r and anon would they show
blanched faces as the tumult of our preparation disturbed them, and they
came to the door and cunningly pulled it open a little and looked out
on this warlike array. If a soldier made a step in their direction they
fled inside with terror, and their cries rang in the interior.

Those two spinsters--very white, very thin clad for a morn so rigorous,
and with a trepidation writ on every feature--were all that saw us off
on our march to the south-east They came out and stood hand in hand on
the door-stoop, and I have little doubt the honest bodies thanked the
God of Israel that the spoilers were departed furth their neighbourhood.

The country we now plunged into, as may be guessed, was a _terra
incognita_ to me. Beyond that it was Bade-noch and an unhealthy clime
for all that wear the Campbell tartan, I could guess no more. It
was after these little wars were over I discovered the names of the
localities--the glens, mounts, passes, streams, and drove-roads--over
which we passed in a march that Gustavus never faced the like of.

With good judgment enough our captors put a small advance-guard ahead,
a score of Airlie's troopers, swanky blaspheming persons, whose horses
pranced very gaily up Glen Tarf, guided by John Lom. M'Iver and I
walked together with the main body, quite free and unfettered, sometimes
talking with affability to our captors. The Irish were in good humour;
they cracked jokes with us in their peculiar Gaelic that at first is
ill for a decent Gael of Albion to follow, if uttered rapidly, but soon
becomes as familiar as the less foreign language of the Athole men,
whose tongue we Argiles find some strange conceits in. If the Irish
were affable, the men of our own side of the ocean were most singularly
morose--small wonder, perhaps, for we have little reason to love each
other. Sour dogs! they gloomed at us under their bonnets and swore in
their beards. I have no doubt but for their gentry there had been dirks
in us before we reached Corryarick.

It was with the repartee of the Irish and the scowls of the Gaels
we went up the rough valley of the Tarf, where the wind moaned most
drearily and drove the thin fine snow like a smoke of burning heather.
But when we got to the pass of Corryarick our trials began, and then
such spirit did M'Iver put in the struggle with the task before us,
such snatches of song, sharp saying and old story,--such commradary as
it might be named,--that we