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Oh, many a time my wife, who is none of our race, warned me against the softening influence, the blight and rot of this eternal air of flattery that's round about Castle Inneraora like a swamp vapour. She's in Stirling to-day I ken it in my heart that to-night shell weep upon her pillow because she'll know fate has found the weak joint in her goodman's armour again."
I was preparing to leave the court-room, having many people to call on in Inneraora, and had turned with my two friends to the door, when a fellow brushed in past us a Highlander, I could see, but in trews and he made to go forward into the body of the court, as if to speak to his lordship, now leaning forward in a cheerful conversation with the Provost of the burgh, a sonsy gentleman in a peruke and figured waistcoat.
Now we had more opportunity of seeing those coarse savage forces than on any occasion since they came to Argile, for the whole of them had mustered at Inneraora after scouring the shire, and were on their march out of the country to the north, fatter men and better put-on than when they came.
When the English minister, in his odd lalland Scots, had told us this tale of the dying MacDonald, I found for the first time my feeling to the daughter of the Provost of Inneraora, Before this the thought of her was but a pleasant engagement for the mind at leisure moments; now it flashed on my heart with a stound that yon black eyes were to me the dearest jewels in the world, that lacking her presence these glens and mountains were very cold and empty.
"Our plan," he went on, "as agreed upon at a council after my return from the north, was to hold all above Inneraora in simple defence while lowland troops took the invader behind. Montrose or the Mac Donalds can't get through our passes." "I'm not cock-sure of that, MacCailein," said Splendid.
Fourpence a-day was a labourer's wage, but what need had one of even fourpence, with his hut free and the food piling richly at his very door? On the 27th of July in this same year 1644 we saw his lordship and his clan march from Inneraora to the dreary north.
The boats bobbed and nudged each other or strained at the twanging cord as seamen and fishers spanged from deck to deck; rose cries in loud and southward Gaelic or the lowlands of Air. The world was no longer dreaming but stark awake, all but the sea and the lapsing bays and the brown floating hills. Town Inneraora bustled to its marge.
Even the wolf from Benderloch no doubt came baying at night at the empty gibbets at the town-head, that spoke of the law's suspense. Only in Castle Inneraora was there anything to be called gaiety.
With my kilt and the memory of old times about me, I went walking down to Inneraora in the middle of the day. I was prepared for change from the complaints of my father, but never for half the change I found in the burgh town of MacCailein Mor.
He was my senior by about a dozen years seemingly, a neat, well-built fellow, clean-shaven, a little over the middle height, carrying a rattan in his hand, though he had a small sword tucked under the skirt of his coat. "With Lumsden's regiment," he said. "His lordship here has been telling me you have just come home from the field." "But last night. I took the liberty while Inneraora was snoring.
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