IT was the pause of the morning, when time stands, and night and day breathe hard ere they get to grips. A cock with a foggy throat started at the crowing, down at Slochd-a-Chubair. Over from Stron a shrewd thin wind came to make stir among the trees in the Duke's big garden, and the crows rasped their beaks on the beech-branches, for they knew that here was the day's forerunner. Still and on the town slept, stretched full out, dour set on the business. Its quirky lanes and closes were as black as the pit. There was only one light in all the place, and a big town and a bonny it is, house and house with high outside stairs and glass windows, so that the wonder is the King himself does not take thought to stay in it, even if it were only for the comfort of it and the company of the MacCailein Mor. Only one light, and that was splashing, yellow, and mixed with a thick peat-reek, out of Jean Rob's open door, facing the bay, on the left, on the Lowlands road. Now and then Jean would come to the door and stand, a blob of darkness in the yellow light, to see if the day was afoot on Ben Ime, or to throw a look at the front of the town for signs of folk stirring.

“Not a peep, not a peep! Sleep! sleep! Few of them part with a man to-day with so sore a heart as Jean Rob.”

Then back to her Culross girdle, for she was at the baking of bannocks to go in her husband's dorlach for the wars.

She had not shut an eye all night. Rob snored at her side slow and heavy while she lay on her back on a bed of white hay, staring up at the black larch joists glinting with the red scad of the peats. She was a Crarae woman, and that same people were given to be throng with the head, and she kept thinking, thinking even on. At last she could bide it no longer, so she up with a leap on the floor to face a new day and all the luck of it.

About the luck being good or ill there might be little doubt. It was the year after they started at the building of the Castle, a laggard spring at the hind-end of a cruel winter, with not a fin in all the seas for the poor fishermen, and black mutton at six Saxon shillings the side. And what the wars were about Jean Rob or her like little knew or cared. Very little, like enough, as is the way with wars, but any way wars there were: the Duke and his House would have it that their people must up and on with belt and target, and away on the weary road like their fathers before them. Some said it was the old game with the Inverlochy dogs (rive them and seize them!); others, that some bastard was at variance with the Duke about the Papist Stewarts—a silly lad called Tearlach with a pack of wild Irishers and daddy Macleans and Macdonalds and Camerons from the Isles and the North at his back.

“Bundle and Go” it was any way in Campbell country from Cruachan to Cowal, from Cantyre to the march of Keppochan, and that's the fine rolling land of sappy grasses and thick woods. In the heart and midst of it Duke Archie played dirl on the boss of his shield on a cold March day, and before night swords were at the sharping from shore to shore. That's war for ye—

quicker than flame, surer than word of mouth, and poor's the man who says “What for?” to his chief.

Rob Donn, for all that, was vassal to no man; for he was come of the swordsmiths of the glen, and they had paper to show that their rigs were held for no service other than beating out good fighting steel on the anvil. Poor, as he was, he could wear one feather in his bonnet if his fancy was on feathers, and no one bragged more of his forefolk. But Elrigmor—a thin old man with little stomach for quarrels—offered twenty pounds English for a man to take his place with the Campbells; and Rob took the money and the loan of Elrigmor's sword, half for the sake of the money and half for the sake of a bit play with Sir Claymore.

Said he to his wife, jingling the Geordies in his hand on the day he got them, “Here's the price of a hero; and troth it's little enough for a good armsmith's blood!”

“Don't say it, Rob,” said Jean.

“Och! I am but laughing at thee, good-wife. Brave dogs would they be that would face the tusks of the Diarmaid boars. Like the wind on the chaff—troosh!—we'll scatter them! In a week I'll be home.”

“In a week?”

“To be sure, Jean. I'll buy with the money a stot or two on the road to bring back with me, for there's little lifting in the Duke's corps, more's the pity! My grandfather seldom came back from the wars without a few head of cattle before him.”

So the money went in Rob Donn's sporran, and Jean would have bit her tongue out before she would crave for part o't from a man going among strangers and swords.

