t and
could have known what was to follow--the countryside laid waste with fire
and sword, women and children turned out of their blazing homes to perish
on the bleak moors, the wearing of the tartan proscribed and made a crime
punishable with death, a hundred brave Highlanders the victim of the
scaffold--we should have quite despaired.

Except the gentle soughing of the wind there was no sound to stir the
silent night. A million of night's candles looked coldly down on an army
of hunted stragglers. I thought of the Prince, Cluny, Lord Murray, Creagh,
and a score of others, wondering if they had been taken, and fell at last
to troubled sleep, from which ever and anon I started to hear the wild
wail of the pibroch or the ringing Highland slogans, to see the flaming
cannon mouths vomiting death or the fell galloping of the relentless
Hanoverian dragoons.

In the chill dawn I awoke to a ravening hunger that was insistent to be
noted, and though my eyes would scarce believe there was Donald Roy cocked
tailor fashion on the heath arranging most temptingly on a rock scone
sandwiches of braxy mutton and a flask of usquebaugh (Highland whiskey). I
shut my eyes, rubbed them with my forefingers, and again let in the light.
The viands were still there.

The Macdonald smiled whimsically over at me. "Gin ye hae your appetite wi'
you we'll eat, Mr. Montagu, for I'm a wee thingie hungry my nainsell
(myself). 'Deed, to mak plain, I'm toom (empty) as a drum, and I'm
thinkin' that a drappie o' the usquebaugh wad no' come amiss neither."

"But where in the world did you get the food, Donald?"

"And where wad you think, but doon at the bit clachan yonder? A very guid
freend of mine named Farquhar Dhu lives there. He and Donald Roy are far
ben (intimate), and when I came knocking at his window at cock-craw he was
no' very laithe to gie me a bit chack (lunch)."

"Did you climb down the mountain and back with your sore ankle?"

He coloured. "Hoots, man! Haud your whitter (tongue)! Aiblins (perhaps) I
wass just wearying for a bit exercise to test it. And gin I were you I
wadna sit cocking on that stane speiring at me upsitten (impertinent)
questions like a professor of pheelosophy, you muckle sumph!"

I fell to with a will. He was not a man to be thanked in words. Long since
I had found out that Captain Roy was one to spend himself for his friends
and make nothing of it. This was one of his many shining qualities that
drew me so strong