurrilous verse whereof we were 
 the subjects, we did no more than hurry our pace.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 385 
 
 By the irony of nature it was a day bright and 
 sunny, the lo7idubh parted his beak of gold and 
 warbled flutey from the grove, indifferent to all 
 this sorrow of the human world. Only in far-up 
 gashes of the hills was there any remnant of the 
 snow we had seen cover the country like a cloak 
 but a few days before. The crows moved briskly 
 about in the trees of Cladich, and in roupy voices 
 said it might be February of the full dykes but 
 surely winter was over and gone. Lucky birds ! 
 they were sure enough of their meals among the 
 soft soil that now followed the frost in the fields 
 and gardens ; but the cotters, when their new 
 grief was weary, would find it hard to secure a 
 dinner in all the country once so well provided 
 with herds and hunters, now reft of both. 
 
 I was sick of this most doleful expedition; 
 M'lver was no less, but he mingled his pity for 
 the wretches about us with a shrewd care for the 
 first chance of helping some of them. It came to 
 him unexpectedly in a dark corner of the way 
 through Cladich wood, where a yeld hind lay 
 with a broken leg at the foot of a creag or rock 
 upon which it must have stumbled. Up he hur- 
 ried, and despatched and gralloched it with his 
 sgian dubJi in a twinkling, and then he ran back 
 to a cot where women and children half craved us 
 as we passed, and took some of them up to this 
 lucky find and divided the spoil. It was a thin 
 beast, a prey no doubt to the inclement weather, 
 with ivy and acorn, its last meal, still in its 
 paunch.
 
 386 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 It was not, however, till we had got clown 
 Glenaora as far as Carnus that we found either 
 kindness or conversation. In that pleasant huddle 
 of small cothouses, the Macarthurs, aye a dour 
 and buoyant race, were making up their homes 
 again as fast as they could, inspired by the old 
 philosophy that if an inscrutable God should level 
 a poor man's dwelling with the dust of the valley, 
 he should even take the stroke with calmness and 
 start to the building again. So the Macarthurs, 
 some of them back from their flight before Antrim 
 and Athole, were throng bearing stone from the 
 river and turf from the brae, and setting up those 
 homes of the poor, that have this advantage over 
 the homes of the wealthy, that they are so easily 
 replaced. In this same Carnus, in later years, I 
 have made a meal that showed curiously the 
 resource of its people. Hunting one day, I went 
 to a little cothouse there and asked for something 
 to eat. A field of unreaped barley stood ripe 
 and dry before the door. Out the housewife went 
 and cut some straws of it, while her daughter 
 shook cream in a bottle, chanting a churn-charm 
 the while. The straw was burned to dry the 
 grain, the breeze win'd it, the quern ground it, 
 the fire cooked the bannocks of it. Then a cow 
 was milked, a couple of eggs were found in the 
 loft, and I sat down in a marvellously short space 
 of time to bread and butter, milk, eggs, and a 
 little drop of spirits that was the only ready-made 
 provand in the house. And though now they 
 were divided between the making of coronachs
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 387 
 
 and the building of their homes, they had still 
 the art to pick a dinner, as it were, off the lich- 
 ened stone. 
 
 There was one they called Niall Mor a Chamais 
 (Big Neil of Kames), who in his day won the 
 applause of courts by slaying the Italian bully 
 who bragged Scotland for power of thew, and I 
 liked Niall Mor's word to us as we proceeded on 
 our way to Inneraora. 
 
 "Don't think," said he, "that MacCailein 's 
 beat yet, or that the boar's tusks are reaped from 
 his jaw. I am of an older clan than Campbell, 
 and closer on Diarmaid than Argile himself; but 
 we are all under the one banner now, and I '11 
 tell you two gentlemen something. They may 
 tear Castle Inneraora out at the roots, stable their 
 horses in the yard of Kilmalieu, and tread real 
 Argile in the clay, but we'll be even with them 
 yet. I have an arm here " (and he held up a 
 bloody-looking limb, hashed at Inverlochy), "I '11 
 build my home when this is mended, and I '11 
 challenge MacDonald till my mouth is gagged 
 with the clod." 
 
 "And they tell me your son is dead yonder," I 
 said, pitying the old man who had now no wife 
 nor child. 
 
 "So they tell me," said he; "that 's the will of 
 God, and better a fast death on the field than a 
 decline on the feather-bed. I '11 be weeping for 
 my boy when I have bigged my house again and 
 paid a call to some of his enemies." 
 
 Niall Mor's philosophy was very much that of
 
 388 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 all the people of the glen, such of them as were 
 left. They busily built their homes and pon- 
 dered, as they wrought, on the score to pay. 
 
 "That 's just like me," M'lver would say after 
 speeches like that of Niall Mor. He was ever 
 one who found of a sudden all another person's 
 traits in his own bosom when their existence was 
 first manifested to him. "That's just like me 
 myself; we are a beaten clan (in a fashion), but 
 we have our chief and many a thousand swords to 
 the fore yet. I declare to you I am quite cheery 
 thinking we will be coming back again to those 
 glens and mounts we have found so cruel because 
 of our loneliness, and giving the MacDonalds and 
 the rest of the duddy crew the sword in a double 
 dose." 
 
 "Ay, John," said I, "it's easy for you to be 
 light-hearted in the matter. You may readily 
 build your bachelor's house at Barbreck, and I 
 may set up again the barn at Elrigmore; but 
 where husband or son is gone it 's a different 
 story. For love is a passion stronger than hate. 
 Are you not wondering that those good folk on 
 either hand of us should not be so stricken that 
 they would be sitting in ashes, weeping like 
 Rachel ? " 
 
 "We are a different stuff from the lady you 
 mention," he said; "I am aye thinking the Al- 
 mighty put us into this land of rocks and holds, 
 and scalloped coast, cold, hunger, and the chase, 
 just to keep ourselves warm by quarrelling with 
 each other. If we had not the recreation now
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 389 
 
 and then of a bit splore with the sword, we should 
 be lazily rotting to decay. The world 's well 
 divided after all, and the happiness as well as the 
 dule of it. It is because I have never had the 
 pleasure of wife nor child I am a little better off 
 to-day than the weeping folks about me, and they 
 manage to make up their share of content with 
 reflections upon the sweetness of revenge. There 
 was never a man so poor and miserable in this 
 world yet but he had his share of it, even if he 
 had to seek it in the bottle. Am n't I rather 
 clever to think of it now? Have you heard of the 
 idea in your classes.^ " 
 
 "It is a notion very antique," I confessed, to 
 his annoyance; "but it is always to your credit 
 to have thought it out for yourself. It is a notion 
 discredited here and there by people of judgment, 
 but a very comfortable delusion (if it is one) for 
 such as are well off, and would salve their con- 
 sciences against the miseries of the poor and dis- 
 tressed. And perhaps, after all, you and the 
 wise man of old are right, the lowest state — even 
 the swineherd's — may have as many compensa- 
 tions as that of his master the Earl. It is only 
 sin, as my father would say, that keeps the soul 
 in a welter " 
 
 "Does it indeed.''" said John, lightly; "the 
 merriest men ever I met were rogues. I 've had 
 some vices myself in foreign countries, though I 
 aye had the grace never to mention them, and I 
 ken I ought to be stewing with remorse for them, 
 but am I ? "
 
 390 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "Are you? " I asked. 
 
 "If you put it so straight, I'll say No — save 
 at my best, and my best is my rarest. But come, 
 come, we are not going into Inneraora on a debate- 
 parade; let us change the subject. Do you know 
 I 'm like a boy with a sweet-cake in this entrance 
 to our native place. I would like not to gulp 
 down the experience all at once like a glutton, 
 but to nibble round the edges of it. We '11 take 
 the highway by the shoulder of Creag Dubh, and 
 let the loch slip into our view." 
 
 I readily enough fell in with a plan that took 
 us a bit off our way, for I was in a glow of eager- 
 ness and apprehension. My passion to come 
 home was as great as on the night I rode up from 
 Skipness after my seven years of war, even greater 
 perhaps, for I was returning to a home now full 
 of more problems than then. The restitution of 
 my father's house was to be set about, six months 
 of hard stint were perhaps to be faced by my 
 people, and, above all, I had to find out how it 
 stood between a certain lady and me. 
 
 Coming this way from Lochow, the traveller 
 will get his first sight of the waters of Loch 
 Finne by standing on a stone that lies upon a 
 little knowe above his lordship's stables. It is a 
 spot, they say, Argile himself had a keen relish 
 for, and after a day of chasing the deer among the 
 hills and woods, sometimes would he come and 
 stand there and look with satisfaction on his 
 country. For he could see the fat, rich fields of 
 his policies there, and the tumultuous sea that
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 391 
 
 swarms with fish, and to his left he could witness 
 Glenaora and all the piled-iip numerous mountains 
 that are full of story if not of crop. To this little 
 knowe M'lver and I made our way. I would have 
 rushed on it with a boy's irapetuousness, but he 
 stopped me with a hand on the sleeve. 
 
 "Canny, canny," said he, "let us get the very 
 best of it. There's a cloud on the sun that'll 
 make Finne as cold, flat, and dead as lead ; wait 
 till it passes." 
 
 We waited but a second or two, and then the 
 sun shot out above us, and we stepped on the hill- 
 ock and we looked, with our bonnets in our hands. 
 
 Loch Finne stretched out before us, a spread 
 of twinkling silver waves that searched into the 
 curves of a myriad bays ; it was dotted with skiffs. 
 And the yellow light of the early year gilded the 
 remotest hills of Ardno and Ben Ime, and the 
 Old Man Mountain lifted his ancient rimy chin, 
 still merrily defiant, to the sky. The parks had 
 a greener hue than any we had seen to the north ; 
 the town revealed but its higher chimneys and 
 the gable of the kirk, still its smoke told of occu- 
 pation ; the castle frowned as of old, and over all 
 rose Dunchuach. 
 
 "O Dunchuach! Dunchuach!" cried M'lver, 
 in an ecstasy, spreading out his arms, and I 
 thought of the old war-worn Greeks who came 
 with weary marches to their native seas. 
 
 "Dunchuach! Dunchuach!" he said, "far have 
 I wandered, and many a town I 've seen, and many 
 a prospect that was fine, and I have made songs
 
 392 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 to maids and mountains, and foreign castles too, 
 but never a verse to Dunchuach. I do not know 
 the words, but at my heart is lilting the very 
 tune, and the spirit of it is here at my breast." 
 
 Then the apple rose in his throat, and he turned 
 him round about that I might not guess the tear 
 was at his eye, 
 
 "Tuts," said I, broken, "'tis at my own; I 
 feel like a girl." 
 
 "Just a tickling at the pap o' the hass, " he said 
 in English ; and then we both laughed. 
 
 It was the afternoon when we got into the 
 town. The street was in the great confusion of 
 a fair-day, crowded with burgesses and landward 
 tenants, men and women from all parts of the 
 countryside still on their way back from flight, 
 or gathered for news of Inverlochy from the sur- 
 vivors, of whom we were the last to arrive. 
 Tradesmen from the Lowlands were busy fitting 
 shops and houses with doors and windows, or fill- 
 ing up the gaps made by fire in the long lands, 
 for MacCailein's first thought on his return from 
 Edinburgh had been the comfort of the common 
 people. Seamen clamoured at the quay, loud- 
 spoken mariners from the ports of Greenock and 
 Dunbarton and their busses tugged at anchor in 
 the upper bay or sat shoulder to shoulder in a 
 friendly congregation under the breast-wall, laden 
 to the beams with merchandise and provender for 
 this hungry country. If Inneraora had been keen- 
 ing for the lost of Inverlochy, it had got over it; 
 at least we found no public lamentation such as
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 393 
 
 made our traverse on Lochow-side so dreary. 
 Rather was there something eager and rapt about 
 the comportment of the people. They talked 
 little of what was over and bye with, except to 
 curse our Lowland troops, whose unacquaintance 
 with native war had lost us Inverlochy. The 
 women went about their business, red-eyed, wan, 
 silent, for the most part; the men mortgaged 
 the future, and drowned care in debauchery in 
 the alehouses. A town all out of its ordinary, 
 tapsilteerie. Walking in it, I was beat to imag- 
 ine clearly what it had been like in its placid day 
 of peace. I could never think of it as ever again 
 to be free from this most tawdry aspect of war, a 
 community in good order, with the day moving 
 from dawn to dusk with douce steps, and no sharp 
 agony at the public breast. 
 
 But we had no excuse for lingering long over 
 our first entrance upon its blue flagstone pave- 
 ments; our first duty was to report ourselves in 
 person to our commander, whose return to Inne- 
 raora Castle we had been apprised of at Cladich.
 
 394 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ARGILE'S BEDROOxM 
 
 This need for waiting upon his lordship so soon 
 after the great reverse was a sour bite to swallow, 
 for M'lver as well as myself. M'lver, had he his 
 own way of it, would have met his chief and 
 cousin alone; and he gave a hint delicately of 
 that kind, affecting to be interested only in spar- 
 ing me the trouble and helping me home to 
 Elrigmore, where my father and his men had 
 returned three days before. But I knew an offi- 
 cer's duty too well for that, and insisted on 
 accompanying him, certain (with some mischiev- 
 ous humour in spoiling his fair speeches) that he 
 dared scarcely be so fair-faced and flattering to 
 MacCailein before me as he would be alone with 
 him. 
 
 The castle had the stillness of the grave. 
 Every guest had fled as quickly as he could from 
 this retreat of a naked and ashamed soul. Where 
 pipers played as a custom, and laughter rang, 
 there was the melancholy hush of a monastery. 
 The servants went about a-tiptoe, speaking in 
 whispers lest their master should be irritated in 
 his fever, the very banner on the tower hung limp 
 about its pole, hiding the black galley of its
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 395 
 
 blazon, now a lymphad of disgrace. As we went 
 over the bridge a little dog, his lordship's favour- 
 ite, lying at the door, weary, no doubt, of sullen 
 looks and silence, came leaping and barking 
 about us at John's cheery invitation, in a joy, as 
 it would appear, to meet any one with a spark of 
 life and friendliness. 
 
 Argile was in his bed-chamber and between 
 blankets, in the hands of his physician, who had 
 been bleeding him. He had a minister for mind 
 and body, for Gordon was with him too, and 
 stayed with him during our visit, though the 
 chirurgeon left the room with a word of caution 
 to his patient not to excite himself. 
 
 "Wise advice, is it not, gentlemen?" said the 
 Marquis. "As if one stirred up his own pas- 
 sions like a dame waiting on a drunken husband. 
 I am glad to see you back, more especially as 
 Master Gordon was just telling me of the sur- 
 prise at Dalness, and the chance that you had 
 been cut down there by the MacDonalds, who, 
 luckily for him and Sonachan and the others, all 
 followed you in your flight, and gave them a 
 chance of an easy escape." 
 
 He shook hands with us warmly enough, with 
 fingers moist and nervous. A raised look was in 
 his visage, his hair hung upon a brow of exceed- 
 ing pallor. I realised at a half-glance the com- 
 motion that was within. 
 
 "A drop of wine.'' " 
 
 "Thank you," said I, "but I 'm after a glass in 
 the town." I was yet to learn sorrow for this
 
 396 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 unhappy nobleman whose conduct had bittered 
 me all the way from Lorn. 
 
 MacCailein scrutinised me sharply, and opened 
 his lips as it were to say something, but changed 
 his mind, and made a gesture towards the bottle, 
 which John Splendid speedily availed himself of 
 with a "Here 's one who has no swither about it. 
 Lord knows I 've had few enough of life's com- 
 forts this past week!" 
 
