ds, who had lost their bauchles of
brogues in the pass, started to a trot, and as the necessity was we had
to take up the pace too. Long lank hounds, they took the road like deer,
their limbs purple with the cold, their faces pinched to the aspect of
the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. "There are
Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat," the Major-General had said.
It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till
morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they
seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile
after mile below them.

But the Campbells were not in Glen Roy. They had been there and
skirmished for a day among their old foes and had gone back to
Lochyside, little thinking the fires they left in the Cameron barns at
morning would light the enemy on ere night The roofs still smouldered,
and a granary here and there on the sides of the valley sent up its
flames,--at once a spur to the spirit of the MacDonalds and a light to
their vengeance.

We halted for the night in Glen Spean, with Ben Chlin-aig looming high
to the south, and the river gulping in ice beside our camp. Around was
plenty of wood: we built fires and ate as poor a meal as the Highlands
ever granted in a bad year, though it was the first break in our fast
for the day. Gentle and simple, all fared alike--a whang of barley
bannock, a stirabout of oat-and-water, without salt, a quaich of spirits
from some kegs the troopers carried, that ran done before the half of
the corps had been served. Sentinels were posted, and we slept till the
morning pipe with sweet weariness in our bones.

Our second day was a repetition of the first. We left without even a
breakfast whenever the pipers set up the Cameron rant, "Sons of the
dogs, O come and get flesh!" The Campbells had spoiled the bridge with
a charge of powder, so we had to ford the river among the ice-lumps,
MacDonald showing the way with his kilt-tail about his waist A hunter
from a hamlet at the glen foot gladly left the smoking ruin of his
home and guided us on a drove-road into the wilds of Lochaber,
among mountains more stupendous than those we had left behind. These
relentless peaks were clad with blinding snow. The same choking drifts
that met us in Corryarick filled the passes between Stob Choire and
Easan Mor and Stob Ban, that cherish the snow in their crannies in the
depths of midsummer. Hunger was eating at