n Campbell company too?"

"The company is none of my seeking," said John Lorn, very short and
blunt "And we're like to have a good deal more of the same clan's
company than we want before long, for Argile and his clan to three times
your number are at Inverlochy. I have tramped a weary day to tell you
the tale, and I get but a spy's reception."

The tale went round the camp in the time a man would whistle an air. Up
came Montrose on the instant, and he was the first to give us a
civil look. But for him we had no doubt got a short quittance from
MacColkitto, who was for the tow gravatte on the spot Instead we
were put on parole when his lordship learned we had been Cavaliers of
fortune. The moon rose with every sign of storm, the mountains lay about
white to their foundations, and ardent winds belched from the glens, but
by mountain and glen Mac Donald determined to get round on the flank of
Argile.

CHAPTER XIX.--THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY.

The month of January, as our old Gaelic notion has it, borrows three
days from July for a bribe of three young lambs. Those three days we
call Faoilteaeh, and often they are very genial and cheerful days, with
a sun that in warmth is a sample of the mellow season at hand. But this
year, as my history has shown, we had no sign of a good _Faoilteach_,
and on the morning of the last day of January, when Alasdair MacDonald's
army set over the hills, it was wild, tempestuous weather. A wind rose
in the dawning and increased in vehemence as the day aged, and with it
came a storm of snow--the small bitter sifting snow that, encountered
on the hill, stings like the ant and drifts in monstrous and impassable
wreaths. Round about us yawned the glens, to me nameless, mysterious,
choked to the throat with snow-mist that flapped and shook like grey
rags. The fields were bleak and empty; the few houses that lay in
the melancholy plain were on no particularly friendly terms with
this convocation of Erse-men and wild kerns: they shut their doors
steadfastly on our doings, and gave us not even the compliment of
looking on at our strange manoeuvres. There was but one exception, in a
staunch and massive dwelling,--a manifest baron keep or stout domicile
of that nature, just on the border of the Meld in which the camp was
pitched: it was apparently in the charge of two old spinster sisters
whose men-folk were afield somewhere else, for they had shuttered
the windows, barricaded the gates, and eve