 Gordon sat with a Bible in his hand, abstracted, 
 his eyes staring on a window that looked on the 
 branches of the highest tree about the castle. 
 He had been reading or praying with his master 
 before the physician had come in; he had been 
 doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), 
 and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame 
 of a conscience revived. There was a constraint 
 on the company for some minutes, on no one more 
 than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, 
 and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the 
 fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in 
 the eyes of M'lver or myself. I can swear John 
 was glad enough to escape their glance. He was 
 as little at ease as his master, made all the fuss 
 he could with his bottle, and drank his wine with 
 far too great a deliberation for a person generally 
 pretty brisk with the beaker. 
 
 "It's a fine day," said he at last, breaking 
 the silence. "The back of the winter's broken 
 fairly." Then he started and looked at me, con- 
 scious that I might have some contempt for so 
 frail an opening.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 397 
 
 "Did you come here to speak about the 
 weather?" asked MacCailein, with a sour wea- 
 ried smile. 
 
 "No," said M'lver, ruffling up at once, "I 
 came to ask when you are going to take us back 
 the road we came ? " 
 
 " To — to — overbye ? " asked MacCailein, baulk- 
 ing at the name. 
 
 "Just so; to Inverlochy," answered M'lver. 
 " I suppose we are to give them a call when we 
 can muster enough men .'' " 
 
 "Hadn't we better consider where we are 
 first.''" said MacCailein. Then he put his fair 
 hand through his ruddy locks and sighed. " Have 
 you nothing to say (and be done with it) about my 
 — my — 'my part in the affair .-• His reverence 
 here has had his will of me on that score." 
 
 M'lver darted a look of annoyance at the min- 
 ister, who seemed to pay no heed, but still to 
 have his thoughts far off. 
 
 "I have really nothing to say. your lordship, 
 except that I 'm glad to see you spared to us here 
 instead of being left a corpse with our honest old 
 kinsman Auchinbreck {bcannacJid leas!) and more 
 gentry of your clan and house than the Blue 
 Quarry will make tombs for in Kilmalieu. If 
 the minister has been preaching, it's his trade; 
 it 's what you pay him for. I 'm no homilist, 
 thank God, and no man's conscience." 
 
 "No, no; God knows you are not," said Argile, 
 in a tone of pity and vexation. "I think I said 
 before that you were the poorest of consciences to
 
 398 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 a man in a hesitancy between duty and inclina- 
 tion. . . . And all my guests have left me, John; 
 I 'm a lonely man in my castle of Inneraora this 
 day, except for the prayers of a wife — God bless 
 and keep her ! — who knows and comprehends my 
 spirit. And I have one more friend here in this 
 room " 
 
 " You can count on John M'lver to the yctts of 
 Hell," said my friend, "and I am the proud man 
 that you should think it." 
 
 "I am obliged to you for that, kinsman," said 
 his lordship in Gaelic, with a by your-leave to 
 the cleric. " But do not give your witless vanity 
 a foolish airing before my chaplain." Then he 
 added in the English, "When the fairy was at 
 my cradle-side and gave my mother choice of my 
 gifts, I wish she had chosen rowth of real friends. 
 I could be doing with more about me of the qual- 
 ity I mention ; better than horse and foot would 
 they be, more trusty than the claymores of my 
 clan. It might be the slogan ' Cruachan ' when- 
 ever it wist, and Archibald of Argile would be 
 more puissant than he of Homer's story. People 
 have envied me when they have heard me called 
 the King of the Highlands — fools that did not 
 know I was the poorest, weakest man of his time, 
 surrounded by flatterers instead of friends. Gor- 
 don, Gordon, I am the victim of the Highland 
 liar, that smooth tongued " 
 
 "Call it the Campbell liar," I cried bitterly, 
 thinking of my father. "Your clan has not the 
 reputation of guile for nothing, and if you refused
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 399 
 
 straightforward honest outside counsel sometimes, 
 it was not for the want of its offering." 
 
 "I cry your pardon," said MacCailein, meekly, 
 "I should have learned to discriminate by now. 
 Blood 's thicker than water, they say, but it 's not 
 so pure and transparent ; I have found my blood 
 drumly enough." 
 
 "And ready enough to run freely for you," said 
 M'lver, but half comprehending this perplexed 
 mind. "Your lordship should be the last to echo 
 any sentiment directed against the name and fame 
 of Clan Campbell." 
 
 " Indeed they gave me their blood freely enough 
 — a thousand of them lying yonder in the north 
 ■ — I wish they had been so lavish, those closest 
 about me, with truth and honour. For that I 
 must depend on an honest servant of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the one man in my pay with the 
 courage to confront me with no cloaked speech, 
 but his naked thought, though it should lash me 
 like whips. Oh many a time my wife, who is 
 none of our race, warned me against the softening 
 influence, the blight and rot of this eternal air of 
 flattery that 's round about Castle Inneraora like 
 a swamp vapour. She 's in Stirling to-day — I 
 ken it in my heart that to-night she '11 weep upon 
 her pillow because she '11 know fate has found the 
 weak link in her goodman's armour again." 
 
 John Splendid' s brow came down upon a most 
 perplexed face; this seemed all beyond him, but 
 he knew his master was somehow blaming the 
 world at large for his own error.
 
 400 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "Come now, John," said his lordship, turning 
 and leaning on his arm and looking curiously at 
 his kinsman. "Come now, what do you think 
 of me here without a wound but at the heart, 
 with Auchinbreck and all my gallant fellows 
 yonder? " 
 
 "Auchinbreck was a soldier by trade and a 
 good one too," answered M'lver, at his usual trick 
 of prevarication. 
 
 "And a flatterer like yourself, you mean," said 
 his lordship. "He and you learned the lesson in 
 the same school, I 'm thinking. And as ill luck 
 had it, his ill counsel found me on the swither, 
 as yours did when Colkitto came down the glens 
 there to rape and burn. That 's the Devil for 
 you; he 's aye planning to have the minute and 
 the man together. Come, sir, come, sir, what do 
 you think, what do you think.-' " 
 
 He rose as he spoke and put his knees below 
 him, and leaned across the bed with hands upon 
 the blankets, staring his kinsman in the face as if 
 he would pluck the truth from him out at the 
 very eyes. His voice rose to an animal cry with 
 an agony in it ; the sinister look that did him 
 such injustice breathed across his visage. His 
 knuckle and collar-bones shone blae through the 
 tight skin. 
 
 "What do I think.?" echoed M'lver. "Well, 
 now " 
 
 "On your honour now," cried Argilc, clawing 
 him by the shoulder. 
 
 At that M'lver's countenance changed; he
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 401 
 
 threw off his soft complacence, and cruelty and 
 temper stiffened his jaw. 
 
 "I '11 soon give you that, my Lord of Argile," 
 said he. "I can lie like a Dutch major for con- 
 venience sake, but put me on honour and you '11 
 get the truth if it cost me my life. Purgatory's 
 your portion, Argile, for a Sunday's work that 
 makes our name a mock to-day across the envious 
 world. Take to your books and your preachers, 
 sir, you 're for the cloister and not for the field; 
 and if I live a hundred years, I '11 deny I went 
 with you to Inverlochy. I left my sword in 
 Badenoch, but here 's my dagger " (and he threw 
 it with a clatter on the floor), " it 's the last tool 
 I '11 handle in the service of a scholar. To-mor- 
 row the old big wars for me; Hebron's troopers 
 will welcome an umquhil comrade, and I '11 find 
 no swithering captains among the cavaliers in 
 France. " 
 
 Back sat my lord in bed, and laughed with a 
 surrender shrill and distraught, until Master 
 Gordon and I calmed him, and there was his 
 cousin still before him in a passion, standing in 
 the middle of the floor. "Stop, stop, John," he 
 cried; "now that for once I've got the truth 
 from you, let us be better friends than ever 
 before. " 
 
 "Never the same again," said M'lver firmly, 
 "never the same again, for you ken my estimate 
 of you now; and what avails my courtesy.-' " 
 
 "Your flatteries, you mean," said Argile, good- 
 natured. " And, besides, you speak only of my
 
 402 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 two blunders ; you know my other parts, you know 
 that by nature I am no paltroon. " 
 
 "That's no credit to you, sir; it's the strong 
 blood of Diarmaid ; there was no paltroon in the 
 race but what came in on the wrong side of the 
 blanket. I've said it first, and I'll say it to 
 the last, your spirit is smoored among the books. 
 Paper and ink will be the Gael's undoing; my 
 mother taught me, and my mother knew : so long 
 as we lived by our hands we were the world's 
 invincibles. Rome met us and Rome tried us, 
 and her corps might come in winter torrents, but 
 they never tore us from our hills and keeps. 
 What Rome may never do, that may paper and 
 sheepskin; you, yourself, MacCailein, have the 
 name of plying pen and ink very well to your 
 own purpose in the fingers of old lairds who have 
 small skill of that contrivance." 
 
 He would have passed on in this outrageous 
 strain without remission, had not Gordon checked 
 him with a determined and unabashed voice. He 
 told him to sit down in silence or leave the room, 
 and asked him to look upon his master and see if 
 that high fever was a condition to inflame in a fit 
 of temper. John Splendid cooled a little, and 
 went to the window, looking down with eyes of 
 far surmise upon the pleasance and the town be- 
 low, chewing his temper between his teeth. 
 
 "You see, Elrigmorc, what a happy King of 
 the Highlands I am," said the Marquis despond- 
 ently. " Fortunate Auchinbrcck, to be all by 
 with it after a moment's agony!"
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 403 
 
 "He died like a good soldier, sir," I said; "he 
 was by all accounts a man of some vices; but he 
 wiped them out in his own blood." 
 
 "Are you sure of that? Is it not the old folly 
 of the code of honour, the mad exaltation of mere 
 valour in arms that makes you think so? What 
 if he was spilling his drops on the wrong side? 
 He was against his king at least, and — O my 
 wits, my wits, what am I saying? ... I saw 
 you did not drink my wine, Elrigmore; am I so 
 low as that ? " 
 
 "There is no man so low, my lord," said I, 
 " but he may be yet exalted. We are, the best 
 of us, the instruments of a whimsical providence " 
 ("What a rank doctrine," muttered the minister), 
 "and Cccsar himself was sometimes craven before 
 his portents. You, my lord, have the one conso- 
 lation left, that all 's not bye yet with the cause 
 you champion, and you may yet lead it to the. 
 highest victory." 
 
 Argile took a grateful glance at me. "You 
 know what I am," he said, "not a man of the 
 happy, single mood like our friend Barbreck here, 
 but tossed between philosophies. I am paying 
 bitterly for my pliability, for who so much the 
 sport of life as the man who knows right well the 
 gait he should gang, and prays fervently to be 
 permitted to follow it, but sometimes stumbles in 
 the ditch? Monday, oh Monday; I must be at 
 Edinburgh and face them all ! 'T is that dauntens 
 me." His eyes seemed to swim in blood, as he 
 looked at me, or through me, aghast at the horror
 
 404 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 of his situation, and sweat stood in blobs upon 
 his brow. "That," he went on, "weighs me 
 down like lead. Here about me my people know 
 me, and may palliate the mistake of a day by the 
 recollection of a life-time's honour. I blame 
 Auchinbreck ; I blame the chieftains; they said 
 I must take to the galley ; I blame " 
 
 "Blame no one, Argile, " said Master Gordon, 
 standing up before him, not a second too soon, 
 for he had his hand on the dirk M'lver had thrown 
 down. Then he turned to us with ejecting arms. 
 "Out you go!" he cried sternly; "out you go ! 
 what delight have you in seeing a nobleman on 
 the rack.-* " 
 
 As the door closed behind us we could hear 
 Argile sob. 
 
 Seventeen years later, if I may quit the thread 
 of my history and take in a piece that more 
 properly belongs to the later adventures of John 
 Splendid, I saw my lord die by the maiden. 
 Being then in his tail, I dined with him and his 
 friends the day before he died, and he spoke with 
 exceeding cheerfulness of that hour M'lver and I 
 found him in bed in Inneraora. "You saw me at 
 my worst," said he, "on two occasions; bide till 
 to-morrow and you '11 see me at my best. I never 
 unmasked to mortal man till that day Gordon put 
 you out of my room." I stayed and saw him die; 
 I saw his head up and his chin in the air as be- 
 hoved his quality, that day he went through that 
 noisy, crowded, causied Edinburgh — Edinburgh 
 of the doleful memories, Edinburgh whose ports
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 405 
 
 I never enter till this day but I feel a tickling at 
 the nape of my neck, as where a wooden collar 
 should lie before the shear fall. 
 
 "A cool enough reception this," said M'lvcr, as 
 we left the gate. "It was different last year, 
 when we went up together on your return from 
 Low Germanic. Then MacCailein was in the 
 need of soldiers, now he 's in the need of priests, 
 who gloze over his weakness with their prayers." 
 
 "You are hardly fair either to the one or the 
 other," I said. "Argile, whom I went in to meet 
 to-day with a poor regard for him, turns out a 
 better man than I gave him credit for being; he 
 has at least the grace to grieve about a great error 
 of judgment, or weakness of the spirit, whichever 
 it may be. And as for Master Gordon, I '11 take 
 off my hat to him. Yon 's no type of the sour, 
 dour, antiprelatics; he comes closer on the per- 
 fect man and soldier than any man I ever met." 
 
 M'lver looked at me with a sign of injured 
 vanity. 
 
 "You're not very fastidious in your choice of 
 comparisons," said he. "As for myself, I can- 
 not see much more in Gordon than what he is 
 paid for — a habit of even temper, more truthful- 
 ness than I have myself, and that 's a dubious 
 virtue, for see the impoliteness that 's always in 
 its train! Add to that a lack of any clannish 
 regard for MacCailein Mor, whom he treats just 
 like a common merchant, and that 's all. Just a 
 plain, stout, fozy, sappy burrow-man, keeping a 
 gospel shop, with scarcel}' so much of a man's
 
 4o6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 parts as will let him fend a blow in the face. I 
 could march four miles for his one, and learn him 
 the A B rt<^ of every manly art. " 
 
 "I like you fine, man," I cried; "I would 
 sooner go tramping the glens with you any day 
 than Master Gordon; but that's a weakness of 
 the imperfect and carnal man, that cares not to 
 have a conscience at his coat-tail every hour of 
 the day: you have your own parts and he his, and 
 his parts are those that are not very common on 
 our side of the country — more 's the pity." 
 
 M'lver was too busy for a time upon the sudden 
 rupture with Argile to pay very much heed to my 
 defence of Master Gordon. The quarrel — to call 
 that a quarrel in which one man had all the bad 
 temper and the other nothing but self-reproach — 
 had soured him of a sudden as thunder turns the 
 morning's cream to curd before noon. And his 
 whole demeanour revealed a totally new man. In 
 his ordinary John was very pernicketty about his 
 clothing, always with the most shining of buckles 
 and buttons, always trim in plaiding, snod and 
 spruce about his hair and his hosen, a real dandy 
 who never overdid the part, but just contrived to 
 be pleasant to the eye of women, who, in my 
 observation, have, the most sensible of them, as 
 great a contempt for the mere fop as they have 
 for the sloven. It took, indeed, trimness of 
 apparel to make up for the plainness of his face. 
 Not that he was ugly or harsh-favoured ; he was 
 too genial for either; he was simply well-favoured 
 enough to pass in a fair, as the saying goes, which
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 407 
 
 is a midway between Apollo and plain Donald. 
 But what with a jacket and vest all creased for 
 the most apparent reasons, a plaid frayed to rib- 
 bons in dashing through the wood of Dalness, 
 brogues burst at the toes and a bonnet soaked all 
 out of semblance to itself by rains, he appeared 
 more common. The black temper of him trans- 
 formed his face too: it lost the geniality that was 
 its main charm, and out of his eyes flamed a most 
 wicked, cunning, cruel fellow. 
 
