ounter.

"Gentlemen," cried John, picking off a man with the first shot from a
silver-butted _dag_ he pulled out of his waist-belt at the onset, "and
with your leave, Sir Donald (trusting you to put pluck in these Low
Country shopkeepers), it's Inneraora or Ifrinn for us this time. Give
them cold steel, and never an inch of arm-room for their bills!"

Forgotten were the boats, behind lay all our loves and fortunes--was
ever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairy
scamps the Irish--never German boor so inelegant--but venomous in their
courage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Our
lads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with the dirk and
sword.

"Montrose! Montrose!" cried the enemy, even when the blood glucked at
the thrapple, and they twisted to the pain of the knife.

"A papist dog!" cried Splendid, hard at it on my right, for once a
zealous Protestant, and he was whisking around him his broadsword like a
hazel wand, facing half-a-dozen Lochaber-axes. "Cruachan, Cruachan!" he
sang. And we cried the old slogan but once, for time pressed and wind
was dear.

Sitting cosy in taverns with friends long after, listening to men
singing in the cheery way of taverns the ditty that the Leckan bard made
upon this little spulzie, I could weep and laugh in turns at minding of
yon winter's day. In the hot stress of it I felt but the ardour that's
in all who wear tartan--less a hatred of the men I thrust and slashed
at with Sir Claymore than a zest in the busy traffic, and something of
a pride (God help me!) in the pretty way my blade dirled on the ham-pans
of the rascals. There was one trick of the sword I had learned off an
old sergeant of pikes in Macka's Scots, in a leisure afternoon in camp,
that I knew was alien to every man who used the targe in home battles,
and it served me like a Mull wife's charm. They might be sturdy, the
dogs, valorous too, for there's no denying the truth, and they were
gleg, gleg with the target in fending, but, man, I found them mighty
simple to the feint and lunge of Alasdair Mor!

Listening, as I say, to a song in a tavern, I'm sad for the stout
fellows of our tartan who fell that day, and still I could laugh gaily
at the amaze of the ragged corps who found gentlemen before them. They
pricked at us, for all their natural ferocity, with something like
apology for marring our fine clothes; and when the end came, and we were
driven