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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 clansmen mustered at Inneraora.
Argile and Auchinbreac rode at our head his lordship on a black horse called Lepanto, a spirited beast that had been trained to active exercises and field-practice; Auchinbreac on a smaller animal, but of great spirit and beauty. M'Iver and I walked, as did all the officers.
She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as she flew. We left the Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber, and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling, calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald and a blessing on Argile.
The blood swept to M'Iver's face, and his eye quailed. "I favoured no such impolitic act," said he, slowly. "I saw you were bent on going, and I but backed you up, to leave you some rags of illusion to cover your naked sin." "I thought no less," said Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder.
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 beginnings of things," and as he spoke he was pouring, with a steady hand, a glass of wine for a woman in the tremors.
"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.
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'll deny I went with you to Inverlochy.
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. 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'Iver or myself.
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 Athole from the main body.
I know comes 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-off woods come in bands at their seasons and together rejoice.
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