 He went down the way from the castle brig to 
 the arches cursing with great eloquence. A sol- 
 dier picks up many tricks of blasphemy in a career 
 about the world with foreign legions, and John 
 had the reddings of three or four languages at his 
 command, so that he had no need to repeat him- 
 self much in his choice of terms about his chief. 
 To do him justice, he had plenty of condemna- 
 tion for himself too. 
 
 "Well," said I, "you were inclined to be calm 
 enough with MacCailein when first we entered 
 his room. I suppose all this uproar is over his 
 charge of flattery, not against yourself alone but 
 against all the people about." 
 
 "That's just the thing," he cried, turning 
 round and throwing his arms furiously about. 
 "Could he not have charged the clan generally, 
 and let who would put the cap on.? If yon 's the 
 policy of Courts, heaven help princes!" 
 
 "And yet you were very smug when you 
 entered," I protested. 
 
 "Was I that.''" he retorted. "That's easy to
 
 408 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 account for. Did you ever feel like arguing with 
 a gentleman when you had on your second-best 
 clothes and no ruffle? The man was in his bed, 
 and his position as he cocked up there on his 
 knees was not the most dignified I have seen; 
 but even then he had the best of it, for I felt like 
 a beggar before him in my shabby duds. Oh, he 
 had the best of us all there. You saw Gordon 
 had the sense to put on a new surtout and clean 
 linen and a freshly dressed peruke before he saw 
 him; I think he would scarcely have been so bold 
 before Argile if he had his brcck-bands a finger- 
 length below his belt, and his wig on the nape of 
 his neck as we saw him in Glencoc. " 
 
 "Anyhow," said I, "you have cut the connec- 
 tion ; are you really going abroad .■" " 
 
 He paused a second in thought, smiled a little, 
 and then laughed as if he had seen something 
 humorous. 
 
 "Man," said he, "didn't I do the dirk trick 
 with a fine touch of nobility.'* Maybe you thought 
 it was done on the impulse and without any cal- 
 culation. The truth was, I played the whole 
 thing over in my mind while he was in the pre- 
 liminaries of his discourse. I saw he was work- 
 ing up to an attack, and I knew I could surprise 
 him. But I must confess I said more than I in- 
 tended. When I spoke of the big wars and He- 
 bron's troopers — well, Argile 's a very nice shire 
 to be living in." 
 
 "What, was it all play-acting, then.?" 
 
 He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 409 
 
 "You must be a singularly simple man, Elrig- 
 more," he said, "to ask that of any one. Are we 
 not play-acting half our lives once we get a little 
 beyond the stage of the ploughman and the herd ? 
 Half our tears and half our laughter and the great 
 bulk of our virtues are like your way of cocking 
 your bonnet over your right ear; it does not come 
 by nature, and it is done to pleasure the world in 
 general. Play-acting! I'll tell you this, Colin, 
 I could scarcely say myself when a passion of 
 mine is real or fancied now. But I can tell you 
 this too; if I began in play to revile the Marquis, 
 I ended in earnest. I 'm afraid it 's all bye with 
 me yonder. No more mine-managing for me; I 
 struck too close on the marrow for him to for- 
 get it." 
 
 "He has forgotten and forgiven it already," I 
 cried. "At least let us hope he has not forgot- 
 ten it (for you said no more than was perhaps 
 deserved), but at least it 's forgiven. If you 
 said to-morrow that you were sorry for your 
 temper " 
 
 " Said ten thousand fiends in Hell ! " cried 
 M'lver. "I may be vexed I angered the man; 
 but I '11 never let him know it by my words, if 
 he cannot make it out from my acts."
 
 4IO JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 MISTRESS BETTY 
 
 I DRESSED myself up in the morning with scrupu- 
 lous care, put my hair in a queue, shaved cheek 
 and chin and put at my shoulder the old heirloom 
 brooch of the house, which, with some other 
 property, the invaders had not found below the 
 bruacJi where we had hid it on the day we had 
 left Elrigmore to their mercy. I was all in a 
 tremor of expectation, hot and cold by turns in 
 hope and apprehension, but always with a singu- 
 lar uplifting at the heart, because for good or ill 
 I was sure to meet in the next hour or two the 
 one person whose presence in Inneraora made it 
 the finest town in the world. Some men tell me 
 they have felt the experience more than once ; 
 light o' loves they, errant gallants, I'll swear (my 
 dear) the tingle of it came to me but once at the 
 thought of meeting one woman. Had she been 
 absent from Inneraora that morning I would have 
 avoided it like a leper-house because of its gloomy 
 memorials; but the very reek of its repairing 
 tenements as I saw them from the upper windows 
 of my home floating in a haze against the blue 
 over the shoulder of Dun Torvil seemed to call
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 411 
 
 me on. I went about the empty chambers carol- 
 ling like the bird. Aumrie and clothes-press were 
 burst and vacant, the rooms in all details were 
 bereft and cheerless because of the plenishing 
 stolen, and my father sat among his losses and 
 mourned, but I made light of our spoiling. 
 
 As if to heighten the rapture of my mood, the 
 day was full of sunshine, and though the woods 
 crowding the upper glen were leafless and slum- 
 bering, they were touched to something like 
 autumn's gold. Some people love the country 
 but in the time of leafage; I find it laden with 
 delights in every season of the year, and the end 
 of winter as cheery a period as any, for I know 
 that the buds are pressing at the bark, and that 
 the boughs in rumours of wind stretch out like 
 the arms of the sleeper who will soon be full 
 awake. 
 
 Down I went stepping to a merry lilt, banish- 
 ing every fear from my thoughts, and the first 
 call I made was on the Provost. He was over in 
 Askaig's with his wife and family pending the 
 repair of his own house, and Askaig was off to 
 his estate. Master Brown sat on the balusters of 
 the outer stair, dangling his squat legs and study- 
 ing through horn specs the tale of thig and theft 
 which the town officer had made up a report on. 
 As I put my foot on the bottom step he looked 
 up, and his welcome was most friendly. 
 
 "Colin! Colin!" he cried, hastening down to 
 shake me by the hand, " come your ways in. I 
 heard you got home yesterday, and I was sure you
 
 412 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 would give us a call in the by-going to-day. And 
 you 're little the waur of your jaunt — hale and 
 hearty. We ken all about your prisoning; M'lver 
 was in last night and kept the crack going till 
 morning — a most humorous devil." 
 
 He pinched rapee as he spoke in rapid doses 
 from a snuff-box, and spread the brown powder in 
 extravagant carelessness over his vest. He might 
 affect what light-heartedness he could; I saw that 
 the past fortnight had made a difference for the 
 worse on him. The pouches below the eyes had 
 got heavier and darker, the lines had deepened on 
 his brow, the ruddy polish had gone off his cheek, 
 and it was dull and spotted; by ten o'clock at 
 night — when he used to be very jovial over a 
 glass — I could tell he would be haggard and 
 yawning. At his years men begin to age in a 
 few hours; a sudden wrench to the affections, or 
 shock to a long-disciplined order of things in 
 their lives, will send them staggering down off 
 the braehead whereon they have been perched 
 with a good balance so long that they themselves 
 have forgot the natural course of human man is to 
 be progressing somewhere. 
 
 "Ah, lad, lad! haven't we the times.''" he 
 said, as he led me within to the parlour. "Inne- 
 raora in the stour in her reputation as well as in 
 her tenements. I wish the one could be amended 
 as readily as the other; but we mustn't be saying 
 a word against princes, ye ken," he went on in 
 the discreet whisper of the conspirator. "You 
 were up and saw him last night, I 'm hearing.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 413 
 
 To-day they tell me he 's himself again, and com- 
 ing down to a session meeting at noon. I must 
 put myself in his way to say a friendly word or 
 two. Ah ! you 're laughing at us. I understand, 
 man, I understand. You travellers need not 
 practise the art of civility; but we're too close 
 on the castle here to be out of favour with Mac- 
 Cailein Mor. Draw in your chair, and — Mary, 
 Mary, goodwife ! bring in the bottle with you and 
 see young Elrigmore. " 
 
 In came the goodwife with even greater signs 
 of trouble than her husband, but all in a flurry of 
 good-humoured welcome. They sat, the pair of 
 them, before me in a little room poorly lit by a 
 narrow window but half-glazed, because a lower 
 portion of it had been destroyed in the occupa- 
 tion of the Irish, and had to be timbered up to 
 keep the wind outside. A douce pathetic pair; 
 I let my thoughts stray a little even from their 
 daughter as I looked on them, and pondered on 
 the tragedy of age that is almost as cruel as war, 
 but for the love that set Provost Brown with his 
 chair haffit close against his wife's, so that less 
 noticeably he might take her hand in his below 
 the table and renew the glow that first they 
 learned, no doubt, when lad and lass awandering 
 in summer days, oh long ago, in Eas-a-chosain 
 glen. 
 
 They plied me with a hundred questions, of my 
 adventures, and of my father, and of affairs up in 
 Shira Glen. I sat answering very often at haz- 
 ard, with my mind fixed on the one question I
 
 414 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 had to ask, which was a simple one as to the 
 whereabouts and condition of their daughter. But 
 I leave to any lad of a shrinking and sensitive 
 nature if this was not a task of exceeding diffi- 
 culty. For you must remember that here were 
 two very sharp-eyed parents, one of them with a 
 gift of irony discomposing to a lover, and the 
 other or both perhaps, with no reason, so far as I 
 knew, to think I had any special feeling for the 
 girl. But I knew as well as if I had gone over 
 the thing a score of times before, how my manner 
 of putting that simple question would reveal me 
 at a flash to the irony of the father and the won- 
 der of the mother. And in any case they gave 
 me not the smallest chance of putting it. As 
 they plied me with affairs a thousand miles be- 
 yond the limits of my immediate interest, and I 
 answered them with a brevity almost discourte- 
 ous, I was practising two or three phrases in my 
 mind. 
 
 "And how is your daughter, sir.-*" might seem 
 simple enough, but it would be too cold for an 
 inquirer to whom hitherto she had always been 
 Betty, while to ask for Betty outright would — a 
 startling new spring of delicacy in my nature 
 told me — be to use a friendly warmth only the 
 most cordial relations with the girl would war- 
 rant. No matter how I mooted the lady, I knew 
 something in my voice and the very flush in my 
 face would reveal my secret. My position grew 
 more pitiful every moment, for to the charge of 
 cowardice I levelled first at myself for my back-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 415 
 
 wardness, there was the charge of discourtesy. 
 What could they think of my breeding that I had 
 not mentioned their daughter? What could I 
 think from their silence regarding her but that 
 they were vexed at my indifference to her, and 
 with the usual Highland pride were determined 
 not even to mention her name till she was asked 
 for. Upon my word, I was in a trouble more dis- 
 tressing than when I sat in the mist in the Moor 
 of Rannoch and confessed myself lost ! I thought 
 for a little, in a momentary wave of courage, of 
 leading the conversation in her direction by hark- 
 ing back to the day when the town was aban- 
 doned, and she took flight with the child into the 
 woods. Still the Provost, now doing all the talk- 
 ing, while his wife knit hose, would ever turn a 
 hundred by-ways from the main road I sought to 
 lead him on. 
 
 By-and-by, when the crack had drifted hope- 
 lessly away from all connection with Mistress 
 Betty, there was a woman's step on the stair. 
 My face became as hot as fire at the sound, and 
 I leaned eagerly forward in my chair before I 
 thought of the transparency of the movement. 
 
 The Provost's eyes closed to little slits in his 
 face; the corner of his mouth curled in amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 "Here's Peggy back from Bailie Campbell's," 
 he said to his wife, and I was convinced he did 
 so to let me know the new-comer, who was now 
 moving about in the kitchen across the lobby, 
 was not the one I had expected. My disappoint-
 
 4t6 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 ment must have shown in my face; I felt I was 
 wasting moments the most precious, though it 
 was something to be under the same roof as my 
 lady's relatives, under the same roof as she had 
 slept below last night, and to see some of her 
 actual self almost, in the smiles and eyes and 
 turns of the voice of her mother. I stood up to 
 go, slyly casting an eye about the chamber for 
 the poor comfort of seeing so little as a ribbon or 
 a shoe that was hers, but even that was denied 
 me. The Provost, who, I '11 swear now, knew my 
 trouble from the outset, though his wife was blind 
 to it, felt at last constrained to relieve it. 
 
 "And you must be going," he said; "I wish 
 you could have waited to see Betty, who 's on a 
 visit to Carlunnan and should be home by now. " 
 
 As he said it, he was tapping his snuff-mull 
 and looking at me pawkily out of the corners of 
 his eyes, that hovered between me and his wife, 
 who stood with the wool in her hand, beaming 
 mildly up in my face. I half turned on my heel 
 and set a restless gaze on the corner of the room. 
 For many considerations were in his simple 
 words. That he should say them at all relieved 
 the tension of my wonder; that he should say 
 them in the way he did, was, in a manner, a 
 manifestation that he guessed the real state of my 
 feelings to the lady whose very name I had not 
 dared to mention to him, and that he was ready 
 to favour any suit I pressed. I was even inclined 
 to push my reading of his remark further, and say 
 to myself that if he had not known the lady her-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 417 
 
 self favoured me, he would never have fanned my 
 hope by even so little as an indifferent sentence. 
 
 "And how is she — how is Betty?" I asked, 
 lamely. 
 
 He laughed with a pleasing slyness, and gave 
 me a dunt with his elbow on the side, a bit of 
 the faun, a bit of the father, a bit of my father's 
 friend. 
 
 "You're too blate, Colin," he said, and then 
 he put his arm through his wife's and gave her a 
 squeeze to take her into his joke. I would have 
 laughed at the humour of it but for the surprise 
 in the good woman's face. It fair startled me, 
 and yet it was no more than the look of a woman 
 who learns that her man and she have been close 
 company with a secret for months, and she had 
 never made its acquaintance. There was perhaps 
 a little more, a hesitancy in the utterance, a flush, 
 a tone that seemed to show the subject was one to 
 be passed bye as fast as possible. 
 
 She smiled feebly a little, picked up a row of 
 dropped stitches, and "Oh, Betty," said she, 
 "Betty — is — is — she'll be back in a little. 
 Will you not wait .'' " 
 
 "No, I must be going," I said; "I may have 
 the happiness of meeting her before I go up the 
 glen in the afternoon." 
 
 They pressed me both to stay, but I seemed, in 
 my mind, to have a new demand upon me for an 
 immediate and private meeting with the girl ; she 
 must be seen alone and not in presence of the old 
 couple, who would give my natural shyness in her 
 
 27
 
 4i8 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 company far more gawkincss than it might have 
 if I met her alone. 
 
 I went out and went down the stair, and along 
 the front of the land, my being in a tumult, yet 
 with my observation keen to everything, no mat- 
 ter how trivial, that happened around me. The 
 sea-gulls, that make the town the playground of 
 their stormy holidays, swept and curved among 
 the pigeons in the gutter and quarrelled over the 
 spoils; tossed in the air wind-blown, then dropped 
 with feet outstretched upon the black joists and 
 window-sills. Fowls of the midden, new brought 
 from other parts to make up the place of those 
 that had gone to the kail-pots of Antrim and 
 Athole, stalked about with heads high, foreign 
 to this causied and gravelled country, clucking 
 eagerly for meat. I made my way amid the bird 
 of the sea and the bird of the wood and common 
 bird of the yard with a divided mind, seeing them 
 with the eye for future recollection, but seeing 
 them not. Peats were at every close-mouth, at 
 every door almost that was half-habitable, and 
 fuel cut from the wood, and all about the thor- 
 oughfare was embarrassed. 
 