The bairn had but one word for her father from then till he started, and that was “Cockade.” What it was the little one never knew, but that it was something braw and costly, a plaything for a father to go far off for.

“Two or three of them, my white love!” would Rob Donn say, fond and hearty. “They'll be as thick as nuts on the ground when we're done of the gentry that wear them on their bonnets.” And he had a soft wet eye for the child, a weakling, white and thin, never quite the better of the snell winds of winter. If cockades, indeed, were to be had for the fighting of a fortnight without sleep, Rob Donn would have them for her.

So now was the morning to put on fighting gear and go on the foray for white cockades.

By-and-by a cruisie-light crept out at the gables of the town, and the darkness filled with the smell of new peat burning. Aora, spluttering past Jean Rob's door with a gulp into the Cooper's Pool, made, within the house, the only sound of the morning.

Jean scraped the meal off her hands and went again to the door to look about and listen.

“Ay, ay! up at last,” she said to herself.

“There's the Major's light, and Kate Mhor up for the making of his breakfast, and a lowe in the weaver's shed. The Provost's is dark—poor man!—it's little his lady is caring!”

She was going to turn about and in, when the squeal of a bagpipe came from the town-head, and the player started to put his drones in order. “Ochan! ochan!” said poor Jean, for here, indeed, was the end of her hopes; there was no putting back from the Duke's errand. She listened a little to the tuning as if it was the finest of piobaireachds, and it brought a curious notion to her mind of the first reel she danced with her man to the squeezing of that same sheepskin. Then the reeds roared into the air of “Baile Inneraora.”

“Och a DhÉ! siod e nis! Eirich, eirich, Rob!” she cried in to the man among the blankets, but there was no need for the summons. The gathering rang far ben in the chambers of sleep, and Rob was stark awake, with a grasp at his hip for the claymore.

“Troth! I thought it was the camp! and them on us,” he laughed foolishly in his beard.

Up and down the street went Dol' Dubh, the Duke's second piper, the same who learned the art of music right well from the Macruimens of Boreraig, and he had as sweet a finger on the chanter as Padruig himself, with the nerve to go round the world. Fine, fine it was for him, be sure, to be the summoner to battle! Lights jumped to the little lozens of the windows and made streaks on the cracks of the doors, and the Major's man came from his loft ganting with a mouth like the glee'd gun, a lantern swinging on a finger, making for the stable to saddle his master's horse. A garret window went up with a bang, and Peter MacIntyre, wright, pat out a towsy head and snuffed the air. It was low tide in the two bays, and the town was smelling less of peat-reek than of sea-wrack and saltness. One star hung in the north over Dunchuach.

“They have the good day for starting the jaunt, whatever,” said the wright. “If I was a stone or two lighter, and had one to look after the shop, it's off on this ploy I would be too.” He took in his head, the top nodding briskly on his Kilmarnock bonnet, and wakened the wife to help him on with his clothes.

Dol' Dubh was up at the Cross, swelled out like a net-bow, blasting furiously, his heart athump with the piper's zest. Doors drummed, windows screeched in their cases, women's voices went from land to land, and the laugh and cry of bairns new roused from the hot toss of dreams. Far up the highroad a horse's hoofs were dunting hollow and hearty on the stones, and by-and-by through the Arches trotted the Cornal, his tall body straight and black against the dun of the gables. He had a voice like a rutting deer. “Master Piper,” he roared to Dol' Dubh, tugging his beast back on its haunches, “stop that braggart air and give us 'Bundle and Go,' and God help the Campbell that's not on the Cadger's Quay before the sun's over Stron Point!”

“Where is the air like it?” said Dol' to himself, slacking a reed with a thumb-nail. “Well they ken it where little they love it with its vaunting!” But he up with his drones on his shoulder and into the tune that had the Cornal's fancy. Beside him the Cornal stood at his horse's stirrup in the grey-brown of the morning, his head still light with the bottle of claret wine his lady in Lecknamban had put before him ere he had boot over saddle.

