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There should be no lowe on this side of the fort after nightfall, 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 farther ben in Bredalbane and Cruachan.
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 bums 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 shelisters or water-flags and bulrush, and farther 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 night and darkness.
"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, who will have the alarm miles up the Glen by now if I make no mistake about the breed."
I found the glen wrapped in mist, the Gearran hamlet empty of people, Maam, Kilblaan, Stuchgoy, 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.
Now that I was here, and my mother no more, my old father needed me on hill and field, and 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.
Almost exactly the same trick is told in an old Gaelic story, that of Conall Cra Bhuidhe. A great Giant with only one eye seized upon Conall, who was hunting on the Giant's lands. Conall himself is made to tell the story: "I hear a great clattering coming, and what was there but a great Giant and his dozen of goats with him, and a buck at their head.
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.
"You see your pledge calls for redemption sooner than you expected, Elrigmore. The enemy'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?
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.
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