sure about our young gentleman
yonder in the bed. He's far too sharp in the eye and black in the
temper, and too much of Clan Donallachd generally, to be trusted with
the lives and liberties of seven gentlemen of a tartan he must know
unfriendly to Glencoe. I wish I saw his legs that I might guess the
length of him, or had had the wit to ask his mother, his age, for either
would be a clue to his chance of carrying the tale against us down the
valley there. He seemed tremendous sharp and wicked lying yonder looking
at us, and I was in a sweat all night for fear he would be out and tell
on us. But so far he's under the same roof as ourselves."

Sonachan and the baron-bailie quarrelled away about some point of
pedigree as they sat, a towsy, unkempt pair, in a dusty corner of the
byre, with beards of a most scraggy nature grown upon their chins.
Their uncouthness gave a scruple of foppishness to M'I ver, and sent him
seeking a razor in the widow's house. He found the late husband's, and
shaved himself trimly, while Stewart played lackey again to the rest of
us, taking out a breakfast the housewife was in the humour to force on
us. He had completed his scraping, and was cracking away very freely
with the woman, who was baking some bannocks on the stone, with sleeves
rolled up from arms that were rounded and white. They talked of the
husband (the one topic of new widowhood), a man, it appeared, of a
thousand parts, a favourite with all, and yet, as she said, "When it
came to the black end they left me to dress him for the grave, and a
stranger had to bury him."

M'Iver, looking fresh and spruce after his cleansing, though his eyes
were small for want of sleep, aroused at once to an interest in the
cause of this unneighbourliness.

The woman stopped her occupation with a sudden start and flared crimson.

"I thought you knew," said she, stammering, turning a rolling-pin in her
hand--"I thought you knew; and then how could you?... I maybe should
have mentioned it,... but,... but could I turn you from my door in the
night-time and hunger?"

M'Iver whistled softly to himself, and looked at me where I stood in the
byre-door.

"Tuts," said he, at last turning with a smile to the woman, as if she
could see him; "what does a bit difference with Lowland law make after
all? I'll tell you this, mistress, between us,--I have a name myself
for private foray, and it's perhaps not the first time I have earned
the justification of the