 I had a different decision at every step, now to 
 seek the girl, now to go home, now finding the 
 most heartening hints in the agitation of the par- 
 ents, anon troubled exceedingly with the reflec- 
 tion that there was something of an unfavourable 
 nature in the demeanour of her mother, however 
 much the father's badinage might sooth my vanity. 
 
 I had made up my mind for the twentieth time
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 419 
 
 to go the length of Carlunnan and face her plump 
 and plain, when behold she came suddenly round 
 the corner at the Maltland where the surviving 
 Lowland troops were gathered! M'lver was with 
 her, and my resolution shrivelled and shook within 
 me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned 
 but for the stupidity and ill-breeding such a move- 
 ment would evidence, yet as I held on my way at 
 a slower pace and the pair apjoroached, I felt every 
 limb an encumbrance, I felt the country lout 
 throbbing in every vein. 
 
 Betty almost ran to meet me as we came closer 
 together, with an agreeableness that might have 
 pleased me more had I not the certainty that she 
 would have been as warm to either of the two men 
 who had rescued her from her hiding in the wood 
 of Strongara, and had just come back from her 
 country's battles with however small credit to 
 themselves in the result. She was in a very 
 happy mood, for, like all women, she could read- 
 ily forget the large and general vexation of a 
 reverse to her people in war if the immediate 
 prospect was not unpleasant and things around 
 were showing improvement. Her eyes shone and 
 sparkled, the ordinary sedate flow of her words 
 was varied by little outbursts of gaiety. She had 
 been visiting the child at Carlunnan, where it 
 had been adopted by her kinswoman, who made a 
 better guardian than it's grandmother, who died 
 on her way. to Dunbarton. 
 
 "What sets you on this road," she asked 
 blandly.
 
 420 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "Oh, you have often seen me on this road be- 
 fore," I said, boldly and with meaning. Ere I 
 went wandering we had heard the rivers sing 
 many a time, and sat upon its banks and little 
 thought life and time were passing as quickly as 
 the leaf or bubble on the surface. She flushed 
 ever so little at the remembrance, and threw a 
 stray curl back from her temples with an impa- 
 tient toss of her fingers. 
 
 "And so much of the dandy too!" put in 
 M'lver, himself perjink enough about his apparel. 
 "I '11 wager there 's a girl in the business." He 
 laughed low, looked from one to the other of us, 
 yet his meaning escaped, or seemed to escape, 
 the lady. 
 
 " Elrigmore is none of the kind," she said, as 
 if to protect a child. " He has too many serious 
 affairs of life in hand to be in the humour for 
 gallivanting." 
 
 This extraordinary reading of my character by 
 the one woman who ought to have known it bet- 
 ter, if only by an instinct, threw me into a blend 
 of confusion and chagrin. I had no answer for 
 her. I regretted now that my evil star had sent 
 mc up Glenaora, or that having met her with 
 M'lver, whose presence increased my diffidence, 
 I had not pretended some errand or business up 
 among the farm-lands in the Salachry hills, where 
 distant relatives of our house were often found. 
 But now I was on one side of the lady and M'lver 
 on the other, on our way towards the burgh, and 
 the convoy must be concluded, even if I were
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 421 
 
 dumb all the way. Dumb, indeed, I was inclined 
 to be. M'lver laughed uproariously at madame's 
 notion that I was too seriously engaged with life 
 for the recreation of love-making; it was bound 
 to please him, coming, as it did, so close on his 
 own estimate of me as the Sobersides he chris- 
 tened me at almost our first acquaintance. But 
 he had a generous enough notion to give me the 
 chance of being alone with the girl he knew very 
 well my feelings for. 
 
 "I 've been up just now at the camp," he said, 
 "anent the purchase of a troop-horse, and I had 
 not concluded my bargain when Mistress Brown 
 passed. I 'm your true caballcro in one respect, 
 that I must be offering every handsome passenger 
 an escort; but this time it's an office for Elrig- 
 more, who can undertake your company down 
 the way bravely enough, I '11 swear, for all his 
 blateness." 
 
 Betty halted, as did the other two of us, and 
 bantered my comrade. 
 
 " I ask your pardon a thousand times, Barbreck," 
 she said ; " I thought you were hurrying on your 
 way down behind me, and came upon me before 
 you saw who I was." 
 
 "That was the story," said he, coolly; "I'm 
 too old a hand at the business to be set back on 
 the road I came by a lady who has no relisii for 
 my company." 
 
 " I would not take you away from your market- 
 ing for the world," she proceeded. "Perhaps 
 Elrigmore may be inclined to go up to the camp
 
 422 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 too; he may help you to the pick of your horse — 
 and we '11 believe you the soldier of fortune again 
 when we see you one." 
 
 She, at least, had no belief that the mine-man- 
 ager was to be a mercenary again. She tapped 
 with a tiny toe on the pebbles, affecting a choler 
 the twinkle in her eyes did not homologate. 
 
 It was enough for M'lver, who gave a " Pshaw," 
 and concluded he might as well, as he said, " be 
 in good company so long as he had the chance," 
 and down the way again we went. Somehow the 
 check had put him on his mettle. He seemed to 
 lose at once all regard for my interests in this. I 
 became, in truth, more frequently than was palat- 
 able, the butt of his little pleasantries; my mys- 
 terious saunter up that glen, my sobriety of 
 demeanour, my now silence — all those things, 
 whose meaning he knew very well, were made 
 the text for his amusement for the lady. As for 
 me, I met it all weakly, striving to meet his wit 
 with careless smiles. 
 
 For the first time, I was seized with a jealousy 
 of him. Here was I, your arrant rustic; he was 
 as composed as could be, overflowing with happy 
 thoughts, laughable incident," and ever ready with 
 the compliment or the retort women love to hear 
 from a smart fellow of even indifferent character. 
 He had the policy to conceal the vanity that was 
 for ordinary his most transparent feature, and his 
 trick was to admire the valour and the humour of 
 others. Our wanderings in Lorn and Lochaber, 
 our adventures with the MacDonalds, all the story
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 423 
 
 of the expedition, he danced through, as it were, 
 on the tip-toe of light phrase, as if it had been a 
 strong man's scheme of recreation, scarcely once 
 appealing to me. With a flushed cheek and parted 
 lips the lady hung upon his words, arched her 
 dark eyebrows in fear, or bubbled into the mer- 
 riest laughter as the occasion demanded. Worst 
 of all, she seemed to share his amusement at my 
 silence, and then I could have wished rather than 
 a bag of gold I had the Mull witch's invisible 
 coat, or that the earth would swallow me up. 
 The very country-people passing on the way were 
 art and part in the conspiracy of circumstances to 
 make me unhappy. Their salutes were rarely for 
 Elrigmore, but for the lady and John Splendid, 
 whose bold quarrel with MacCailein Mor was now 
 the rumour of two parishes, and gave him a wide 
 name for unflinching bravery of a kind he had 
 been generally acknowledged as sadly wanting in 
 before. And Mistress Betty could not but see 
 that high or low, I was second to this fellow 
 going off — or at least with the rumour of it — to 
 Hebron's cavaliers in France before the week-end. 
 M'lver was just, perhaps, carrying his humour 
 at my cost a little too far for my temper, which 
 was never readily stirred, but flamed fast enough 
 when set properly alowe, and Betty — here too 
 your true woman wit — saw it sooner than he did 
 himself, quick enough in the uptake though he 
 was. He had returned again to his banter about 
 the supposititious girl I was trysted with up the 
 glen, and my face showed my annoyance.
 
 424 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "You think all men like yourself," said the 
 girl to him, "and all women the same — like the 
 common soldier you are." 
 
 "I think them all darlings," he confessed, 
 laughing; " God bless them, kind and foolish " 
 
 "As you've known them oftenest, " she sup- 
 plied coldly. 
 
 " Or sedate and sensible," he went on. " None 
 of them but found John M'lver of Barbeck their 
 very true cavalier." 
 
 "Indeed," said Mistress Betty, colder than 
 ever, some new thought working within her, judg- 
 ing from the tone. " And yet you leave to-mor- 
 row, and have never been to Carlunnan." She 
 said the last words with a hesitancy, blushing 
 most warmly. To me they were a dark mystery, 
 unless I was to assume, what I did wildly for a 
 moment, only to relinquish the notion immedi- 
 ately, that she had been in the humour to go 
 visiting her friends with him. M' Ivor's face 
 showed some curious emotion that it baflflcd me 
 to read, and all that was plain to me was that 
 here were two people with a very strong thought 
 of a distressing kind between them. 
 
 "It would be idle for me," he said in a little, 
 "to deny that I know what you mean. But do 
 you not believe you might be doing me poor jus- 
 tice in your suspicions.'' " 
 
 "It is a topic I cannot come closer upon," she 
 answered; "I am a woman. That forbids me and 
 that same compels me. If nature does not de- 
 mand your attendance up there, then you are a
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 425 
 
 man wronged by rumour or a man dead to every 
 sense of the human spirit. I have listened to 
 your humour and laughed at your banter, for you 
 have an art to make people forget; but all the 
 way I have been finding my lightness broken in 
 on by the feeble cry of a child without a mother 
 — it seems, too, without a father." 
 
 "If that is the trouble," he said, turning away 
 with a smile he did not succeed in concealing 
 either from the lady or me, "you may set your 
 mind at rest. The child you mention has, from 
 this day, what we may be calling a godfather." 
 
 "Then the tale 's true.^ " she said, stopping on 
 the road, turning and gazing with neither mirth 
 nor warmth in her countenance. 
 
 M'lver hesitated, and looked upon the woman 
 to me as if I could help him in the difficulty; but 
 I must have seemed a clown in the very abjection 
 of my ignorance of what all this mystery was 
 about. He searched my face and I searched my 
 memory, and then I recollected that he had told 
 me before of Mistress Brown's suspicions of the 
 paternity of the child. 
 
 "I could well wish your answer came more 
 readily," said she again, somewhat bitterly, "for 
 then I know it would be denial." 
 
 "And perhaps untruth, too," said John, oddly. 
 "This time it 's a question of honour, a far more 
 complicated turn of circumstances than you can 
 fancy, and my answer takes time." 
 
 "Guilty!" she cried, "and you go like this. 
 You know what the story is, and your whole con-
 
 426 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 duct in front of my charges shows you take the 
 very lightest view of the whole horrible crime." 
 
 "Say away, madame," said M'lver, assuming 
 an indifference his every feature gave the lie to. 
 "I 'm no better nor no worse than the rest of the 
 world. That 's all I '11 say." 
 
 "You have said enough for me, then," said the 
 girl. "I think, Elrigmore, if you please, I '11 not 
 trouble you and your friend to come further with 
 me now. I am obliged for your society so far." 
 
 She was gone before either of -us could answer, 
 leaving us like a pair of culprits standing in the 
 middle of the road. A little breeze fanned her 
 clothing, and they shook behind her as to be free 
 from some contamination. She had overtaken 
 and joined a woman in front of her before I had 
 recovered from my astonishment. M'lver turned 
 from surveying her departure with lowered eye- 
 brows, and gave me a look with half-a-dozen con- 
 tending thoughts in it. 
 
 "That 's the end of it," said he, as much to 
 himself as for my ear, "and the odd thing of it 
 again is that she never seemed so precious fine a 
 woman as when it was * a' bye wi' auld days and 
 you,' as the Scots song says." 
 
 "It beats me to fathom," I confessed. "Do I 
 understand that you admitted to the lady that you 
 were the father of the child ? " 
 
 "I admitted nothing," he said, cunningly, "if 
 you '11 take the trouble to think again. I but let 
 the lady have her own way, which most of her 
 sex generally manage from me in the long-run."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 427 
 
 " But, man ! you could leave her only one im- 
 pression, that you are as black as she thinks you, 
 and am I not sure you fall far short of that ? " 
 
 "Thank you," he said; "it is good of you to 
 say it. I am for off whenever my affairs here are 
 settled, and when I 'm the breadth of seas afar 
 from Inneraora, you '11 think as well as you can 
 of John M'lver who '11 maybe not grudge having 
 lost the lady's affection if he kept his friend's 
 and comrade's heart." 
 
 He was vastly moved as he spoke. He took 
 my hand and wrung it fiercely; he turned without 
 another word, good or ill, and strode back on his 
 way to the camp, leaving me to seek my way to 
 the town alone.
 
 428 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXXH 
 
 For some days I kept to Glen Shira as the tod 
 keeps to the cairn when heather burns, afraid 
 almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest 
 they should fly back distressed, to say the hope I 
 cherished was in vain. I worked in the wood 
 among the pines that now make rooftrees for my 
 home, and at nights I went on ceilidh among some 
 of the poorer houses of the Glen, and found a 
 drug for a mind uneasy in the tales our peasants 
 told around the fire. A drug, and yet a drug 
 sometimes with the very disease in itself I sought 
 for it to kill. For the love of a man for a maid 
 is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it 
 as we may, and my good people, telling their old 
 ancient histories round the fire, found, although 
 they never knew it, a young man's quivering 
 heart a score of times a night. 
 
 Still at times, by day and night — ay! in the 
 very midmost watches of the stars — I walked, 
 in my musing, as I thought, upon the causied 
 street, where perhaps I had been sooner in the 
 actual fact if M* Tver's departure had not been 
 delayed. He was swaggering, they told me, 
 about the town in his old regimentals, every 
 pomp of the foreign soldier assumed again as if
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 429 
 
 they had never been relaxed in all those five or 
 six years of peace and commerce. He drank 
 stoutly in the taverns, and 't was constantly, 
 "Landlady, I 'm the lawing, " for the fishermen, 
 that they might love him. A tale went round, 
 too, that one morning he went to a burial in Kil 
 malieu, and Argile was there seeing the last of 
 an old retainer to his long home, and old Mac- 
 nachtan came riding down past corpse and mourner 
 with his only reverence a finger to his cap. 
 " Come down off your horse when Death or Ar- 
 gile goes bye," cried IVLIver, hauling the laird 
 off his saddle. But between Argile and him were 
 no transactions ; the pride of both would not allow 
 it, though it was well known that their affections 
 were stronger than ever they had been before, 
 and that Gordon made more than one attempt at 
 a plan to bring them together. 
 
 It is likely, too, I had been down — leaving 
 M'lver out of consideration altogether — had 
 there not been the tales about MacLachlan, tales 
 that came to my ears in the most miraculous way, 
 with no ill intention on the part of the gossips 
 — about his constant haunting of Inneraora and 
 the company of his cousin. He had been seen 
 there with her on the road to Carlunnan. That 
 venue of all others ! God ! did the river sing for 
 him too among its reeds and shallows; did the 
 sun tip Dunchuach like a thimble and the wild 
 beast dally on the way ? That was the greatest 
 blow of all ! It left plain (I thought in my fool- 
 ishness) the lady's coolness when last I met her;
 
 430 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 for mc henceforth (so said bitterness) the serious 
 affairs of life, that in her notion set me more than 
 courtship. I grew solemn, so gloomy in spirit 
 that even my father observed the ceasing of my 
 whistle and song, and the less readiness of my 
 smile. And he, poor man, thought it the melan- 
 choly of Inverlochy and the influence of this 
 ruined countryside. 
 
