hope we surrendered when a
lad came from Camus with a tale of two old men, who were weavers there,
and a woman, nailed into their huts and burned to death.

Had Inneraora been a walled town, impregnable, say, as a simple Swabian
village with a few sconces and redoubts, and a few pieces of cannon, we
old soldiers would have counselled the holding of it against all comers;
but it was innocently open to the world, its back windows looking into
the fields, its through-going wynds and closes leading frankly to the
highway.

A high and sounding wind had risen from the south, the sea got in a
tumult, the ice-blocks ran like sheep before it to the Gearran bay and
the loch-head. I thought afterwards it must be God's providence that
opened up for us so suddenly a way of flight from this lamentable trap,
by the open water now free from shore to shore in front of the town.
Generalling the community as if he was a marshal of brigade, John
Splendid showed me the first of his manly quality in his preparation
for the removal of the women and children. He bade the men run out
the fishing smacks, the wherries and skiffs, at the Cadger's Quay, and
moving about that frantic people, he disposed them in their several
places on the crafts that were to carry them over the three-mile ferry
to Cowal. A man born to enterprise and guidance, certes! I never saw his
equal. He had the happy word for all, the magic hint of hope, a sober
merriment when needed, sometimes a little raillery and laughing,
sometimes (with the old) a farewell in the ear. Even the better
gentry, Sir Donald and the rest, took a second place in the management,
beholding in this poor gentleman the human heart that at a pinch is
better than authority in a gold-braided coat.

By noon we had every bairn and woman (but for one woman I'll mention) on
their way from the shore, poor dears! tossing on the turbulent sea, the
women weeping bitterly for the husbands and sons they left, for of men
there went with them but the oldsters, able to guide a boat, but poorly
equipped for battling with Irish banditty. And my father was among
them, in the kind hands of his _sgaiag_ and kinswomen, but in a vague
indifference of grief.

A curious accident, that in the grace of God made the greatest
difference on my after-life, left among them that found no place in the
boats the daughter of Provost Brown. She had made every preparation to
go with her father and mother, and had her foot on the beam