off and skurry along the shore;
we saw the lads of the Diarmaid tartan hewn down on the edge of the tide
till its waves ran red; but we were as helpless as the rush that waved
at our feet. Between us and our friends lay the enemy and our parole--I
daresay our parole was forgotten in that terrible hour.

John M'Iver laid him down on the _tulaich_ and clawed with his nails the
stunted grass that in wind-blown patches came through the snow. None
of my words made any difference on his anguish. I was piping to the
surrender of sorrow, nigh mad myself.

The horses of Ogilvie--who himself fell in the brulzie--chased the
Lowlanders along the side of Loch Linnhe, and so few of the flying had
the tartan that we had no great interest in them, till we saw six men
with their plaid-ing cast run unobserved up the plain, wade waist-deep
through the Nevis, and come somewhat in our direction. We went down to
join them, and ran hard and fast and came on them at a place called the
Rhu at the water of Kiachnish.

CHAPTER XXI.--SEVEN BROKEN MEN.

At last there was but one horseman in chase of the six men who were
fleeing without a look behind them--a frenzied blackavised trooper on
a short-legged garron he rode most clumsily, with arms that swung like
wings from the shoulders, his boots keeping time to the canter with
grotesque knockings against the gaunt and sweating flanks of his
starven animal. He rode with a shout, and he rode with a fool's want of
calculation, for he had left all support behind him and might readily
enough have been cut off by any judicious enemy in the rear. Before we
could hurry down to join the fugitives they observed for themselves that
the pursuit had declined to this solitary person, so up they drew (all
but one of them), with dirks or sgians out to give him his welcome. And
yet the dragoon put no check on his horse. The beast, in a terror at the
din of the battle, was indifferent to the rein of its master, whom it
bore with thudding hooves to a front that must certainly have appalled
him. He was a person of some pluck, or perhaps the drunkenness of terror
lent him the illusion of valour; at least, when he found a bloody end
inevitable he made the best of the occasion. Into the heaving sides of
the brute he drove desperate spurs, anew he shouted a scurrilous name
at Clan Campbell, then fired his pistol as he fell upon the enemy.
The _dag_ failed of its purpose, but the breast of the horse struck an
elde