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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.
I lived, of course, at the inns, which were not very good, and having no companion, not even a servant, I felt rather dull and lonely, especially on the wet days. A well-known London banker was staying at the inn of Cladich at the same time with me, so we became acquainted, and he wished to purchase one of my studies; but as I intended to keep them all, I declined.
In the year 1857 I made the expedition to the Highlands which afterwards became well known in consequence of my book about it. The Duke of Argyll gave me leave to encamp on an island in Loch Awe that belonged to him, and Mr. Campbell of Monzie granted leave to encamp on his property on the Cladich side of the lake.
At Cladich the people, who knew I was going to fetch a bride, threw old shoes after the carriage for luck. It did not rain rice at Loch Awe in those days. I was an excellent traveller then, and did not get into a bed before arriving in Paris. There was a day in London between two nights of railway, a day spent in looking at pictures and making a few purchases.
I was sick of this most doleful expedition; M'Iver 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.
But we had no excuse for lingering long over our entrance upon its blue flagstone pavements; our first duty was to report ourselves in person to our commander, whose return to Inneraora Castle we had been apprised of at Cladich. This need for waiting upon his lordship so soon after the great reverse was a sour bite to swallow, for M'Iver as well as myself.
"They cannot know of it already in Glencoe!" said M'Iver, appalled. "Know it!" said the crone, drawing nearer and with still more frenzy; "Glencoe has songs on it 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 keening on the slopes of Cladich.
The air was still, there was no snow, and at Corryghoil, the first house of any dignity we 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.
"Here's a friend of Argile back again," said an old halberdier, staunching a savage cut on his 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 Argile'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.
It was a most piteous community, crowded in every lane and pend with men, women, and children dreadful of the worst All day the people had been trooping in from the landward parts, flying before the rumour of the Athole advance down Cladich.
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