a barn blaze in Appin or Glencoe but I minded on
our own black barns in Shira Glen; nor a beast slashed at the sinew with
a wanton knife, but I thought of Moira, the dappled one that was the
pride of my mother's byre, made into hasty collops for a Stewart meal.
Through this remoter Lorn I went, less conscious of cruelty than when I
plied fire and sword with legitimate men of war, for ever in my mind
was the picture of real Argile, scorched to the vitals with the invading
flame, and a burgh town I cherished reft of its people, and a girl with
a child at her neck flying and sobbing among the hills.

Montrose and MacColkitto were far before us, marching up the Great Glen.
They had with them the pick of the clans, so we lived, as it were, at
free quarters, and made up for weeks of short fare by a time of high
feeding.

Over Etive and through the Benderloch, and through Appin and even up
to Glencoe, by some strange spasm of physique--for she was frail and
famished--the barefooted old _cailleach_ of Carnus came after us, a bird
of battle, croaking in a horrible merriment over our operations. The
Dark Dame we called her. She would dance round the butchery of the
fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that
she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do
such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a
vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she
added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way,
whose larders in our masculine ignorance we had overlooked.

"I would give thee the choicest of the world," she would say. "What is
too good for my heroes, O heroes of the myrtle-badge?"

"Sit down and pick," John Splendid bade her once, putting a roysterer's
playful arm round her waist, and drawing her to the fire where a dinner
stewed.

Up she threw her claws, and her teeth were at his neck with a weasel's
instinct But she drew back at a gleam of reason.

"Oh, darling, darling," she cried, patting him with her foul hands,
"did I not fancy for the moment thou wert of the spoilers of my home and
honour--thou, the fleet foot, the avenger, the gentleman with an account
to pay--on thee this mother's blessing, for thee this widow's prayers!"

M'Iver was more put about at her friendliness than at her ferocity, as
he shook his plaiding to order and fell back from her worship.

"I've seldom seen a more wicked cat," said he; "go