Then the town stirred to its affairs. The Major's horse went clattering over the cobblestones to his door-end, the arm-room door opened, and old Nanny Bheag, who kept the key, was lifted off her feet and in, on the rush of young lads making for the new guns Lome Clerk had up from the Low Country. On the belts of the older men, loth to leave the fire-end, mothers and wives were hanging bags with thick farls of cake, and cheese, and the old Aora salve for swordcuts.

If they had their way of it, these caille-achan, the fighting gear would be all kebbucks of cheese and dry hose, and no powder and ball. The men blustered, high-breasted, with big words in their beards, and no name too dirty for the crew they were off to scatter—praising themselves and making the fine prophecies, as their folks did before them with better rights when the town was more in the way of going to wars. Or they roundly scolded the weans for making noise, though their eyes were learning every twist of the copper hair and every trick of the last moment, to think on when long and dreary would be the road before them.

There was a break in Dol' Dubh's music, and high over the big town rang the Cornal's voice, starting the bairns in their sleep and setting them up and screaming.

“Laggards! laggards! O lazy ones! Out! out! Campbells before were never so swear't to be marching. It is time to be steeping the withies!”

Hard back went the stout doors on the walls, and out ran the folk. The brogues skliffed and hammered; men with muskets, swords, dirks, and targes ran down the street, and women and children behind them. A tumult filled the town from side to side and end to end, and the lanes and closes were streaming with the light from gaping doors.

Old and young, the boy and the snooded girl, women with bairn at breast, bodach and cailleach, took to the Cross muster, leaving the houses open to the wind and to the world. The cats thrummed by the fires, and the smell of the sea-wrack came in beside them.

“I have you here at last,” said the Cornal, dour and dark, throwing his keen eyes along the row of men. “Little credit are ye to my clan and chief, and here's to the Lowlands low, and would to God I was there now among the true soldados with stomachs for slaughter and the right skill of fence and musketoon! A short tulzie, and a tow at the thrapple of bastard Chevalier would there be in that case. Here's but a wheen herds, weavers, and gillies holding Brown Betty like a kail-runt!”

He was one of the Craignish Campbells, the Cornal—Dugald, brother of Lachan who got death at a place called Fontenoy in the summer before—very sib to the Duke, and it behoved the town-men to say nothing. But they cursed his eyes to each other on the corners of their mouths, and if he knew it he had sense enough to say nothing.

The women and bairns and the old folks stood in a great crowd behind the Cornal's horse. The Major's mare with him in the sell was dancing an uncanny spring near the Arches, full of freshness and fine feeding as a battle-horse should be, but overly much that way for a man sixteen finger-lengths round the belly and full of fish and ale. From Glen Beag came the slow morning, gusty and stinging; Stob-an-Eas stood black against the grey of it; the tide stretched from shore to shore unfriendly and forlorn.

Jean Rob, with the bairn at her brattie-string, was with the other women seeing her man away, stupid with two sorrows—one because he was going, and the other because he had twenty pounds in his sporran that he might well be doing without; for he was leaving the woman without a groat, and only a boll of meal in the girnel and a wee firkin of salted fish.

The steady breeze came yet from Stron, and sat snug in the sails of the six boats that carried the Duke's men over to Cowal. Brog-and-Turk's skiff put out first, himself at the helm in his tarry jacket; the others, deep down, followed close on her heels. One by one they fell off from the quay. The men waved their bonnets and cried cheerily and vaunting, as was aye the good grace of Clan Diarmaid at the first and the last of forays.

“Blessings with ye!” cried the folk left behind, wet-eyed; and even the Provost's wife took a grief at her inside to see her man with a shaking lip look round the sail of the hin'most boat. Cheering and weeping, singing and ochain! there they were on the quay and on the sea, our own folk, our dear folk; and who were ever like them when it came to the bit, and stout hearts or kind hearts were wanted?

“Stand back, kindred!” cried the Cornal, putting spurs to his horse, and he pranced up the town-head, a pretty man, to join the Major and gallop round the loch-head to join the corps at Cairn-dubh.