 When I went down to the town again the very 
 house-fronts seemed inhospitable, so that I must 
 pass the time upon the quay. There are days at 
 that season when Loch Finne, so calm, so crys- 
 tal, so duplicate of the sky, seems like water sunk 
 and lost forever to wind and wave, when the sea- 
 birds doze upon its kindly bosom like bees upon 
 the flower, and a silence hangs that only breaks 
 in distant innuendo of the rivers or the low of 
 cattle on the Cowal shore. The great bays lapse 
 into hills that float upon a purple haze, forest nor 
 lea has any sign of spring's extravagance or the 
 flame of the autumn that fires Dunchuach till it 
 blazes like a torch. All is in the light sleep of 
 the year's morning, and what, I have thought, if 
 God in His pious whim should never awake it 
 any more ? 
 
 It was such a day when I went up and down 
 the rough cobble of the quay, and to behold men 
 working there at their noisy and secular occu- 
 pations seemed, at first, a Sabbath desecration. 
 But even they seemed affected by this marvellous 
 peace of sea and sky, and they lifted from the net 
 or rested on the tackle to look across greasy gun-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 431 
 
 nels with some vague unquiet of the spirit at the 
 marvellous restfulness of the world. Their very 
 voices learned a softer note from that lulled hour 
 of the enchanted season, and the faint blue smoke 
 of their den-fires rose and mingled in the clus- 
 tered masts or nestled wooing in the drying sails. 
 Then a man in drink came roaring down the quay, 
 an outrage on the scene, and the magic of the day 
 was gone! The boats bobbed and nudged each 
 other or strained at the twanging cord as seamen 
 and fishers spanged from deck to deck ; rose cries 
 in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of 
 Air. The world was no longer dreaming but 
 stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays 
 and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora 
 bustled to its marge. Here was merchandise, 
 here the pack and the bale; snuffy men in 
 perukes, knee-breeched and portly, came and 
 piped in high English, managing the transport of 
 their munitions ashore. 
 
 I was standing in the midst of the throng of 
 the quay-head, with my troubled mind finding 
 ease in the industry and interest of those people 
 without loves or jealousies, and only their poor 
 merchandise to exercise them, when I started at 
 the sound of a foot coming up the stone slip from 
 the water-edge. I turned, and who was there but 
 MacLachlan .-* He was all alone but for a haunch- 
 man, a gillie-wetfoot as we call him, and he had 
 been set on the slip by a wherry that had ap- 
 proached from Cowal side unnoticed by me as I 
 stood in meditation. As he came up the sloping
 
 432 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 way, picking his footsteps upon the slimy stones, 
 he gave no heed to the identity of the person be- 
 fore him, and with my mood in no way favourable 
 to polite discourse with the fellow, I gave a pace 
 or two round the elbow of the quay, letting him 
 pass on his way up among the clanking rings and 
 chains of the moored gaberts, the bales of the 
 luggers, and the brawny and crying mariners. 
 He was not a favourite among the quay-folk, this 
 pompous little gentleman, with his nose in the 
 air and his clothing so very gaudy. The Low- 
 lands men might salute his gentility if they cared; 
 no residenters of the place did so, but turned 
 their shoulders on hi-m and were very busy with 
 their affairs as he passed. He went bye with a 
 waff of wind in his plaid ing, and his haunch-man 
 as he passed at a discreet distance got the double 
 share of jibe and glunch from the mariners. 
 
 At first I thought of going home ; a dread came 
 on me that if I waited longer in the town I might 
 come upon this intruder and his cousin, when it 
 would sore discomfort me to do so. Thus I went 
 slowly up the quay, and what I heard in the bye- 
 going put a new thought in my head. 
 
 Two or three seamen were talking together as 
 I passed, with nudges and winks and sly laughs, 
 not natives of the place but from further up the 
 loch, yet old frequenters with every chance to 
 know the full ins and outs of what they discoursed 
 upon. I heard but three sentences as I passed; 
 they revealed that MacLachlan at Kilmichael 
 market had once bragged of an amour in Innc-
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 433 
 
 raora. That was all ! But it was enough to set 
 every drop of blood in my body boiling. I had 
 given the dog credit for a decent affection, and 
 here he was narrating a filthy and impossible 
 story. Liar! liar! liar! At first the word rose 
 to my mouth, and I had to choke it at my teeth 
 for fear it should reveal my passion to the people 
 as I passed through among them with a face 
 inflamed; then doubt arose, a contention of rec- 
 ollections, numb fears — but the girl's eyes tri- 
 umphed : I swore to myself she at least should 
 never know the villany of this vulgar and lying 
 rumour set about the country by a rogue. 
 
 Now all fear of facing the street deserted me. 
 I felt a man upright, imbued with a strong sense 
 of justice : I felt I must seek out John Splendid 
 and get his mind, of all others, upon a villany he 
 could teach me to avenge. I found him at As- 
 kaig's corner, a flushed man with perhaps (as I 
 thought at first) too much spirits in him to be 
 the most sensible of advisers in a matter of such 
 delicacy. 
 
 " Elrigmore ! " he cried ; " sir, I give you wel- 
 come to Inneraora ! You will not know the place, 
 it has grown so much since you last visited its 
 humble street." ^ 
 
 "I'm glad to see you now, John," I said hur- 
 riedly. " I would sooner see you than any other 
 living person here." 
 
 He held up a- finger and eyed me pawkily. 
 " Come, man, come 1 " he said, laughing. " On 
 your oath now, is there not a lady.-* And that 
 
 28
 
 434 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 minds mc; you have no more knowledge of the 
 creatures, no more pluck in their presence, than 
 a child. Heavens, what a soldier of fortune is 
 this! Seven years among the army; town to 
 town, camp to camp, here to-day and away to- 
 morrow, with a soldier's pass to love upon your 
 back and haunch, and yet you have not learned 
 to lift the sneck of a door, but must be tap-tap- 
 ping with your finger-nails." 
 
 " I do not know what you mean," said I. 
 
 "Lord! Lord!" he cried, pretending amaze- 
 ment, "and here's schooling! Just think it over 
 for yourself. You are not an ill-looking fellow 
 (though I think I swing a kilt better myself), you 
 are the proper age (though it 's wonderful what a 
 youngish-looking man of not much over forty 
 may do), you have a name for sobriety, and Elrig- 
 more carries a good many head of cattle and com- 
 mands a hundred swords, — would a girl with any 
 wisdom and no other sweetheart in her mind turn 
 her back on such a list of virtues and graces.'' If 
 I had your reputation and your estate, I could 
 have the pick of the finest women in Argile — 
 ay, and far beyond it." 
 
 "Nevermind about that just now," I demanded, 
 gypping my preacher by the hand and forcing 
 him with me out of tire way of the passers-by, 
 whose glance upon us would have seemed an in- 
 delicacy when we were discussing so precious a 
 thing as my lady's honour. 
 
 "But I shall mind it," insisted M'lver, purs- 
 ing his lips as much to check a hiccough as to
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 435 
 
 express his determination. " It seems I am the 
 only man dare take the liberty. Fie on ye ! man, 
 fie ! you have not once gone to see the Provost or 
 his daughter since I saw you last. I dare not go 
 myself for the sake of a very stupid blunder ; but 
 I met the old man coming up the way an hour 
 ago, and he was asking what ailed you at them. 
 Will I tell you something, Colin.? The Provost 's 
 a gleg man, but he 's not so gleg as his wife. 
 The dame for me ! say I, in every household, for 
 it 's her daughter's love-affairs she 's to keep an 
 eye on." 
 
 " You know so much of the lady and her peo- 
 ple," said I, almost losing patience, "that it 's a 
 wonder you never sought her for yourself." 
 
 He laughed. "Do you think so?" he said. 
 " I have no doubt of the result ; at least I would 
 have had no doubt of it a week or two ago, if I 
 had taken advantage of my chances." Then he 
 laughed anew. "I said Mrs. Brown was gleg; 
 I'm just as gleg myself." 
 
 This tipsy nonsense" began to annoy me; but it 
 was useless to try to check it, for every sentence 
 uttered seemed a spark to his vanity. 
 
 "It 's about Betty I want to speak," I said. 
 
 "And it 's very likely too; I would not need to 
 be very gleg to see that. She does not want to 
 speak to me, however, or of me, as you '11 find out 
 when once you see her. I am in her black books 
 sure enough, for I saw her turn on the street not 
 an hour ago to avoid me." 
 
 "She'll not do that to MacLachlan," I put in,
 
 436 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 glad of the opening, " unless she hears — and 
 God forbid it — that the scamp lightlies her name 
 at common fairs." 
 
 M'lver drew himself up, stopped, and seemed 
 to sober. 
 
 "What's this you're telling me.?" he asked, 
 and I went over the incident on the quay. It 
 was enough. It left him as hot as myself. He 
 fingered at his coat-buttons and his cuffs, fasten- 
 ing and unfastening them; he played nervously 
 with the hilt of his dirk; up would go his brows 
 and down again like a bird upon his prey; his 
 lips would tighten on his teeth, and all the time 
 he was muttering in his pick of languages senti- 
 ments natural to the occasion. Gaelic is the 
 poorest of tongues to swear in : it has only a hash 
 of borrowed terms from Lowland Scots; but my 
 cavalier was well able to make up the deficiency, 
 
 "Quite so; very true and very comforting," I 
 said at last; "but what's to be done.?" 
 
 "What's to be done.?" said he with a start. 
 " Surely to God there 's no doubt about that ! " 
 
 " No, sir ; I hope you know me better. But 
 how's it to be done.? I thought of going up in 
 the front of the whole quay and making him chew 
 his lie at the point of my dagger. Then I thought 
 more formality was needed — a friend or two, a 
 select venue, a careful leisure time for so impor- 
 tant a meeting," 
 
 " But what 's the issue upon which the rencontre 
 shall take place.?" asked M'lver, it seemed to 
 me, with ridiculous scrupulosity.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 437 
 
 "Why need you ask?" said I. "You do not 
 expect me to invite him to repeat the insult or 
 exaggerate the same." 
 
 M'lver turned on me almost roughly and shook 
 me by the shoulder. " Man ! " said he, " wake up 
 and do not let your wits hide in the heels of your 
 boots. Are you clown enough to think of send- 
 ing a lady's name around the country tacked on 
 to a sculduddry tale like this.? You must make 
 the issue somewhat more politic than that." 
 
 "I agree with you," I confessed; "it was stu- 
 pid of me not to think of it, but what can I do.? 
 I have no other quarrel with the man." 
 
 "Make one, then/' said M'lver. "I cannot 
 comprehend where you learned your trade as cava- 
 lier, or what sort of company you kept in Mac- 
 kay's, if you did not pick up and practise the art 
 of forcing a quarrel with a man on any issue you 
 cared to choose. In ten minutes I could make 
 this young fellow put down his gage in a dispute 
 about the lacing of boots." 
 
 "But in that way at least I 'm the poorest of 
 soldiers ; I never picked a quarrel, and yet here 's 
 one that sets my gorge to my palate, yet cannot 
 be fought upon. " 
 
 "Tuts, tuts! man," he cried, "it seems that, 
 after all, you must leave the opening of this little 
 play to John M'lver. Come with me a bit yont 
 the Cross here and take a lesson." 
 
 He led me up the wide pend close and round 
 the back of old Stonefield's dwelling, and into a 
 corner of a lane that gave upon the fields, yet at 
 the same time kept a plain view of the door of
 
 438 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Askaig's house, where we guessed MacLachlan 
 was now on his visit to the Provost's family. 
 
 "Let us stand here," said he, "and I '11 swear 
 I 'm not very well acquainted with our friend's 
 habits if he 's not passing this way to Carlunnan 
 sometime in the next ten minutes, for I saw Mis- 
 tress Betty going up there, as I said, not so very 
 long ago." 
 
 This hint at MacLachlan's persistency exasper- 
 ated me the more. I felt that to have him by the 
 throat would be a joy second only to one other in 
 the world. 
 
 M'lver saw my passion — it was ill to miss 
 seeing it — and seemed struck for the first time 
 by the import of what we were engaged upon. 
 
 " We were not given to consider the end of a 
 duello from the opening when abroad," he said; 
 " but that was because we were abroad, and had 
 no remonstrance and reminder in the face of 
 familiar fields and houses and trees, and the pass- 
 ing footsteps of our own people. Here, however, 
 the end 's to be considered from the beginning — 
 have you weighed the risks in your mind.-' " 
 
 "I've weighed nothing," said I shortly, "ex- 
 cept that I feel in me here that I shall have his 
 blood before nightfall." 
 
 "He's a fairly good hand with his weapon, 
 they tell me." 
 
 " If he was a wizard, with the sword of Great 
 Donald, I would touch him to the vitals. Have 
 I not learned a little, if you '11 give me the credit, 
 from Para Mor .'' " 
 
 "I forgot that," said M'lver; "you'll come
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 439 
 
 through it all right. And here's our man com- 
 ing up the lane. No anger now; nothing to be 
 said on your side till I give you a sign, and then 
 I can leave the rest to your wisdom." 
 
 MacLachlan came staving up the cobbles in a 
 great hurry, flailing the air as he went with a 
 short rattan, for he affected some of the foppish 
 customs the old officers brought back from the 
 Continent. He was for passing us with no more 
 than a jerk of the head, but M'lver and I between 
 us took up the mouth of the lane, and as John 
 seemed to smile on him like one with gossip to 
 exchange, he was bound to stop. 
 
 "Always on the going foot, MacLachlan;" 
 said John airily. " I never see a young gentle- 
 man of your age and mettle but I wish he could 
 see the wisdom of putting both to the best pur- 
 pose on the field." 
 
 " With your cursed foreigners, I suppose you 
 mean," said the young fellow. "I could scarcely 
 go as a private pikeman like yourself." 
 
 " I daresay not, I daresay not," answered M'lver, 
 pricked at his heart (I could tell by his eye) by 
 this reflection upon his humble office, but keep- 
 ing a marvellously cool front to his cockerel. 
 "And now when I think of it I am afraid you 
 have neither the height nor width for even so 
 ornamental a post as an ensign's." 
 
 MacLachlan restrained himself too, unwilling, 
 no doubt, as I thought, to postpone his chase of 
 the lady by so much time as a wrangle with John 
 M'lver would take up. He affected to laugh at
 
 440 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 Splcndid's rejoinder, turned the conversation upon 
 the disjasket condition of the town, and edged 
 round to get as polite a passage as possible be- 
 tween us, without betraying any haste to sever 
 himself from our company. But both John Splen- 
 did and I had our knees pretty close together, and 
 the very topic he started seemed to be the short 
 cut to the quarrel we sought. 
 
 "A poor town indeed," admitted M'lver, read- 
 ily, "but it might be worse. It can be built 
 anew. There 's nothing in nature, from a pigsty 
 to a name for valour and honour, that a wise man 
 may not patch up somehow." 
 
 MacLachlan's retort to this opening was on 
 the tip of his tongue; but his haste made him 
 surrender a taunt as likely to cause trouble. 
 "You're very much in the proverb way to-day, " 
 was all he said. "I 'm sure I wish I saw Inne- 
 raora as hale and complete as ever it was ; it never 
 had a more honest friend than myself." 
 
 "That one has missed," thought I, standing by 
 in a silent part of this three-cornered convention. 
 M'lver smiled mildly, half, I should think, at the 
 manner in which his thrust had been foiled, half 
 to keep MacLachlan still with us. Mis next 
 attack was more adroit though roundabout, and 
 it effected its purpose. 
 
 "I see you are on your way up to the camp," 
 said he, with an appearance of indifference. " We 
 were just thinking of a daunder there ourselves." 
 
