aybe came round a bend of the road, my comrade
stopped in his pace and added with what in another I might have thought
a sob--"I've trudged the world; I have learned many bravadoes, so that
my heart never stirred much to the mere trick of an instrument but one,
and the _piob mhor_ conquers me. What is it, Colin, that's in us, rich
and poor, yon rude cane-reeds speak so human and friendly to?"

"Tis the Gaelic," I said, cheered myself by the air. "Never a roar of
the drone or a sob of the chanter but's in the Gaelic tongue."

"Maybe," said he, "maybe: I've heard the scholars like yourself say the
sheepskin and the drones were Roman--that or Spanish, it's all one to
me. I heard them at Boitzenburg when we gave the butt of the gun to
Tilly's _soldadoes_, they played us into Holstein, and when the ditch
of Stralsund was choked with the tartan of Mackay, and our lads were
falling like corn before the hook, a Reay piper stood valiantly in front
and played a salute. Then and now it's the pipes, my darling!"

"I would as lief have them in a gayer strain. My fondest memories are of
reels I've danced to their playing," I said, and by now we were walking
down the glen.

"And of one reel you danced," said he, quizzingly, "not more than two
months gone in a town that was called Inneraora?"

"Two months!" I cried,--"two months! I could have sworn offhand we have
been wandering in Lorn and Badenoch for as many years!"

Such spirit did my native pipes, played by a clansman, put in me that my
weariness much abated, and we made great progress down the glen, so that
before the tune had ceased we were on the back of Montrose's men as they
crept on quietly in the night.

The piper stopped suddenly enough when some shots rang out,--an exchange
of compliments between our pickets ahead and some wandering scouts of
Argile.

And yonder below us, Loch Linnhe and Locheil glanced in the moonlight,
and the strong towers of Inverlochy sat like a scowl on the fringe of
the wave!

CHAPTER XX.--INVERLOCHY.

When we came up with the main body of MacDonald's army, the country, as
I say, was shining in the light of the moon, with only a camp-fire down
in the field beside the castle to show in all the white world a sign of
human life. We had got the Campbells in the rear, but they never knew
it A few of their scouts came out across the fields and challenged our
pickets; there was an exchange of musketry, but, as we found again,
we were tho