Dol' Dubh stopped his playing at the bow of Brog-an-Turk's skiff when she gulped the first quaich of brine, and the men in all the boats started to sing the old boat-song of “Aora Mo Chridhe tha mi seoladh”—

It came back on the wind with a sorrow to break hearts, sinking and swelling as the wind took the fancy, and the long-necked herons stood on the fringe of the tide with their heads high to listen. The sails got scattered and shrunk, and the tune got thin and low, and lost at last in the swish of the waves on the shore, and the ears of those who listened heard the curlew piping cursedly loud over the Cooper's Pool. A grey cold day with rain on the tail of it. High Creag Dubh with its firs and alders and rowans stark and careless over the hollow town. Broad day and brightness, and the cruisies and candles burning the ghosts of flame in the empty houses, with doors wide to the empty street and the lanes and closes!

II.

The wanderer has ever the best of it, and wae wae are the hearts behind I Is it for war or sport, or for the red gold, that a man turns heel on his home and takes the world for his pillow? In his pack is the salve for care as well as for sword-cuts, for ever and always are new things happening. The road crooks through the curious glens; the beasts trot among the grass and fern and into the woods; the girls (the dear ones, the red-lipped ones!) come from the milking of the white-shouldered cattle and look with soft black eyes as he passes, and there is a new tale at the corner of every change-house fire. All that may befall a packman; but better's the lot of the fighter with steel at his haunch, fire at his heart, and every halt a day closer to them he would be seeking.

But the folks behind in the old place! Mo thruaigh! mo thruaigh! Daybreak, and hot sun, and the creeping in of the night, when the door must be snecked on the rover; the same place, and still with a want in it, and only guessing at where and how is the loved one out on strange ways on the broad world.

Far up the long Highlands the Campbells were on their way. Loch Sloy and Glen Falloch, Rannoch's bleakness and Ben Alder's steepness, and each morning its own wet grass and misty brae, and each night its dreams on the springy heather.

A woman was weeping on Achadunan because that her man was gone and her chimney stone was cold, and Rob Donn's sporran was emptied at her feet, though he knew not so much as the name of her. But he took a thought and said, “I'll keep the half, for long's the way before us, and ill is travelling among strangers without a round-piece in the purse.” That was but a day's march from Jean Rob, and she was making a supper of crowdie that was the first meal of the day.

On Spey-side was the camp of the Argylls, and card-play round the fires, with the muskets shining, and the pipes playing sweeter for slumber than for rouse.

“I will put my watch on this turn,” said a black Lowlander in the heat of the game.

“Rob Donn's watch is the sun on Toman-uardar,” said our hero, “but here are ten yellow Geordies,” and out went his fortune among the roots of the gall.

“Troosh! beannachd leat!” and the coin was a jingle in the other one's pouch.

“I have plenty more where it came from, and cattle enough forbye,” said our braggart, and he turned on his elbow whistling “Crodh Chailein.”

But let them follow the drum who will, for us the story's beside the hearth. It is not a clatter of steel and the tulzies of Chevaliers, but the death of an only bairn.

In her house on the Lowlands road Jean Rob starved with the true Highland pride, that sets a face content against the world at kirk or market. Between her and a craving stomach lay but shell-fish and herbs, for she had not a plack to spend, and the little one got all the milk that came from Mally, the dappled one, drying up for calving. Break of day would see the woman, white, thin, keen-eyed, out on the ebb before the fishing-boats were in, splashing in the pools in the sand for partans and clabbie-doos, or with two ready fingers piercing the sand to pull the long spout-fish from his hiding. Or she would put little stakes in the sand, and between them a taut line with baited hooks to coax the fish at high tide. But ill was her luck, indeed, for few were the fish that came to the lure to be lifted again at ebb.

Above Kilmalieu on the sea side of Dunchu-ach, in the tangle and dark of the trees, among the soft splashing soil, the wild leeks gave a scent to the air. These would Jean gather, and the nettle too, and turn them to thin broth; but that same was no fare for a Crarae stomach.