 "No," said MacLachlan, shortly; "I'm for 
 farther up the Glen."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 441 
 
 "Then at least we'll have your company part 
 of the way," said John, and the three of us walked 
 slowly off, the young gentleman with no great 
 warmth at the idea, which was likely to spoil his 
 excursion to some degree. M'lver took the place 
 between us, and in the rear, twenty paces, came 
 the gille-cas-flcuch. 
 
 "I have been bargaining for a horse up here," 
 said John in a while, "and I 'm anxious that 
 Elrigmore should see it. You '11 have heard I 'm 
 off again on the old road." 
 
 "There's a rumour of it," said MacLachlan, 
 cogitating on his own affairs, or perhaps wonder- 
 ing what our new interest in his company was 
 due to. 
 
 "Ah! it's in my blood," said John, "in my 
 blood and bones! Argile was a fairly good master 
 — so to call him — but — well, you understand 
 yourself; a man of my kind at a time like this 
 feels more comfortable anywhere else than in the 
 neighbourhood of his chief." 
 
 "I daresay," replied MacLachlan, refusing the 
 hook, and yet with a sneer in his accent. 
 
 " Have you heard that his lordship and I are at 
 variance since our return from the North .^ " 
 
 "Oh! there's plenty of gossip in the town," 
 said MacLachlan. "It's common talk that you 
 threw your dagger in his face. My father, who 's 
 a small chief enough so far as wealth of men and 
 acres goes, would have used the weapon to let out 
 the hot blood of his insulter there and then." 
 
 "I daresay," said M'lver. "You're a hot-
 
 442 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 headed clan. And MacCailein has his own 
 ways." 
 
 "He's welcome to keep them too," answered 
 the young fellow, his sneer in no ways abated. I 
 became afraid that his carefully curbed tongue 
 would not give us our opening before we parted, 
 and was inclined to force his hand; but M'lver 
 came in quickly and more astutely. 
 
 "How.''" said he; "what 's your meaning? Are 
 you in the notions that he has anything to learn 
 of courtesy and gallantry on the other side of the 
 loch at Strathlachlan } " ' 
 
 MacLachlan's eyes faltered a little under his 
 pent brows. Perhaps he had a suspicion of the 
 slightest that he was being goaded on for some 
 purpose, but if he had, his temper was too raw to 
 let him qualify his retort with calmness, 
 
 "Do you know, Barbreck," said he, "I would 
 not care to say much about what your nobleman 
 has to learn or unlearn.-' As for the gallantry — 
 good Lord, now ! — did you ever hear of one of 
 my house leaving his men to shift for themselves 
 when blows were going.'' " 
 
 M'lver, with an utterance the least thought 
 choked by an anger due to the insult he had 
 wrought for, shrugged his shoulders, and at the 
 same time gave me his elbow in the side for his 
 sign. 
 
 "I'm sorry to hear you say that about Gilles- 
 beg Gruamach," said he. "Some days ago, half 
 as much from you would have called for my cor- 
 rection; but I 'm out of his lordship's service, as
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 443 
 
 the rumour rightly goes, and seeing the manner 
 of my leaving it was as it was, I have no right to 
 be his advocate now." 
 
 " But I have ! " said I hotly, stopping and fac- 
 ing MacLachlan, with my excuse for the quarrel 
 now ready. "Do you dare come here and call 
 down the credit of MacCailein Mor.-* " I demanded 
 in the English, with an idea of putting him at 
 once in a fury at having to reply in a language he 
 spoke but indifferently. 
 
 His face blanched; he knew I was doubling my 
 insult for him. The skin of his jaw twitched and 
 his nostrils expanded; a hand went to his dirk- 
 hilt on the moment. 
 
 "And is it that you are the advocate.-'" he 
 cried to me in a laughable kind of Scots. I was 
 bitter enough to mock his words and accent with 
 the airs of one who has travelled far and knows 
 other languages than his own. 
 
 "Keep to your Gaelic," he cried in that lan- 
 guage ; " the other may be good enough to be 
 insolent in; let us have our own for courtesies." 
 
 "Any language," said I, "is good enough to 
 throw the lie in your face when you call Mac- 
 Cailein a coward." 
 
 "Grace of God!" said he; "I called him noth- 
 ing of the kind ; but it 's what he is all the same. " 
 
 Up came his valet and stood at his arm, blade 
 out, and his whole body ready to spring at a sig- 
 nal from his master. 
 
 I kept my anger out of my head, and sunk to 
 the pit of my stomach while I spoke to him.
 
 444 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "You have said too much about Archibald, Mar- 
 quis of Argile," I said. "A week or two ago, 
 the quarrel was more properly M'lver's; now that 
 he's severed by his own act from the clan, I'm 
 ready to take his place and chastise you for your 
 insolence. Are you willing, John?" I asked, 
 turning to my friend. 
 
 "If I cannot draw a sword for my cousin I can 
 
 at least second his defender," he answered quickly. 
 
 • MacLachlan's colour came back; he looked 
 
 from one to the other of us, and made an effort 
 
 to laugh with cunning. 
 
 "There's more here than I can fathom, gen- 
 tlemen," said he. "I'll swear this is a forced 
 quarrel ; but in any case I fear none of you. 
 Alasdair," he said, turning to his man, who it 
 seemed was his dalta or foster-brother, "we'll 
 accommodate those two friends of ours when and 
 where they like." 
 
 "Master," cried the gillie, I would like well to 
 have this on my own hands," and he looked at me 
 with great venom as he spoke. 
 
 MacLachlan laughed. "They may do their 
 dangerous work by proxy in this part of the 
 shire," said he; "but I think our own Cowal 
 ways are better; every man his own quarrel." 
 
 "And now is the time to settle it," said I; 
 "the very place for our purpose is less than a 
 twenty minutes' walk off." 
 
 Not a word more was said ; the four of us 
 stepped out again.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 445 
 
 CHAPTER XXXHI 
 
 We went along the road two and two, M'lver 
 keeping company behind with the valet, who 
 would have stabbed me in the back in all likeli- 
 hood ere we had made half our journey, had there 
 been no such caution. We walked at a good 
 pace, and fast as we walked it was not fast enough 
 for my eagerness, so that my long steps set the 
 shorter ones of MacLachlan pattering beside me 
 in a most humorous way that annoyed him much, 
 to judge from the efforts he made to keep time 
 and preserve his dignity. Not a word, good or 
 bad, was exchanged between us ; he left the guid- 
 ance to me, and followed without a pause, when, 
 over the tip of the brae at Tarra Dubh, I turned 
 sharply to the left and plunged into the wood. 
 
 In this part of the wood there is a laracJi or site 
 of an ancient church. No stone stands there to- 
 day, no one lives who has known another who has 
 heard another say he has seen a single stone of 
 this umquhile house of God; but the sward lies 
 flat and square as in a garden, levelled, and in 
 summer fringed with clusters of the nettle that 
 grows over the ruins of man with a haste that 
 seems to mock the brevity of his interests, and 
 the husbandman and the forester for generations
 
 446 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 have put no spade to its soil. A cill or cell we 
 call it in the language; and the saying goes 
 among the people of the neighbourhood that on 
 fhe eve of Saint Patrick bells ring in this glade 
 of the forest, sweet, soft, dreamy bells, muffled 
 in a mist of years — bells whose sounds have 
 come, as one might fancy, at their stated interval, 
 after pealing in a wave about God's universe from 
 star to star, back to the place of their first chim- 
 ing. Ah ! the monk is no longer there to hear 
 them, only the mavis calls and the bee in its 
 period hums where matins rose. A queer thought 
 this, a thought out of all keeping with my bloody 
 mission in the wood, which was to punish this 
 healthy yoiith beside me; yet to-day, looking 
 back on the occasion, I do not wonder that, go- 
 ing a-murdering, my mind in that glade should 
 soften by some magic of its atmosphere. For, 
 ever was I a dreamer, as this my portion of his- 
 tory may long since have disclosed. Ever must 
 I be fronting the great dumb sorrow of the uni- 
 verse, thinking of loves undone, of the weakness 
 of man, poor man, a stumbler under the stars, the 
 sickening lapse of time, the vast and awesome 
 voids left by people dead, laughter quelled, eyes 
 shut for evermore, and scenes evanished. And it 
 was ever at the crisis of things my mind took on 
 this mood of thought and pity. 
 
 It was not of my own case I reflected there, 
 but on the great swooning silences that might be 
 tenanted ere the sun dropped behind the firs by 
 the ghost of him I walked with. Not of my own
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 447 
 
 father, but of an even older man in a strath be- 
 yond the water hearing a rap at his chamber door 
 to-night and a voice of horror tell him he had no 
 more a son. A fool, a braggart, a liar the less, 
 but still he must leave a vacancy at the hearth! 
 My glance could not keep off the shoulder of him 
 as he walked cockily beside me, a healthy brown 
 upon his neck, and I shivered to think of this 
 hour as the end of him, and of his clay in a little 
 stretched upon the grass that grew where psalm 
 had chanted and the feet of holy men had passed. 
 Kill him ! The one thrust of fence I dare not 
 neglect was as sure as the arrow of fate; I knew 
 myself in my innermost his executioner. 
 
 It was a day, I have said, of exceeding calm, 
 with no trace left almost of the winter gone, and 
 the afternoon came on with a crimson upon the 
 west, and numerous birds in flying companies 
 settled upon the bushes. The firs gave a per- 
 fume from their tassels and plumes, and a little 
 burn among the bushes gurgled so softly, so like 
 a sound of liquor in a goblet, that it mustered the 
 memories of good companionship. No more my 
 mind was on the knave and liar, but on the nu- 
 merous kindnesses of man. 
 
 We stepped in upon the bare laiacJi with the 
 very breath checked upon our lips. The trees 
 stood round it and back, knowing it sanctuary ; 
 tall trees, red, and rough at the hide, cracked 
 and splintered in roaring storms; savage trees, 
 coarse and vehement, but respecting that patch of 
 blessed memory vacant quite but of ourselves and
 
 448 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 a little bird who turned his crimson breast upon 
 us for a moment then vanished with a thrill of 
 song. Crimson sky, crimson-vested bird, the 
 colour of that essence I must be releasing with 
 the push of a weapon at that youth beside me ! 
 
 John Splendid was the first to break upon the 
 silence. 
 
 " I was never so much struck with the Sunday 
 feeling of a place," he said; "I daresay we could 
 find a less melancholy spot for our meeting if we 
 searched for it, but the day goes, and I must not 
 be putting off an interesting event both of you, 
 I 'm sure, are eager to begin." 
 
 "Indeed we might have got a more suitable 
 place in many ways," I confessed, my hands be- 
 hind me with every scrap of passion gone from 
 my heart. 
 
 MacLachlan showed no such dubiety. " What 
 ails you at the place?" he asked, throwing his 
 plaid to his servant, and running his jacket off its 
 wooden buttons at one tug. " It seems to me a 
 most particularly fine place for our business. 
 But of course," he added with a sneer, "I have 
 not the experience of two soldiers by trade, who 
 are so keen to force the combat." 
 
 He threw off his belt, released the sword from 
 its scabbard — a clumsy weapon of its kind, ab- 
 rupt, heavy, and ill-balanced, I could tell by its 
 slow response to his wrist as he made a pass or 
 two in the air to get the feel of it. He was in a 
 cold bravado, the lad, with his spirit up, and 
 utterly reckless of aught that might happen him,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 449 
 
 now saying a jocular word to his man, and now 
 gartering his hose more tightly. 
 
 I let myself be made ready by John Splendid 
 without so much as putting a hand to buckle, for 
 I was sick sorry that we had set out upon this 
 adventure. Shall any one say fear.-' It was as 
 far from fear as it was from merriment. I have 
 known fear in my time — the fear of the night, of 
 tumultuous sea, of shot-ploughed space to be trav- 
 ersed inactively and slowly, so my assurance is 
 no braggadocio, but the simple truth. The very 
 sword itself, when I had it in my hand, felt like 
 something alive and vengeful. 
 
 Quick as we were in preparing, the sun was 
 quicker in descending, and as we faced each 
 other, without any of the parades of foreign 
 fence, the sky hung like a bloody curtain be- 
 tween the trees behind MacLachlan. 
 
 M'lver and the servant now stood aside and the 
 play began. MacLachlan engaged with the left 
 foot forward, the trick of a man who is used to 
 the targaid, and I saw my poor fool's doom in the 
 antiquity of his first guard. In two minutes I 
 had his whole budget of the art laid bare to me; 
 he had but four parries — quarte and tierce for 
 the high lines, with septime and second for the 
 low ones — and had never seen a counter-parry or 
 lunge in the whole course of his misspent life. 
 
 "Little hero!" thought I, "thou art a spitted 
 cockerel already, and yet hope, the blind, the 
 ignorant, has no suspicion of it!" 
 
 A faint chill breeze rose and sighed among the 
 29
 
 450 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 wood, breathed from the west that faced me, a 
 breeze bearing the odour of the tree more strong 
 than before, and of corrupt leafage in the heughs. 
 Our weapons tinkled and rasped, the true-points 
 hissed and the pommels rang, and into the midst 
 of this song of murderous game there trespassed 
 the innocent love-lilt of a bird. I risked him the 
 flash of an eye as he stood, a becking black body 
 on a bough, his yellow beak shaking out a flutey 
 note of passionate serenade. Thus the irony of 
 nature; no heed for us, the head and crown of 
 things created : the bird would build its home and 
 hatch its young upon the sapling whose roots were 
 soaked by young MacLachlan's blood. 
 
 His blood ! That was now the last thing I de- 
 sired. He fought with suppleness and strength, 
 if not with art ; he fought, too, with venom in 
 his strokes, his hair tossed high upon his temples, 
 his eyes the whitest of his person, as he stood, to 
 his own advantage, that I never grudged him, 
 with his back against the sunset. I contented 
 with defence till he cursed with a baffled accent. 
 His man called pitcously and eagerly; but M'lver 
 checked him, and the fight went on. Not the 
 lunge, at least, I determined, though the punish- 
 ment of a trivial wound was scarce commensurate 
 with his sin. So I let him slash and sweat till I 
 wearied of the game, caught his weapon in the 
 curved guard of my hilt, and broke it in two. 
 
 He dropped the fragment in his hand with a 
 cry of mingled anger and despair, snatched a 
 knife from his stocking, and rushed on me to
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 451 
 
 stab. Even then I had him at my mercy. As 
 he inclosed, I made a complete volte with the left 
 foot, passed back my right in rear of his, changed 
 my sword into my left hand, holding it by the 
 middle of the blade and presenting the point at 
 his throat, while my right hand, across his body, 
 seized his wrist. 
 
 For a moment I felt angry as he thought him- 
 self gone. He let his head fall helplessly on 
 my breast, and stood still as one waiting the 
 stroke, with his eyes, as M'lver told me again, 
 closed and his mouth parted. But a spasm of 
 disgust at the uncleanness of the task to be done 
 made me retch and pause. 
 
 " Home, dog ! " I gasped, and I threw him from 
 me sprawling on the sod. He fell, in his weari- 
 ness, in an awkward and helpless mass; the knife 
 still in his hand, pierced him on the shoulder, 
 and thus the injury I could not give him by my 
 will was given him by Providence. Over on his 
 back he turned with a plash of blood oozing at 
 his shirt, and he grasped with clawing fingers to 
 staunch it, yet never relinquishing his look of 
 bitter anger at me. With cries, with tears, with 
 names of affection, the gillie ran to his master, 
 whom I saw was not very seriously injured. 
 
 M'lver helped me on with my coat. 
 
 "You're far too soft, man!" he said. "You 
 would have let him go scathless, and even now he 
 has less than his deserts. You have a pretty 
 style of fence, do you know, and I should like to 
 see it paraded against a man more your equal."
 
