f wind-blown pines,
with their roots clean out of the earth, and raised up, so that coming
together at two edges they made two sides of a triangle. To add to its
efficiency as a hiding-place, some young firs grew at the open third
side of the triangle.

In this confined little space (secure enough from any hurried search)
there was still a _greasach_ as we call it, the ember of a fire that the
girl had kindled with a spark from a flint the night before, to warm the
child, and she had kept it at the lowest extremity short of letting
it die out altogether, lest it should reveal her whereabouts to any
searchers in the wood.

We told her our story and she told us hers. She had fled on the morning
of the attack, in the direction of the castle, but found her way cut off
by a wing of the enemy, a number of whom chased her as she ran with the
child up the river-side to the Cairnbaan, where she eluded her pursuers
among his lordship's shrubberies, and discovered a road to the wood. For
a week she found shelter and food in a cow-herd's abandoned bothy among
the alders of Tarra-dubh; then hunger sent her travelling again, and she
reached Leacainn Mhor, where she shared the cotter's house with a widow
woman who went out to the burn with a kail-pot and returned no more, for
the tardy bullet found her. The murderers were ransacking the house
when Betty and the child were escaping through the byre. This place of
concealment in Strongara she sought by the advice of a Glencoe man well
up in years, who came on her suddenly, and, touched by her predicament,
told her he and his friends had so well beaten that place, it was likely
to escape further search.

"And so I am here with my charge," said the girl, affecting a gaiety
it were hard for her to feel "I could be almost happy and content, if
I were assured my father and mother were safe, and the rest of my
kinsfolk."

"There's but one of them in all the countryside," I said. "Young
MacLachlan, and he's on Dunchuach."

To my critical scanning her cheek gave no flag.

"Oh, my cousin!" she said. "I am pleased that he is safe, though I would
sooner hear he was in Cowal than in Campbell country."

"He's honoured in your interest, madam," I could not refrain from
saying, my attempt at raillery I fear a rather forlorn one.

She flushed at this, but said never a word, only biting her nether lip
and fondling the child.

I think we put together a cautious little fire and cooked some oats