ted grass above us, and so certain seemed discovery that we had our
little black knives lying naked along our wrists.

The suspense parched me at the throat till I thought the rasping of
my tongue on the roof of my palate seemed like the scraping of a
heath-brush in a wooden churn. Unseen we were, we knew, but it was
patent that the man above us would be round in front of us at any
moment, and there we were to his plain eyesight! He was within three
yards of a steel death, even had he been Fin MacCoul; but the bank he
was standing on--or lying on, as we learned again--crumbled at the edge
and threw him among us in a different fashion from that we had looked
for.

My fingers were on his throat before I saw that we had for our visitor
none other than young MacLachlan.

He had his _sgian dubh_ almost at my stomach before our mutual
recognition saved the situation.

"You're a great stranger," said John Splendid, with a fine pretence at
more coolness than he felt, "and yet I thought Cowal side would be more
to your fancy than real Argile in this vexatious time."

"I wish to God I was on Cowal side now!" said the lad, ruefully. "At
this minute I wouldn't give a finger-length of the Loch Eck road for the
whole of this rich strath."

"I don't suppose you were forced over here," I commented.

"As well here in one way as another," he said "I suppose you are unaware
that Montrose and MacDonald have overrun the whole country. They have
sacked and burned the greater part of Cowal; they have gone down as far
as Knapdale. I could have been in safety with my own people (and the
bulk of your Inneraora people too) by going to Bute or Dunbarton, but I
could hardly do that with my kinsfolk still hereabouts in difficulties."

"Where, where?" I cried; "and who do you mean?"

He coughed, in a sort of confusion, I could see, and said he spoke of
the Provost and his family.

"But the Provost's gone, man!" said I, "and his family too."

"My cousin Betty is not gone among them," said he; "she's either in
the castle yonder--and I hope to God she is--or a prisoner to the
MacDonalds, or----"

"The Worst Curse on their tribe!" cried John Splendid, in a fervour.

Betty, it seemed, from a narrative that gave me a stound of anguish, had
never managed to join her father in the boats going over to Cowal the
day the MacDonalds attacked the town. Terror had seemingly sent her,
carrying the child, away behind the town; for though her father an