artan array," these shepherds
laughed at the storm--and hark! you hear the bagpipe play--the music the
Highlanders love both in war and in peace.

"They think then of the ourie cattle,
And silly sheep;"

and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night--for the snow-storm will
sweep her out of heaven--up the mountain and down the glen they go,
marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at
nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth
where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know
their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now
close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so--and why howls
Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead
body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the
antlers went by! Not dead--nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in
both is frozen--and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be
thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin--and the frightened sheep
know not what is the terrible Shape that is howling there. But a man
enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them
at the doorway--and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a
rifle, they see that it is Ranald Cameron and Flora Macdonald,
seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds
burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured
that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not
there--and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his
eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their
plaids--how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the
field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and
wounded, they bore away the shattered body--yet living--of the youthful
warrior, who had shown that of such a Clan, he was worthy to be the
Chief.

The storm was with them all the way down the glen--nor could they have
heard each other's voices had they spoke--but mutely they shifted the
burden from strong hand to hand--thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of
what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind
people walk through what to them is the night of crowded
daystreets--unpausing turn round corners--unhesitatingly plunge down
steep stairs--wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life