ught to be some of the Lochaber hunters unworthy of serious
engagement.

For the second time in so many days we tasted food, a handful of meal to
the quaich of water--no more and no less; and James Grahame, Marquis of
Montrose, supped his brose like the rest of us, with the knife from his
belt doing the office of a horn-spoon.

Some hours after us came up the Camerons, who had fallen behind, but
fresher and more eager for fighting than our own company, for they had
fallen on a herd of roe on the slope of Sgur an Iolair, and had supped
savagely on the warm raw flesh.

"You might have brought us a gigot off your take," Sir Alasdair said to
the leader of them, Dol Ruadh. He was a short-tempered man of no great
manners, and he only grunted his response.

"They may well call you Camerons of the soft mouth," said Alasdair,
angrily, "that would treat your comrades so."

"You left us to carry our own men," said the chief, shortly; "we left
you to find your own deer."

We were perhaps the only ones who slept at the mouth of Glen Nevis that
woeful night, and we slept because, as my comrade said, "What cannot be
mended may be well slept on; it's an ease to the heart." And the counsel
was so wise and our weariness so acute, that we lay on the bare ground
till we were roused to the call of a trumpet.

It was St Bridget's Day, and Sunday morning. A myriad bens around
gave mists, as smoke from a censer, to the day. The Athole pipers
high-breastedly strutted with a vain port up and down their lines and
played incessantly. Alasdair laid out the clans with amazing skill,
as M'Iver and I were bound to confess to ourselves,--the horse (with
Montrose himself on his charger) in the centre, the men of Clanranald,
Keppoch, Locheil, Glengarry, and Maclean, and the Stewarts of Appin
behind. MacDonald and O'Kyan led the Irish on the wings.

In the plain we could see Argile's forces in a somewhat similar order,
with the tartan as it should be in the midst of the bataille and the
Lowland levies on the flanks. Over the centre waved the black galley of
Lorne on a gold standard.

I expressed some doubt about the steadfastness of the Lowlanders, and
M'Iver was in sad agreement with me.

"I said it in Glenaora when we left," said he, "and I say it again.
They would be fairly good stuff against foreign troops; but they have no
suspicion of the character of Gaelic war. I'm sore feared they'll prove
a poor reed to lean on. Why, in heaven's name