d fled, and
satisfied their revengeful feelings by ransacking and pillaging the
empty houses. Probably the _movables_ were of no great value. They then
took their departure and left the island, when the sight of a solitary
human being among the cliffs awakened their suspicion, and induced them
to return. Unfortunately a slight sprinkling of snow had fallen, and the
footsteps of an individual were traced to the mouth of the cave. Not
having been there ourselves at the period alluded to, we cannot speak
with certainty as to the nature of the parley which ensued, or the
terms offered by either party; but we know that those were not the days
of protocols. The ultimatum was unsatisfactory to the Skye-men, who
immediately proceeded to 'adjust the preliminaries' in their own way,
which adjustment consisted in carrying a vast collection of heather,
ferns, and other combustibles, and making a huge fire just in the very
entrance of the _Uamh Fraingh_, which they kept up for a length of time;
and thus, by 'one fell smoke,' they smothered the entire population of
the island."

Such is Mr. Wilson's version of the story, which, in all its leading
circumstances, agrees with that of Sir Walter. According, however, to at
least one of the Eigg versions, it was the M'Leod himself who had landed
on the island, driven there by a storm. The islanders, at feud with the
M'Leod's at the time, inhospitably rose upon him, as he bivouacked on
the shores of the Bay of Laig; and in a fray, in which his party had the
worse, his back was broken, and he was forced off half dead to sea.
Several months after, on his partial recovery, he returned, crook-backed
and infirm, to wreak his vengeance on the inhabitants, all of whom,
warned of his coming by the array of his galleys in the offing, hid
themselves in the cave, in which, however, they were ultimately
betrayed--as narrated by Sir Walter and Mr. Wilson--by the track of some
footpaths in a sprinkling of snow; and the implacable chieftain, giving
orders on the discovery, to unroof the houses in the neighborhood,
raised high a pile of rafters against the opening, and set it on fire.
And there he stood in front of the blaze, hump-backed and grim, till the
wild, hollow cry from the rock within had sunk into silence, and there
lived not a single islander of Eigg, man, woman, or child. The fact that
their remains should have been left to moulder in the cave is proof
enough, of itself, that none survived to b