more was scarce likely to undertake the conveying back of seven
fugitives of the clan that had come so high-handedly through their
neighbourhood four days ago. On this side there was not a boat in sight;
indeed there was not a vestige on any side of human tenancy. Glencoe had
taken with him every man who could carry a pike, not to our disadvantage
perhaps, for it left the less danger of any strong attack.

On the side of the loch, when we emerged from the hills, there was a
cluster of whin-bushes spread out upon a machar of land that in a less
rigorous season of the year, by the feel of the shoe-sole, must be
velvet-piled with salty grass. It lay in the clear, grey forenoon like
a garden of fairydom to the view--the whin-bushes at a distant glance
floating on billows of snow, touched at their lee by a cheering green,
hung to the windward with the silver of the snow, and some of them even
prinked off with the gold flower that gives rise to the proverb about
kissing being out of fashion when the whin wants bloom. To come on this
silent, peaceful, magic territory, fresh out of the turmoil of a battle,
was to be in a region haunted, in the borderland of morning dreams,
where care is a vague and far-off memory, and the elements study our
desires. The lake spread out before us without a ripple, its selvedge at
the shore repeating the picture on the brae. I looked on it with a mind
peculiarly calm, rejoicing in its aspect Oh, love and the coming years,
thought I, let them be here or somewhere like it--not among the savage
of the hills, fighting, plotting, contriving; not among snow-swept
mounts and crying and wailing brooks, but by the sedate and tranquil
sea in calm weather. As we walked, my friends with furtive looks to this
side and yon, down to the shore, I kept my face to the hills of real
Argile, and my heart was full of love. I got that glimpse that comes to
most of us (had we the wit to comprehend it) of the future of my life.
I beheld in a wave of the emotion the picture of my coming years,
going down from day to day very unadventurous and calm, spent in some
peaceful valley by a lake, sitting at no rich-laden board but at bien
and happy viands with some neighbour heart A little bird of hope fluted
within me, so that I knew that if every clan in this countryside was
arraigned against me, I had the breastplate of fate on my breast "I
shall not die in this unfriendly country," I promised myself. "There
may be terror, and