felt ashamed of his double-dealing. "That's a bonny bairn," he
continued, lifting one of the children in his arms; "the rogue has your
own good looks in every lineament."

"Aye, aye," said the woman, drily, spreading her blankets; "I would need
no sight of tartan to guess your clan, master. Your flattery goes wrong
this time, for by ill-luck you have the only bairn that does not belong
to me of all the brood."

"Now that I look closer," he laughed, "I see a difference; but I'll take
back no jot of my compliment to yourself."

"I was caught yonder," said he to me a little later in a whisper in
English, as we lay down in our corner. "A man of my ordinary acuteness
should have seen that the brat was the only unspoiled member of all the
flock."

We slept, it might be a couple of hours, and wakened together at the
sound of a man's voice speaking with the woman outside the door. Up we
sat, and John damned the woman for her treachery.

"Wait a bit," I said. "I would charge her with no treachery till I had
good proofs for it I'm mistaken if your lie about your wife and weans
has not left her a more honest spirit towards us."

The man outside was talking in a shrill, high voice, and the woman in a
softer voice was making excuses for not asking him to go in. One of her
little ones was ill of a fever, she said, and sleeping, and her house,
too, was in confusion, and could she hand him out something to eat?

"A poor place Badenoch nowadays!" said the man, petulantly. "I've seen
the day a bard would be free of the best and an honour to have by any
one's fire. But out with the bannocks and I'll be going. I must be at
Kilcumin with as much speed as my legs will lend me."

He got his bannocks and he went, and we lay back a while on our bedding
and pretended to have heard none of the incident It was a pleasant
feature of the good woman's character that she said never a word of her
tactics in our interest.

"So you did not bring in your gentlemen?" said John, as we were
preparing to go. "I was half afraid some one might find his way
unbidden, and then it was all bye with two poor soldiers of fortune."

"John MacDonald the bard, John Lorn, as we call him, went bye a while
ago," she answered simply, "on his way to the clan at Kilcumin."

"I have never seen the bard yet that did not demand his bardic right to
kail-pot and spoon at every passing door."

"This one was in a hurry," said the woman, reddening a little in
confusion.