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You have had a good deal of flattery and spoiling; and you may find out you have been expecting too much. As for these Macleods here, I will say this although I came here very much against my own inclination that I defy any one to have been more kind, and courteous, and attentive than they have been to you. I don't care. It is not my business, as I tell you.
But I think the Macleods had done enough for the Stuarts; and it was but little thanks they ever got in return, so far as I could ever hear. Do you know, Mrs. Ross, my mother wears mourning every 3d of September, and will eat nothing from morning till night.
Ross, with a smile, "if you try to excuse one of the cruelest things ever heard of." "I do not excuse it at all," said he, simply. "It was very bad very cruel. But perhaps the Macleods were not so much worse than others. It was not a Macleod at all, it was a Gordon and she a woman, too that killed the chief of the Mackintoshes after she had received him as a friend.
'Put your head down on the table, said she to the chief, 'in token of your submission to the Earl of Huntly. And no sooner had he bowed his neck than she whipped out a knife and cut his head off. That was a Gordon, not a Macleod. And I do not think the Macleods were so much worse than their neighbors, after all." "Oh, how can you say that?" exclaimed his persecutor.
They would not have exchanged it for a suburban villa for worlds. Just on the opposite side of the harbour, with the jetty and the broad strip of green water in between, was the furnished house rented at present by the Macleods. It stood in the more aristocratic portion of Chagmouth, apart from the town and the fishing, in company with one or two other newly-built residences.
Dundee had gone further afield, but had not been successful. The gratitude of the Mackintoshes was not enough to do more than keep them neutral, which was perhaps fortunate, for had they joined the muster at Lochaber they would inevitably have been at blows with the Macdonalds before a day had passed. The Macphersons also kept aloof, and the Macleods.
When a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod's fortune, it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady's friends should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby driven to throw herself entirely into the gentleman's arms, and he thus becomes possessed of the wife and the money without the abominable nuisance of stringent settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled with Alice, did not quarrel with her
One of the Macdonalds being connected by marriage with the Macleods, was offered permission to crawl out on his hands and knees, and to bring out four others along with him in safety; but having selected a friend hated by the Macleods, who refused to spare the man's life, he preferred to suffer death with his clansmen than to live on without them.
They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to their chief. The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp, and vowed to defend the slayers. The inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound them hand and foot, and turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of hunger.
In the cluster of houses about Macdonald's farm, there was dulness and silence in the evenings, and anxious thoughts about fathers, husbands, and brothers, with dread of the daylight which would bring round the perpetual ineffectual watch for a boat on the waters, bearing news of the brave companies of the Macdonalds and Macleods.
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