" said the
glover. "However, be that as it may, it chanced me to serve Gilchrist
MacIan in a high matter. It is now about eighteen years since, that it
chanced, the Clan Quhele and Clan Chattan being at feud, as indeed they
are seldom at peace, the former sustained such a defeat as well nigh
extirpated the family of their chief MacIan. Seven of his sons were
slain in battle and after it, himself put to flight, and his castle
taken and given to the flames. His wife, then near the time of giving
birth to an infant, fled into the forest, attended by one faithful
servant and his daughter. Here, in sorrow and care enough, she gave
birth to a boy; and as the misery of the mother's condition rendered her
little able to suckle the infant, he was nursed with the milk of a doe,
which the forester who attended her contrived to take alive in a snare.
It was not many months afterwards that, in a second encounter of these
fierce clans, MacIan defeated his enemies in his turn, and regained
possession of the district which he had lost. It was with unexpected
rapture that he found his wife and child were in existence, having never
expected to see more of them than the bleached bones, from which the
wolves and wildcats had eaten the flesh.

"But a strong and prevailing prejudice, such as is often entertained
by these wild people, prevented their chief from enjoying the full
happiness arising from having thus regained his only son in safety. An
ancient prophecy was current among them, that the power of the tribe
should fall by means of a boy born under a bush of holly and suckled
by a white doe. The circumstance, unfortunately for the chief, tallied
exactly with the birth of the only child which remained to him, and it
was demanded of him by the elders of the clan, that the boy should be
either put to death or at least removed from the dominions of the tribe
and brought up in obscurity. Gilchrist MacIan was obliged to consent and
having made choice of the latter proposal, the child, under the name of
Conachar, was brought up in my family, with the purpose, as was at first
intended, of concealing from him all knowledge who or what he was, or of
his pretensions to authority over a numerous and warlike people. But,
as years rolled on, the elders of the tribe, who had exerted so much
authority, were removed by death, or rendered incapable of interfering
in the public affairs by age; while, on the other hand, the influence of
Gilchrist MacIan