 452 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "You'll never see it paraded by me," I an- 
 swered, sorrowfully. "Here's my last duello, if 
 I live a thousand years." And I went up and 
 looked at my fallen adversary. He was shivering 
 with cold, though the sweat hung upon the young 
 down of his white cheeks, for the night air was 
 more bitter every passing moment. The sun was 
 all down behind the hills, the valley was going 
 to rest, the wood was already in obscurity. If our 
 butcher-work had seemed horrible in that sanctu- 
 ary in the open light of day, now in the eve it 
 seemed more than before a crime against Heaven. 
 The lad weltering, with no word or moan from his 
 lips; the servant staunching his wound, shaken 
 the while by brotherly tears; M'lver, the old 
 man-at-arms, indifferent, practised to such sights, 
 and with the heart no longer moved by man-in- 
 flicted injury; and over all a brooding silence; 
 over all that place, consecrated once to God and 
 prayer by men of peace, but now degraded to a 
 den of beasts — over it shone of a sudden the new 
 wan crescent moon ! I turned me round, I turned 
 and fell to weeping in my hands! 
 
 This abject surrender of mine patently more 
 astounded the company than had the accident to 
 MacLachlan. M'lver stood dumbfoundcred, to 
 behold a cavalier of fortune's tears, and MacLach- 
 lan' s face, for all its pain, gave up its hate and 
 anger for surprise as he looked at me over the 
 shoulder of his kneeling clansman plying rude 
 leech -craft on his wound. 
 
 "Are you vexed .-'" said he, with short breaths.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 453 
 
 " And that bitterly ! " I answered. 
 
 "Oh, there is nothing to grieve on," said he, 
 mistaking me most lamentably. "I'll give you 
 your chance again. I owe you no less; but my 
 knife, if you '11 believe me, sprang out of itself, 
 and I struck at you in a ruddy mist of the senses." 
 
 "I seek no other chance," I said; "our feuds 
 are over; you were egged on by a subterfuge, 
 deceit has met deceit, and the balance is equal." 
 
 His mood softened, and we helped him to his 
 feet, M'lver a silent man because he failed to 
 comprehend this turn of affairs. We took him 
 to a cotliouse down at the foot of the wood, 
 where he lay while a boy was sent for a skilly 
 woman. 
 
 In life, as often as in the stories of man's in- 
 vention, it is the one wanted who comes when the 
 occasion needs, for God so arranges, and if it may 
 seem odd that the skilly woman the messenger 
 brought back with him for the dressing of Mac- 
 Lachlan's wound was no other than our Dark 
 Dame of Lorn, the dubiety must be at the Al- 
 mighty's capacity, and not at my chronicle of the 
 circumstance. As it happened, she had come 
 back from Dalness some days later than our- 
 selves, none the worse for her experience among 
 the folks of that unchristian neighbourhood, who 
 had failed to comprehend that the crazy tumult of 
 her mind might, like the sea, have calm in its 
 depths, and that she was more than by accident 
 the one who had alarmed us of their approach. 
 She had come back with her frenzy reduced, and
 
 454 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 was now with a sister at Bal-an-tyre the Lower, 
 whose fields slope on Aora's finest bend. 
 
 For skill she had a name in three parishes; she 
 had charms sure and certain for fevers and hoasts ; 
 the lives of children were in her hands while yet 
 their mothers bore them ; she knew manifold 
 brews, decoctions, and clysters ; at morning on 
 the saints' days she would be in the woods, or 
 among the rocks by the rising of the sun, gather- 
 ing mosses and herbs and roots that contain the 
 very juices of health and the secret of age. I 
 little thought that day when we waited for her, 
 and my enemy lay bleeding on the fern, that she 
 would bring me the cure for the sore heart, the 
 worst of all diseases. 
 
 While M'lver and I and the gillie waited the 
 woman's coming, MacLachlan tossed in a fever, 
 his mind absent and his tongue running on with- 
 out stoppage, upon affairs of a hundred different 
 hues, but all leading sooner or later to some 
 babble about a child. It was ever "the dear 
 child," the " jh' aidail g/u-al,'' "the white treas- 
 ure," "the orphan;" it was always an accent of 
 the most fond and lingering character. I paid 
 no great heed to this constant wail; but M'lver 
 pondered and studied, repeating at last the words 
 to himself as MacLachlan uttered them. 
 
 "If that's not the young one in Carlunnan he 
 harps on," he concluded at last, "I 'm mistaken. 
 He seems even more wrapt in the child than does 
 the one we know who mothers it now, and 3'ou '11 
 notice, by the way, he has nothing to say of her."
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 455 
 
 "Neither he has," I confessed, well enough 
 pleased with the fact he had no need to call my 
 attention to. 
 
 " Do you know, I 'm on the verge of a most 
 particular, deep secret ? " said John, leaving me 
 to guess what he was at, but I paid no close heed 
 to him. 
 
 The skilly dame came in with her clouts and 
 washes. She dressed the lad's wound and drugged 
 him to a more cooling slumber, and he was to be 
 left in bed till the next day. 
 
 "What's all this cry about the child.''" asked 
 M'lver indifferently, as we stood at the door be- 
 fore leaving. " Is it only a fancy on his brain, or 
 do you know the one he speaks of.'' " 
 
 She put on a little air of vanity, the vanity of a 
 woman who knows a secret the rest of the world, 
 and man particularly, is itching to hear. "Oh, 
 I daresay he has some one in his mind," she ad- 
 mitted; "and I daresay I know who it might be 
 too, for I was the first to sweel the baby and the 
 last to dress its mother — blessing with her! " 
 
 M'lver turned round and looked at her, with cun- 
 ning humour, in the face. " I might well guess 
 that," he said; "you have the best name in the 
 countryside for these ofifices, that many a fumb- 
 ling dame botches. I suppose," he added, when 
 a pleasure in her face showed his words had found 
 her vanity — "I suppose you mean the bairn up 
 in Carlunnan .'' " 
 
 "That's the very one," she said with a start; 
 " but who told you ? "
 
 456 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "Tuts!" said he slyly, "the thing's well 
 enough known about the Castle, and MacLachlan 
 himself never denied he was the father. Do you 
 think a secret like that could be kept in a clatter- 
 ing parish like Inneraora ? " 
 
 "You 're the first I ever heard get to the mar- 
 row of it," confessed the Dame Dubh. "Mac- 
 Lachlan himself never thought I was in the 
 woman's confidence, and I 've seen him in Carlun- 
 nan there since I came home, pretending more 
 than a cousin's regard for the Provost's daughter 
 so that he might share in the bairn's fondling. 
 He did it so well, too, that the lady herself would 
 talk of its fatherless state with tears in her 
 eyes." 
 
 I stood by, stunned at the revelation that 
 brought joy from the very last quarter where I 
 would have sought it. But I must not let my 
 rapture at the idea of MacLachlan's being no 
 suitor of the girl go too far till I confirmed this 
 new intelligence. 
 
 "Perhaps," I said in a little to the woman, 
 "the two of them fondling the bairn were chief 
 enough, though they did not share the secret of 
 its fatherhood." 
 
 "Chief!" she cried; "the girl has no more 
 notion of MacLachlan than I have, if an old 
 woman's eyes that once were clear enough for 
 such things still show me anything. I would 
 have been the first to tell her how things stood if 
 I had seen it otherwise. No, no; Mistress Brown 
 has an eye in other quarters. What do you say
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 457 
 
 to that, Barbeck?" she added, laughing slyly to 
 my friend. 
 
 A great ease came upon my mind; it was light- 
 ened of a load that had lain on it since ever my 
 Tynree spaewife found, or pretended to find, in 
 my silvered loof such an unhappy portent of my 
 future. And then this rapture was followed by a 
 gladness no less profound that MacLachlan, bad 
 as he had been, was not the villain quite I had 
 fancied ; if he had bragged of conquests, it had 
 been with truth though not with decency. 
 
 Inneraora, as we returned to it that night, was 
 a town enchanted; again its lights shone warm 
 and happily. I lingered late in its street, white 
 in the light of the stars, and looked upon the nine 
 windows of Askaig's house. There was no light 
 in all the place ; the lower windows of the tene- 
 ments were shuttered, and slumber was within. 
 It gave me an agreeable exercise to guess which 
 of the unshuttered nine would let in the first of 
 the morning light on a pillow with dark hair 
 tossed upon it and a rounded cheek upon a hand 
 like milk.
 
 458 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Young Lachie did not bide long on our side of 
 the water; a day or two and he was away back to 
 his people, but not before he and I, in a way, 
 patched up once more a friendship that had never 
 been otherwise than distant, and was destined so 
 to remain till the end, when he married my aunt 
 Nannie Ruadh of the Boshang Gate, whose money 
 we had been led to look for as a help to our fallen 
 fortunes. She might, for age, have been his 
 mother, and she was more than a mother to the 
 child he brought to her from Carlunnan without 
 so much as by your leave, the day after they took 
 up house together. "That's my son," said he, 
 "young Lachie." She looked at the sturdy little 
 fellow beating with a knife upon the bark of an 
 ashen sapling he was fashioning into a whistle, 
 and there was no denying the resemblance. The 
 accident was common enough in those days. 
 "Who is the mother.'" was all she said, with 
 her plump hand on the little fellow's head. " She 
 was So-and-so," answered her husband, looking 
 into the fire; "we were very young, and I've 
 paid the penalty by my rueing it ever since." 
 
 Nannie Ruadh took the child to her heart that 
 never knew the glamour of her own, and he grew 
 up, as I could tell in a more interesting tale than
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 459 
 
 this, to be a great and good soldier, wlio won 
 battles for his country. So it will be seen that 
 the Dame Dubh's story to us in the cot by Aora 
 had not travelled very far when it had not in six 
 years reached the good woman of Boshang Gate, 
 who knew everybody's affairs between the two 
 stones of the parish. M'lver and I shared the 
 secret with MacLachlan and the nurse of his dead 
 lover; it went no farther, and it was all the more 
 wonderful that John should have to keep his 
 thumb on it, considering its relevancy to a blun- 
 der that made him seem a scoundrel in the eyes 
 of Mistress Betty. Once I proposed to him that 
 through her father she might have the true state 
 of affairs revealed to her. 
 
 " Let her be," he answered, " let her be. She '11 
 learn the truth some day, no doubt." And then, 
 as by a second thought, " The farther off the bet- 
 ter, perhaps," a saying full of mystery. 
 
 The Dark Dame, as I say, gave me the cure for 
 a sore heart. Her news, so cunningly squeezed 
 from her by John Splendid, relieved me at once 
 of the dread that MacLachlan, by his opportuni- 
 ties of wooing, had made himself secure in her 
 affections, and that those rambles by the river to 
 Carlunnan had been by the tryst of lovers. A 
 wholesome new confidence came to my aid when 
 the Provost, aging and declining day by day to 
 the last stroke that came so soon after, hinted 
 once that he knew no one he would .sooner leave 
 the fortunes of his daughter with than with my- 
 self. I mooted the subject to his wife too, in
 
 46o JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 one wild valour of a sudden meeting, and even 
 she, once so shy of the topic, seemed to look upon 
 my suit with favour. 
 
 " I could not have a goodson more worthy than 
 yourself," she was kind enough to say. "Once I 
 thought Betty's favour was elsewhere, in an air 
 that scarcely pleased me, and " 
 
 "But that 's all over," I said, warmly, sure she 
 thought of MacLachlan. 
 
 "I hope it is; I think it is," she said. "Once 
 I had sharp eyes on my daughter, and her heart's 
 inmost throb was plain to me, for you see, Colin, 
 I have been young myself, long since, and I 
 remember. A brave heart will win the bravest 
 girl, and you have every wish of mine for your 
 good fortune." 
 
 Then I played every art of the lover, embold- 
 ened the more since I knew she had no tie of 
 engagement. Remembering her father's words 
 in the harvest-field of Elrigmore, I wooed her, not 
 in humility, but in the confidence that, in other 
 quarters, ere she ever came on the scene, had 
 given me liberty on the lips of any girl I met in 
 a lane without more than a laughing protest. 
 Love, as I learned now, was not an outcome of 
 the reason, but will's mastership. Day by day I 
 contrived to see my lady. I was cautious to be 
 neither too hot nor too cold, and never but at my 
 best in appearance and in conversation. All my 
 shyness I thrust under my feet; there is one way 
 to a woman's affections, and that is frankness to 
 the uttermost. I thought no longer, ere I spoke,
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 461 
 
 if this sentiment should make me ridiculous, or 
 that sentiment too readily display my fondness, 
 but spoke out as one in a mere gallantry. 
 
 At first she was half alarmed at the new mood 
 I was in, shrinking from this, my open revelation, 
 and yet, I could see, not unpleased altogether that 
 she should be the cause of a change so much to 
 my advantage. I began to find a welcome in her 
 smile and voice when I called on the household 
 of an afternoon or evening, on one pretext or 
 another, myself ashamed sometimes at the very 
 flimsiness of them. She would be knitting by 
 the fire perhaps, and it pleased me greatly by 
 some design of my conversation to make her turn 
 at once her face from the flames whose rosiness 
 concealed her flushing, and reveal her confusion 
 to the yellow candle-light. Oh! happy days. 
 Oh ! times so gracious, the spirit and the joy 
 they held are sometimes with me still. We re- 
 vived, I think, the glow of that meeting on the 
 stair when I came home from Germanic, and the 
 hours passed in swallow flights as we talked of 
 summer days gone bye. 
 
 At last we had even got the length of walking 
 together in an afternoon or evening in the wood 
 behind the town that has been the haunt in court- 
 ing days of generations of our young people; ex- 
 cept for a little melancholy in my lady, these 
 were perhaps life's happiest periods. The wind 
 might be sounding and the old leaves flying in 
 the wood, the air might chill and nip, but there 
 was no bitterness for us in the season's chiding. 
 
 o-
 
 462 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 To-day, an old man, with the follies of youth 
 made plain and contemptible, I cannot but think 
 those eves in the forest had something precious 
 and magic for memory. There is no sorrow in 
 them but that they are no more, and that the 
 world to come may have no repetition. How the 
 trees, the tall companions, communed together in 
 their heights among the stars! how the burns 
 tinkled in the grasses and the howlets mourned ! 
 And we, together, walked sedate and slowly in 
 those evening alleys, surrounded by the scents 
 the dews bring forth, shone upon by silver moon 
 and stars. 
 
 To-day, in my eld, it amuses me still that for 
 long I never kissed her. I had been too slow of 
 making a trial, to venture it now without some 
 effort of spirit ; and time after time I had started 
 on our stately round of the hunting-road with a 
 resolution wrought up all the way from my look- 
 ing-glass at Elrigmore, that this should be the 
 night, if any, when I should take the liberty that 
 surely our rambles, though actual word of love 
 had not been spoken, gave me a title to. A title ! 
 I had kissed many a bigger girl before in a ca- 
 price at a hedge-gate. But this little one, so 
 demurely walking by my side, with never so much 
 as an arm on mine, her pale face like marble in 
 the moonlight, her eyes, when turned on mine, 
 like dancing points of fire. Oh! the task defied 
 me! The task I say — it was a duty, I '11 swear 
 now, in the experience of later years. 
 
 I kissed her first on the niirht before M'lver
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 463 
 
 set out on his travels anew, no more in the camp 
 of Argile his severed chief, but as a Cavalier of 
 the purchased sword. 
 
 It was a night of exceeding calm, with the 
 moon, that I had seen as a cork-hook over my 
 warfare with MacLachlan in Tara-Dubh, swollen 
 to the full and gleaming upon the country till it 
 shone as in the dawn of day. We walked back 
 and forth on the hunting-road for long, in a 
 silence broken by few words. My mind was in a 
 storm. I felt that I was losing my friend, and 
 that by itself was trouble; but I felt, likewise, 
 a shame that the passion of love at my bosom 
 robbed the deprivation of much of its sorrow. 
 