At night when the wee one slept, the mother would have her plaid on her head, and through the town, barefoot, in the darkness, passing the folk at the close-mouths quickly for fear they would speak to her, and her heart would crave for share of the noble supper that made steam from the door of her cousin the rich merchant.

Like a ghost sometimes, wandering about the Cadger's Quay or the gutting-stools, where she would be looking for a dropped giley or a bake from the nets, she would come on a young woman.

“Dhe! Jean Rob! is it thyself that is here?”

“Just Jean, my darling, for a little turn, because of the stir in the town, and the smell of the barking nets. Well I like the smell of the bark, and the wind takes little of it up the Lowlands road.”

“Thou art not coming out much since the men went to the North. Art well at the house—the little one, now, bless her?”

“Splendid, splendid, m' eudail. Faith, it is too fat we will be getting on the fortune Rob got from Elrigmor.”

“Indeed, yes, Jean, it was the great luck! When a poor person comes——”

“Hut tut! Poor nor rich, my people had their own place on Lochowside, and little did my Rob need MacNicol's dirty money; but he was aye fond of a 'horo-yally,' and that's the way of his being among them.”

“Well, well, if that's the way, our own people were good enough on a time; but a pedigree, thou wilt allow, is a poor plaster for a pain in the stomach. For me, I would have a good shaking of herring and money in the town. It was but black brochan for our one meal to-day, and my mother poorly.”

“My dear! och, my dear! and I to brag of plenty! Little enough, in truth, is on my own board; but I have a boiling of meal if you come for it in the morning.”

“Kindly, kindly, thou good dame. It would be but a loan.”

“Yes, indeed, one will be running out of the wherewithal now and again, and 'twas aye 'Mine is yours and yours is mine' in Gaeldom. But I must be stepping.”

And while Jean Rob starved, there was never a word from the best and bravest off at the wars, or how they fared, only now and then a half tale from a travelling caird or a Low-Country carrier about gatherings and skirling pipes and hard knocks. His Grace himself kept a horse or two and a good rider on the other side of the Rest, to gallop hot-hoof into the Castle with the first news of how his clan won; but weary was the waiting.

The town took to its old appearance, the aged men clack-clacking with the shuttle, the boys scattering seed over the rig-and-fur of the ploughed fields, the women minding their houses. And that, too, is war for ye! The dirk is out, the brogues trail over the hills and through the glens, the clans meet and clash, the full heart belches blood, the grass soaks, the world and the chance of it is put on the luck of a swinging stroke at yon one's neck. War! war! red and lusty—the jar of it fills the land! But oh, mo chridhe! home in Glen Shie are women and bairns living their own day's life, and the crack will be blithe in the sheilings to come, for all your quarrels. Where is Hector, and where is Gilean-of-the-Axe, and where is Diarmaid of the boar's snout? They are all gone but for an old song at the sheiling-fire, and life, love, and the Fell Sergeant still come and go in the place the warriors made such stir in! A stranger would think there was little amiss in the Duke's town. The women sang their long songs of love and yore as they span about the wheel and carded the wool; the bairns guddled in Jumping John's burn, and tore their kilts among the whins, and came home with the crows, redfaced and hungry-warned. At the ale-house there was traffic by day, and heavy drovers and gaugers stamped their feet to the choruses at night. The day lengthened, and comforting winds came from the two bonny black glens; the bracken put on new growths, like the crook of St Molach that's up-by in the Castle; Easachosain reeled to the piping of birds.

There might be an eye many times a-day on the Stron Point to see if a horseman was rounding it, and the cruisies were kept burning a little longer at night in case the news would come in the darkness like the Athol thieves. But patience was ever the gift of the Gael, and few lost heart.

And at last the news came of Culloden Moor.

It was on a Sunday—a dry clear day—and all the folk were at the church, with old Colin the minister sweating at it for the good of the Ceannloch fishermen in the loft. He was in the middle of his prayer when a noise came over the town, a dunting of hoofs on the causey of the Provost's house-front.

