in on a south wind to the
front of the Gearran, giving the long curve of the land an appearance
new and terrible, filled as it was far over high-water mark with
monstrous blocks, answering with groans and cries to every push of the
tide.

I found the glen wrapped in mist, the Gearran hamlet empty of people,
Maam, Kilblaan, Stuchgoy, and Ben Bhuidhe presenting every aspect of
desolation. A weeping rain was making sodden all about my father's house
when I galloped to the door, to find him and the _sgalag_ the only ones
left.

The old man was bitter on the business.

"Little I thought," said he, "to see the day when Glen Shira would turn
tail on an enemy."

"Where are they?" I asked, speaking of our absent followers; but indeed
I might have saved the question, for I knew before he told me they were
up in the conies between the mounts, and in the caves of Glen Finne.

He was sitting at a fire that was down to its grey ash, a mournful
figure my heart was vexed to see. Now and then he would look about him,
at the memorials of my mother, her chair and her Irish Bible (the first
in the parish), and a posy of withered flowers that lay on a bowl on a
shelf where she had placed them, new cut and fresh, the day she took
to her deathbed. Her wheel, too, stood in the corner, with the thread
snapped short in the heck--a hint, I many times thought, at the sundered
interests of life.

"I suppose we must be going with the rest," I ventured; "there's small
sense in biding here to be butchered."

He fell in a rain of tears, fearing nor death nor hardship, I knew, but
wae at the abandonment of his home. I had difficulty in getting him to
consent to come with me, but at last I gave the prospect of safety in
the town and the company of friends there so attractive a hue that he
consented So we hid a few things under a _bruach_ or overhanging brae
beside the burn behind the house, and having shut all the doors--a
comical precaution against an army, it struck me at the time--we rode
down to Inneraora, to the town house of our relative Craignure.

It was a most piteous community, crowded in every lane and pend with
men, women, and children dreadful of the worst All day the people had
been trooping in from the landward parts, flying before the rumour of
the Athole advance down Cladich. For a time there was the hope that
the invaders would but follow the old Athole custom and plunder as they
went, sparing unarmed men and women, but this