itty and carving
a scroll with his hunting-knife on a crook he would maybe use when he
got back to the tack where his home was in ashes and his cattle were far
to seek, when he heard a crackle of bushes at the edge of the wood that
almost reached the hill-top, but falls short for lack of shelter from
the sinister wind. In a second a couple of scouts in dirty red and green
tartans, with fealdags or pleatless kilts on them instead of the better
class philabeg, crept cannily out into the open, unsuspicious that their
position could be seen from the fort.

Para Mor stopped his song, projected his firelock over the wall as he
ducked his body behind it--all but an eye and shoulder--and, with a
hairy cheek against the stock, took aim at the foremost The crack of the
musket sounded odd and moist in the mist, failing away in a dismal slam
that carried but a short distance, yet it was enough to rouse Dunchuach.

We took the wall as we stood,--myself, I remember me, in my kilt, with
no jacket, and my shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder; for I had
been putting the stone, a pleasant Highland pastime, with John Splendid,
who was similarly disaccoutred.

"All the better for business," said he, though the raw wind, as we lined
the wall, cut like sharp steel.

Para Mor's unfortunate gentleman was the only living person to see
when we looked into the gut, and he was too little that way to say much
about. Para had fired for the head, but struck lower, so that the scout
writhed to his end with a red-hot coal among his last morning's viands.

Long after, it would come back to me, the oddity of that spectacle
in the hollow--a man in a red fealdag, with his hide-covered buckler
grotesquely flailing the grass, he, in the Gaelic custom, making a great
moan about his end, and a pair of bickering rooks cawing away heartily
as if it was no more than a sheep in the throes of braxy.

After a little the moan of the MacDonald stopped, the crows slanted down
to the loch-side, stillness came over the place. We talked in whispers,
sped about the walls on the tiptoes of our brogues, and peered
wonderingly down to the edge of the wood. Long we waited and wearily,
and by-and-by who came out high on the shoulder of Duntorvil but a band
of the enemy, marching in good order for the summit of that paramount
peak?

"I hope to God they have no large pieces with them yonder," said John;
"for they'll have a coign there to give us trouble if once they get