“Amen!” said the cunning Colin, quick as could be, and then, “Friends, here is news for us,” and down the pulpit steps he ran briskly like a lad of twenty.

Peter MacIntyre set back the bolt from the door with a bang, and past him the people made rush. The Duke's rider from over the Rest was there in the saddle of a grey garron foaming at the mouth and its hurdies in a tremble.

“Your tidings, your tidings, good man!” cried the people.

The lad sat stark in the saddle, with his eyes wet and his nose pricking with the Gaelic pride.

“I have been at the Castle, and-”

“Your news, just man.”

“I have been at the Castle, and Mac-Cailein Mor, who said I rode well from the Rest, said I might come in-by and carry my budget to you.”

“Out with it, Paruig, little hero. Is't good or ill?”

“What would it be, my heroes, with our own lads, but good? Where's the beat of them? It's 'The Glen is Mine' Dol' Dubh will be playing this day on Culloden, for ours is the battle. They scattered the dirty Northmen and the Irishers like chaff, and Cailein Mor himself gave me a horn of ale from his own hands on the head o't.”

A roar went up that stirred the crows on Scaurnoch, and there was a Sunday spoiled for you; for the ale went free and merry in the change-house at the Duke's charge till the moon was over Ben Ime.

But there were five houses with the clocks stopped (for the ghosts take no heed of time); five houses with the glasses turned face to the wall (for who dare look in glass to see a wraith at the back of the shoulder?); there were four widows and five mothers wet faced, keening for five fine men who had been, and whose names were now writ on paper on the church door.

III.

Day followed day, and still home came no Campbells. They were far to the dreary North, plying sword and fire among the bad clans, harrying for the glory of Mac-Cailein Mor.

And at last on a day the sea-pigs rolled and blew off Stron Point, and the scarts dived like arrows from the sun's eye, deep into a loch boiling with fish. Night found the brown sails bellying out on the scudding smacks, and the snouts of skiff and galley tearing the waves to get among the spoil. Bow-to-back, the nets spotted Finne mile on mile; the kind herrings crowded thick into them; the old luck was back, and the quays in the morning heard the fine tune of the cadger's clinking silver. In a hurry of hurries the fleet came up to the mouth of Shira—Tarbert men, Strathlachlan men, Minard men, black fellows from MacCallum country, and the wine-traffickers from French Foreland to swap sour claret for the sweet fat fish.

It was ho-rol and spill the bicker in yon town, for all that the best of its men were away and afar at the killing. The smoke was black from the fires in the Cooper's Pool, the good healthy smell of the gut-pots sought up to the Castle door. Little doubt his Grace (beannachd leis!) would come out to the door-step and curse because it made him bock his breakfast, dainty man!

Throng though the town was, round about the little house on the left of the Lowlands Road crept a queer quietness. The cow had dried, and the dull weather kept the spout fish too deep down in the sand for the ready fingers to reach them. So the household of Rob Donn starved to the bone.

“To-morrow—they will be home tomorrow,” said Jean to herself every day to keep up her heart; but the days went by, and though it was something to know that Rob was not among the killed at Culloden, it was not something to stay the stomach. A stone-throw off were the best and kindest hearts in the world: the woman's cousin, the rich merchant, would give all he had on his board if he knew her trouble, and friends without number would share the last bite with her. But to ask it would be to say she was at the lowest, and to tell that Rob had left her nothing, and she would sooner die in her pride.

Such people as passed her way—and some of them old gossips—would have gone in, but the withie was aye across the door, and that's the sign that business is doing within no one dare disturb. The withie was ever there except at night, when Jean was scouring the countryside for something to eat.

The bairn dwined so fast that even the mother (and blind indeed's the mother at that bit) saw a little of it. There was no longer the creepie-stool at the back of the house, in the sun, and the bairn on it, watching the birds; her shanks grew thin like spirtles; her eyes sank far ben in her face, and she would not go the length of the door. She sat at the fireside and laughed her poor cold laugh less every day, till one long thought came to her that kept her busy at the thinking from morning till night with a face like a cailleach of eighty.