 "I shall kiss her to-night if she spurns mc for 
 ever," I said to myself over and over again, and 
 anon I would marvel at my own daring; but the 
 act was still to do. It was more than to do — it 
 was to be led up to, and yet my lady kept every 
 entrance to the project barred, with a cunning 
 that yet astounds me. 
 
 We had talked of many things in our evening 
 rambles in that wood, but never of M'lver, whose 
 name the girl shunned mention of for a cause I 
 knew but could never set her right on. This 
 night, his last in our midst, I ventured on his 
 name. She said nothing for a little, and for a 
 moment I thought, "Here's a dour, little unfor- 
 giving heart ! " Then, softly, said she, " I wish 
 him well and a safe return from his travelling. 
 I wish him better than his deserts. That he goes 
 at all surprises me. I thought it but John Splen-
 
 464 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 tlid's promise — to be acted on or not as the mood 
 happened." 
 
 "Yes," I said; "he goes without a doubt. I 
 saw him to-day kiss his farewells with half-a- 
 dozen girls on the road between the Maltland and 
 the town." 
 
 "I daresay," she answered; "he never lacked 
 boldness." 
 
 My chance had come. 
 
 "No, indeed, he did not," said I; "and I wish 
 I had some of it myself." 
 
 "What! for so common a display of it .-' " she 
 asked rallying, yet with some sobriety in her tone. 
 
 "Not a bit," I answered; "that — that — that I 
 might act the part of a lover with some credit to 
 myself, and kiss the one girl I know in that 
 capacity." 
 
 "Would she let you.''" she asked, removing 
 herself by a finger-length from my side, yet not 
 apparently enough to show she thought herself 
 the one in question. 
 
 "That, madame, is what troubles me," I con- 
 fessed in anguish, for her words had burst the 
 bubble of my courage. 
 
 "Of course you cannot tell till you try," she 
 said demurely, looking straight before her, no 
 smile on the corners of her lips, that somehow 
 maddened by their look of pliancy. 
 
 "You know whom I mean," I said, pursuing 
 my plea, whose rustic simplicity let no man mock 
 at, remembering the gawky errors of his own 
 experience.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 465 
 
 "There 's Bell, the minister's niece, and there's 
 Kilblaan's daughter, and " 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! my dear ! " I cried, stopping and 
 putting my hand daringly on her shoulder. " You 
 know it's not any of these; you must know I 
 mean yourself. Here am I, a man travelled, no 
 longer a youth, though still with the flush of it, 
 no longer with a humility to let me doubt myself 
 worthy of your best thoughts ; I have let slip a 
 score of chances on this same path, and even now 
 I cannot muster up the spirit to brave your pos- 
 sible anger." 
 
 She laughed a very pleasant soothing laugh 
 and released her shoulder. " At least you give 
 me plenty of warning," she said. 
 
 "I am going to kiss you now," I said, with 
 great firmness. 
 
 She walked a little faster, panting as I could 
 hear, and I blamed myself that I had alarmed 
 her. 
 
 "At least," I added, "I '11 do it when we get 
 to Bealloch-an-uarain well." 
 
 She hummed a snatch of Gaelic song we have 
 upon that notable well, a song that is all an in- 
 vitation to drink the waters while you are young, 
 and drink you may, and I suddenly ventured to 
 embrace her with an arm. She drew up with 
 stern lijDs and back from my embrace, and Elrig- 
 more was again in torment. 
 
 "You are to blame yourself," I said huskily; 
 "you let me think I might. And now I see you 
 are angry," 
 
 30
 
 466 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 " Am I ? " she said, smiling again. " I think 
 you said the well, did you not?" 
 
 " And may I ? " eagerly I asked, devouring her 
 with my eyes. 
 
 "You may — at the well," she answered, and 
 then she laughed softly. 
 
 Again my spirits bounded. 
 
 "But I was not thinking of going there to- 
 night," she added, and the howlet in the bush 
 beside me hooted at my ignominy. 
 
 I walked in a perspiration of vexation and 
 alarm. It was plain that here was no desire for 
 my caress, that the girl was but probing the depth 
 of my presumption, and I gave up all thought of 
 pushing my intention to performance. Our con- 
 versation turned to more common channels, and I 
 had hoped my companion had lost the crude im- 
 pression of my wooing as we passed the path that 
 led from the hunting-road to the 13ealloch-an- 
 uarain. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried here, "I wished for some ivy; 
 I thought to pluck it farther back, and your non- 
 sense made me quite forget." 
 
 " Cannot we return for it.'' " I said, well enough 
 pleased at the chance of prolonging our walk. 
 
 "No; it is too late," she answered abruptly. 
 " Is there nowhere else here where we can get 
 it ? " 
 
 "I do not think so," I said stupidly. Then I 
 remembered that it grew in the richest profusion 
 on the face of the grotto we call Realloch-an- 
 uarain. "Except at the well," I added.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 467 
 
 "Of course it is so; now I remember," said 
 she; "there is plenty of it there. Let us haste 
 and get it." And she led the way up the path, 
 I following with a heart that surged and beat. 
 
 When our countryside is changed, when the 
 forest of Creag Dubh, where roam the deer, is 
 levelled with the turf, and the foot of the passen- 
 ger wears round the castle of Argile, I hope, I 
 pray, that grotto on the brae will still lift up its 
 face among the fern and ivy. Nowadays when 
 the mood comes on me, and I must be the old 
 man chafing against the decay of youth's spirit, 
 and the recollection overpowers of other times 
 and other faces than those so kent and tolerant 
 about me, I put my plaid on my shoulders and 
 walk to Bealloch-an-uarain well. My children's 
 children must be with me elsewhere on my saun- 
 ters ; here I must walk alone. I am young again 
 when looking on that magic fountain, still the 
 same as when its murmur sounded in my lover's 
 ears. Here are yet the stalwart trees, the tall 
 companions, that nodded on our shy confessions ; 
 the ivy hangs in sheeny spray upon the wall. 
 Time, that ranges, has here no freedom, but 
 stands, shackled by links of love and memory to 
 the rocks we sat on. I sit now there and muse, 
 and beside me is a shadow that never ages, with 
 a pale face averted, looking through leafless 
 boughs at the glimpse of star and moon. I sec 
 the bosom heave; I see the eyes flash full, then 
 soften half-shut on some inward vision. For I 
 am never there at Bealloch-an-uarain, summer or
 
 468 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 spring, but the season, in my thought, is that of 
 my wife's first kiss, and it is always a pleasant 
 evening and the birds are calling in the dusk. 
 
 I plucked my lady's ivy with a cruel wrench, 
 as one would pluck a sweet delusion from his 
 heart, and her fingers were so warm and soft as I 
 gave her the leaves ! Then I turned to go. 
 
 "It is time we were home," I said, anxious 
 now to be alone with my vexation. 
 
 "In a moment," she said, plucking more ivy 
 for herself; and then she said, "Let us sit a 
 little; I am wearied." 
 
 My courage came anew. " Fool ! " I called 
 myself. " You may never have the chance again. 
 I sat down by her side, and talked no love but 
 told a story. 
 
 It is a story we have in the sheilings among 
 the hills, the tale of "The Sea Fairy of French 
 Foreland;" but I changed it as I went on and 
 made the lover a soldier. I made him wander, 
 and wandering think of home and a girl beside 
 the sea. I made him confront wild enemies and 
 battle with storms, I set him tossing upon oceans 
 and standing in the streets of leaguered towns, or 
 at grey heartless mornings upon lonely plains with 
 solitude around, and yet, in all, his heart was 
 with the girl beside the sea. 
 
 She listened and flushed. My hero's dangers 
 lit her eyes like lanthorns, my passions seemed 
 to find an echo in her sighs. 
 
 Then I pitied my hero, the wandering soldier, 
 so much alone, so eager, and unforgetting, till I
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 469 
 
 felt the tears in my eyes as I imaged his hope- 
 less longing. 
 
 She checked her sighs, she said my name in 
 the softest whisper, laid her head upon my shoul- 
 der and wept. And then at last I met her quiv- 
 ering lips.
 
 470 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 On the morrow, John Splendid came riding up 
 the street on his way to the foreign wars. He 
 had attired himself most sprucely; he rode a good 
 horse, and he gave it every chance to show its 
 quality. Old women cried to him from their 
 windows and close-mouths. "Oh! laoc/iain,^'' 
 they said, "yours be the luck of the seventh 
 son ! " He answered gaily, with the harmless 
 flatteries that came so readily to his lips always, 
 they seemed the very bosom's revelation. "Oh! 
 women!" said he, "I'll be thinking of your 
 handsome sons, and the happy days we spent 
 together, and wishing myself soberly home with 
 them when I am far away. " 
 
 But not the old women alone waited on his 
 going; shy girls courtesied or a2:)plauded at the 
 corners. For them his horse caracoled on Stone- 
 field's causeway, his shoulders straightened, and 
 his bonnet rose. "There you are!" said he, 
 "still the temptation and the despair of a decent 
 bachelor's life. I '11 marry every one of you that 
 have not a man when I come home. " 
 
 "And when may that be.''" cried a little, bold 
 fair one, with a laughing look at him from under 
 the blowing locks that escaped the snood on her 
 hair.
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 471 
 
 " When may it be ? " he repeated. " Say ' Come 
 home, Barbreck, ' in every one of your evening 
 prayers, and heaven, for the sake of so sweet a 
 face, may send me home the sooner with my 
 fortune." 
 
 Master Gordon, passing, heard the speech. 
 "Do your own praying, Barbreck " 
 
 "John," said my hero. "John, this time to 
 you." 
 
 "John be it," said the cleric, smiling warmly. 
 "I like you, truly, and I wish you well." 
 
 M'lver stooped and took the proffered hand. 
 "Master Gordon," he said, "I would sooner be 
 liked and loved than only admired; that's, per- 
 haps, the secret of my life." 
 
 It was not the fishing season; but the street 
 thronged with fishers from Kenmore and Cairn- 
 dhu and Kilcatrine and the bays of lower Cowal. 
 Their tall figures jostled in the causeway, their 
 white teeth gleamed in their friendliness, and 
 they met this companion of numerous days and 
 nights, this gentleman of good humour and even 
 temper, with cries as in a schoolboy's playground. 
 They clustered round the horse and seized upon 
 the trappings. Then John Splendid's play-act- 
 ing came to its conclusion, as it was ever bound 
 to do when his innermost man was touched. 
 He forgot the carriage of his shoulders; indiffer- 
 ent to the disposition of his reins, he reached and 
 wrung a hundred hands, crying back memory for 
 memory, jest for jest, and always the hope for 
 future meetings.
 
 4/2 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 "O scamps! scamps!" said he, "fishing the 
 silly prey of ditches when you might be with me 
 upon the ocean and capturing the towns. I '11 
 never drink a glass of Rhenish, but I '11 mind of 
 you and sorrow for your sour ales and bitter 
 aqua! " 
 
 Will it be long?" said they — true Gaels, ever 
 anxious to know the lease of pleasure or of grief. 
 
 "Long or short," said he, with absent hands 
 in his horse's mane, "will lie with Fate, and 
 she, my lads, is a dour jade with a secret. It '11 
 be long if ye mind of me, and unco short if ye 
 forget me till I return." 
 
 I went up and said farewell. I but shook his 
 hand, and my words were few and simple. That 
 took him, for he was always quick to sound the 
 depth of silent feeling. 
 
 "Mo thniadli ! mo tJmiadli ! Colin," said he. 
 "My grief! my grief! here are two brothers 
 closer than by kin, and they have reached a gus- 
 set of life, and there must be separation. I have 
 had many a jolt from my fairy relatives, but they 
 have never been more wicked than now. I wish 
 you were with me, and yet, ah ! yet. Would her 
 ladyship, think ye, forget for a minute, and shake 
 an old friend's hand, and say good-bye.-' " 
 
 I turned to Betty, who stood a little back with 
 her father, and conveyed his wish. She came 
 forward, dyed crimson to the neck, and stood by 
 his horse's side. He slid off the saddle and 
 shook her hand. 
 
 "It is very good of you," said he. "You
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 473 
 
 have my heart's good wishes to the innermost 
 chamber. " 
 
 Then he turned to me, and while the fishermen 
 stood back, he said, "I envied you twice, Colin, 
 once when you had the foresight of your fortune 
 on the side of Loch Lhinne, and now that it 
 seems begun." 
 
 He took the saddle, waved his bonnet in fare- 
 well to all the company, then rode quickly up the 
 street and round the castle walls. 
 
 It was a day for the open road, and, as we say, 
 for putting the seven glens and the seven bens 
 and the seven mountain moors below a young 
 man's feet, a day with invitation in the air and 
 the promise of gifts around. The mallards at 
 morning had quacked in the Dhuloch pools, the 
 otter scoured the burn of Maam, the air-goat 
 bleated as he flew among the reeds, and the stag 
 paused above his shed antlers on Torvil-side to 
 hide them in the dead bracken. 
 
 M'lver rode beside flowering saugh and alder 
 tree through those old arches, now no more, those 
 arches that were the outermost posterns where 
 good-luck allowed farewells. He dare not once 
 look round, and his closest friends dare not fol- 
 low him, as he rode alone the old road so many 
 of our people have gone to their country's wars or 
 to sporran battles. 
 
 A silence fell upon the community, and in upon 
 it broke from the river-side the wail of a bagpipe 
 played by the piper of Argile. It played a tune 
 familiar to those parts upon occasions of parting
 
 474 JOHN SPLENDID 
 
 and encouragement, a tunc they call "Come back 
 to the Glen." 
 
 Come back to the glen, to the glen, to the glen. 
 And there shall the welcome be waiting for you. 
 
 The deer and the heath-cock, the curd from the pen. 
 The blackberry fresh from the dew ! 
 
 We saw the piper strut upon the gravelled walk 
 beside the bridge-gate, we saw Argile himself 
 come out to meet the traveller. 
 
 " MacCailcin ! MacCailein ! Ah the dearheart ! " 
 cried all our people, touched by this rare and gen- 
 teel courtesy. 
 
 The Marquis and his clansman touched hands, 
 lingered together a little, and the rider passed on 
 his way with the piper's invitation the last sound 
 in his ears. He rode past Kilmalieu of the 
 tombs, with his bonnet off for all the dead that 
 were so numerous there, so patient, waiting for 
 the final trump. He rode past Boshang Gate, 
 portal to my native glen of chanting birds and 
 melodious waters and merry people. He rode 
 past Gearron hamlet, where the folk waved fare- 
 wells; then over the river before him was the 
 bend that is ever the beginning of home-sickness 
 for all that go abroad for fortune. 
 
 I turned to the girl beside me, and " Sweet- 
 heart," said I softly, "there's an elder brother 
 lost. It is man's greed, I know; but rich though 
 I am in this new heart of yours, I must be grudg- 
 ing the comrade gone." 
 
 "Gone!" said she, with scarcely a glance after
 
 JOHN SPLENDID 475 
 
 the departing figure. " Better gone than here a 
 perpetual sinner, deaf to the cry of justice and of 
 nature." 
 
 "Good God!" I cried, "are you still in that 
 delusion?" and I hinted at the truth. 
 
 She saw the story at a flash ; she paled to the 
 very lips, and turned and strained her vision after 
 that figure slowly passing round the woody point; 
 she relinquished no moment of her gaze till the 
 path bent and hid John Splendid from her eager 
 view.
 
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