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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.
A black cloud was pricked upon the spur of Cowal. "There's wind there," said he, "and water too! I'm thinking we are better here than below Otter this night. Nan, my dear, it is home you may get to-day, but not without a wetting. I told you not to come, and come you would." She drummed with her heels upon the breaker, held up a merry chin, and smiled boldly at her father's captain.
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!
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 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.
This morning the "Cowal," or watercourse, which had detained the Brothers on their first trip, had to be swum over, and here poor Ginger, one of the horses, got hopelessly bogged, and though got out and put on his legs with saplings, was too exhausted to go on,and had to be abandoned. The distance accomplished was 11 miles. 'March' 11. The line marked by Mr. Jardine was followed to-day.
"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; "Taing! 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.
For the benefit of the curious in such matters we may mention that the Duke's titles are, by writ 1445, Baron Campbell; 1457, Earl of Argyll; 1570, Baron of Lorne; by Royal charter, 1701, Duke of Argyll; Marquis of Lorne and Kintyre; Earl of Campbell and Cowal; Viscount of Lochow and Glenila; Baron Inveraray, Mull, Morven, and Tory, in the Peerage of Scotland; 19th December, 1766, Baron Sundridge of Croombank; May 4, 1776, Baron Hamilton, in the Peerage of England; Hereditary Master of the Queen's Household; Keeper of Dunoon, Dunstaffnage, and Carrick Castles; Heritable Lord-Lieutenant of Argyllshire.
This Duncan of Knockdunder was a person of first-rate importance in the island of Roseneath,* and the continental parishes of Knocktarlitie, Kilmun, and so forth; nay, his influence extended as far as Cowal, where, however, it was obscured by that of another factor. The Tower of Knockdunder still occupies, with its remains, a cliff overhanging the Holy Loch.
The reason seemed to flash on her there and then, and she backed my 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.
My fingers were on his throat before I saw that we had for our visitor none other than young MacLachlan. He had his sgian dubh 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 to your fancy than real Argile in this vexatious time."
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