“White love, white love,” Jean would be saying, “your father is on the road with stots and a pouch of cockades.”

At that the bairn would come back from her roaming; but soon she was off again into the deeps of mind, her wide eyes like the windows of an empty house for all that could be seen through them.

“Oh! but it will be the fine cockade,” poor Jean would press—“what am I saying?—the pack of your father will be full of them. Not the white ones of silk only, but the red and the grassy green, my little calf. You'll be wearing them when you will.”

No heeding in the bairn's face.

Then Jean would go out and pull the tansy at the door, and give it to the little one to get the fine scent. The curious shells from the shore, too, would she gather, and lay in rings about the chair, and call her the Queen in her castle. For ever would there be a song at her lips, even if the drops would be in her eyes—old daft songs from fairs and weddings, and fairy rhyming and cheery stories about the Good People up on Sithean Sluaidhe. Her fingers were for ever soft about the bairn, her flesh and blood, stroking in the hair, softening the cushion, petting her in every hand's-turn. She made a treat to herself by asking her, now and then, something that had to be answered “Yes” or “No,” and “Mother” was so sweet in her ears that she would be content to hear no more in all her lifetime.

All the day the bairn crouched up in a hoop-chair with her neck slack and her chin on her breast. Jean was loth to leave her in her bed in the mornings, for she had a notion that to get her out of the blankets and to put her in the clothes of the busy world would be to keep her in the trim for living on.

Still there was no sign of the men returning. Often was Jean's foot at the door and her hand over her eyes to see if there was no stir at Stron or Kilachatrine, and but for good stuff, her heart failed five-score times a-day.

At last, on a day of days, the bairn could not be stirred to notice anything. The tansy fell out of her fingers, and she picked at the wool of the plaid that wrapped her; the shells had no charm for her eye.

Jean made the pack of the coming father as routh as a magic cave. “That father of yours, darling, what a many wonderful things he will bring! I see him on the road. Stots, and cows with milk brimming from the udders, and a pet sheep for his caileag bheag; pretty gold and silver things, and brooches and shining stuff. That father of yours! Hurry, father, hurry! Jingling things, and wee fairy-men, and bells to ring for you, m' eudail; pretty glasses and dishes to play with, and—O my darling! my darling!”

The bairn's face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and fell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made for her out of a rich and willing mind.

Jean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to where Mally the dappled one lay at the back.

“I must be doing it!” said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do in the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to make a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the pot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the fire when the child cluttered at the throat.

Jean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe's lilting came over the glassy bay from Stron Point.

It was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the heads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than wine makes. Dol' Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head of them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, “Here's our own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the fine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!”

On the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and furious—the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching behind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself was before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he was in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the wind to Boshang Gate.

“Halt!” cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol' Dubh's bag emptied itself with a grant.

“Tha sibh an sol! You are here, cousin,” said the Duke. “Proud am I to see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!”

“They did that, MacCailein. The stuff's aye to the fore.”

“It's in the blood, man. We have't in us, high or low. I have but one thing to vex me.”

“Name it, cousin.”

“Well ye ken, Cornai. It's that I had not been with you to see the last crushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp's head.”

“It was a good ploy missed, I'll not deny.”

“What about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?”

“As foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy, MacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your forebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of Geordie's Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand true Gaels in all the fellow's corps.”

“To read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!”

“A bantam's crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the neck of it at any time up to Dunedin.”

“They made a fair stand, did they not?

“Uch! Poor eno'—indeed it was not what you would call a coward's tulzie either.”

“Well, well, that's over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. Slochd a Chubair gu bragh! Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and bairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes' bite and sup. Who's that with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is't Rob Donn?”

“It is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the diversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he put an end to.”

“There's luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything. March!” Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the boys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob Donn left the company as it passed near his own door.

“Faith! 'tis a poor enough home-coming, without wife or bairn to meet one,” said he, as he pushed in the door.

“Wife! wife!” he cried ben among the peat-reek, “there's never a stot, but here's the cockade for the little one!”