heartbreak
too, like her auntie? No; Scotty did not see how that was possible;
for Mary had never had a dress ready for a wedding; nor a fine soldier
man who did not come. But Isabel was sure he was mistaken. Yes, that
was certainly what Mary had, for her face was so pale, and she had the
same look in her eyes that her auntie had when her wedding day came
round, only Mary's eyes were kinder. But Scotty was not interested in
Mary. Callum absorbed all his thoughts, and he left Isabel at Kirsty's
and hurried home.

He found the boys all gone and his grandfather sitting alone by the
door. Big Malcolm was not smoking, which was a bad sign, and his
grandson saw by the look in his eye that he was not at peace. In his
perturbation over Callum's difficult case the boy had not noticed that
a new undercurrent of excitement was running through life's everyday
affairs.

For, though Big Malcolm had, with wonderful self-control, put aside his
indignation at the Orangemen, all the MacDonalds had not done so.
Weaver Jimmie had gone up over the hills of the Oa like a bearer of the
fiery cross, and wherever he appeared the beacon-fire of anger had
blazed forth. The Orangemen celebrating! The MacDonalds arose as one
man, and in all the inherited fury of generations, combined with as
much more produced for the occasion, banded together and swore that
before the soil of this, their new home, should be polluted by a
celebration in honour of the MacDonalds' betrayer, it should first be
soaked with the MacDonalds' blood!

To do Tom Caldwell justice, he did not at all comprehend the enormity
of the offence he was about to commit. Of course the Orangemen
anticipated some trouble among their Catholic brethren, but rather
looked forward to it as part of their entertainment. For though Pat
Murphy and his friends prophesied death and destruction to the
procession and all that had part or lot in it, what matter? The
country had been growing far too quiet since the fighting MacDonalds
had taken to praying instead of pugilism, and a little row at the
corner would just stir things up a bit and make it seem like old times.
But while they gleefully looked for tempests in the Flats, they were
innocently oblivious to the fact that the formerly peaceful hills of
the Oa had been converted into raging volcanoes. Occasionally vague
rumours of an eruption in the MacDonald settlement did float down to
King William and his men, drilling in the lon