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Updated: June 26, 2025


It is likely, too, I had been down leaving M'Iver out of consideration altogether had there not been the tales about MacLachlan, tales that came to my ears in the most miraculous way, with no ill intention on the part of the gossips about his constant haunting of Inneraora and the company of his cousin. He had been seen there with her on the road to Carlunnan. That venue of all others!

His mood softened, and we helped him to his feet, M'Iver a silent man because he failed to comprehend this turn of affairs. We took him to a cothouse down at the foot of the wood, where he lay while a boy was sent for a skilly woman.

"Very little indeed," I answered, recalling our bond; "but she cursed his lordship and his army with a zeal that was alarming, even to an old soldier of Sweden." "God ward all evil!" cried Betty in a passion of earnestness. "You'll be glad to see your friend M'Iver back, I make no doubt."

The parks had a greener hue than any we had seen to the north; the town revealed but its higher chimneys and the gable of the kirk, still its smoke told of occupation; the castle frowned as of old, and over all rose Dunchuach. "O Dunchuach! Dunchuach!" cried M'Iver, in an ecstasy, spreading out his arms, and I thought of the old war-worn Greeks who came with weary marches to their native seas.

"Long may they prosper, mistress," said M'Iver, drumming with a horn spoon on his knee, and winking and smiling very friendly to the little fellows in a row in the bed, who, all but the oldest, thawed to this humour of the stranger. "It must be a task getting a throng like yon bedded at evening.

M'Iver and I shared the secret with MacLachlan and the nurse of his dead lover; it went no farther, and it was all the more wonderful that John should keep his thumb on it, considering its relevancy to a blunder that made him seem a scoundrel in the eyes of Mistress Betty. Once I proposed to him that through her father she might have the true state of affairs revealed to her.

The lad weltering, with no word or moan from his lips; the servant stanching his wound, shaken the while by brotherly tears; M'Iver, the old man-at-arms, indifferent, practised to such sights, and with the heart no longer moved by man-inflicted injury; and over all a brooding silence; over all that place, consecrated once to God and prayer by men of peace, but now degraded to a den of beasts over it shone of a sudden the new wan crescent moon!

We took the bairn in turns, M'Iver and I, and the four of us set out for the opposite side of Glenaora for the eas or gully called the Beannan, that lay out of any route likely to be followed by the enemy, whether their object was a retreat or a hunting.

"If I were you," said John in a little, "I would not put the finish on that ditty till I learned the end of the transaction. "When MacCailein comes here," said the bard, "he'll get a Badenoch welcome." "And that is the thief's welcome, the shirt off his very back," cried M'Iver. "Off his back very likely," said the bard; "it's the back we see oftenest of the bonny gentleman."

So it was, I say, that the deliberations of M'Iver and myself were without any outside light in somewhat dark quarters: we had to guide us only yon momentary glimpse of the stricken field with its flying men, seen in a stupid blur of the senses, as one lying by a dark hill tarn at night, waiting for mallard or teal, sees the birds wheeling above the water ere he has appreciated the whirr of their presence, lets bang his piece at the midst of them, and is in a dense stillness again before he comprehends that what he has waited for in the cold night has happened.

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