ing and the merchandise of the burgh town.

Now we had more opportunity of seeing those coarse savage forces than
on any occasion since they came to Argile, for the whole of them had
mustered at Inneraora after scouring the shire, and were on their march
out of the country to the north, fatter men and better put-on than when
they came. Among them were numerous tartans, either as kilt, trews, or
plaid; the bonnet was universal, except that some of the officers wore
steel helms, with a feather tip in them, and a clan badge of heather or
whin or moss, and the dry oak-stalk whimsy of Montrose. They had
come bare-footed and bare-buttocked (many of the privates of them) to
Campbell country; now, as I say, they were very snod, the scurviest of
the knaves set up with his hosen and brogues. Sturdy and black, or lank
and white-haired like the old sea-rovers, were they, with few among them
that ever felt the razor edge, so that the hair coated them to the very
eyeholes, and they looked like wolves. The pipers, of whom there were
three, were blasting lustily at Clanranald's march when they came up
the lower part of the Glen, according to M'Iver, who had heard them from
Meall Ruadh; but now the music was stopped, and all were intent upon
driving the cattle or watching their stolen gear', for doubtless among
such thieves there was not as much honour as would prevent one from
picking his neighbour's sporran.

We lay buried to the head in bracken that filled one side of the byre,
and keeked through the plenteous holes in the dry-stone wall at the
passing army. Long gaps were between the several clans, and the Irish
came last It seemed--they moved so slowly on account of the cattle--that
the end of the cavalcade was never to come; but at length came the
baggage and the staff of Montrose himself. Then I got my first look
of the man whose name stinks in the boar's snout to this day. A fellow
about thirty-three years of age, of mid height, hair of a very dark red,
hanging in a thick fell on the shoulders of the tartan jacket (for he
wore no armour), with a keen scrutinising eye, and his beard trimmed in
the foreign vein. He sat his horse with considerable ease and grace,
and was surrounded by half-a-dozen of the chiefs who had come under his
banner. The most notable-looking of these was Alasdair MacDonald, the
Major-General, an uncouth dog, but a better general, as I learned later,
than ever God or practice made James Grahame of Montrose;