een a feud waged between two clans for
three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
they wrought on each other's houses. The one human passion of Dark
Malcolm's life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown
eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown
Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the
Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well
of Malcolm's worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him
through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one
night after a raid in which he had lost followers and weapons and
strength, found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried away, and
unspeakable taunts and threats left behind by Ian and his men. With
unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark Malcolm and the
remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen rushed forth into the night.

"Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back," screamed Dark
Malcolm, raving mad, "but we may die fighting to get near enough to her
to drive dirk into her little breast and save her from worse."

They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian's castle
walls; how they fought their way through it, leaving their dead bodies
in the path, none really ever knew. By what strange chance Dark Malcolm
came upon Wee Brown Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek with
a child of Ian's so that she might not cry out and betray her presence;
how, already wounded to his death, he caught at and drove his dirk into
her child heart, the story only offers guesses at. But kill and save her
he did, falling dead with her body held against his breast, her brown
hair streaming over it. Not one living man went back to the small, rude
castle on the Glen--not one.

I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I
found that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the
ladder. He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were
both quite still.

"It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?" he
said, at last.

"And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed," I added, slowly.

Angus nodded his head with a sad face. "It was the only way for a
father," he said. "A hound of hell was Ian. S