at the arms and shoulders,
bent a little at the head, affronted for the first time with the full
shame of our disaster. All my bright portents of the future seemed,
as they flashed again before me, muddy in the hue, an unfaithful man's
remembrance of his sins when they come before him at the bedside of
his wife; the evasions of my friends revealed themselves what they were
indeed, the shutting of the eyes against shame.

The woman's meaning. Master Gordon could only guess at, and he faced her
composedly.

"You are far off your road," he said to her mildly, but she paid him no
heed.

"You have a bad tongue, mother," said M'Iver.

She turned and spat on his vest, and on him anew she poured her
condemnation.

"_You_, indeed, the gentleman with an account to pay, the hero, the
avenger! I wish my teeth had found your neck at the head of Aora Glen."
She stood in the half-night, foaming over with hate and evil words, her
taunts stinging like asps.

"Take off the tartan, ladies!" she screamed; "off with men's apparel and
on with the short-gown."

Her cries rang so over the land that she was a danger bruiting our
presence to the whole neighbourhood, and it was in a common panic we ran
with one accord from her in the direction of the loch-head. The man with
the want took up the rear, whimpering as he ran, feeling again, it might
be, a child fleeing from maternal chastisement: the rest of us went
silently, all but Stewart, who was a cocky little man with a large
bonnet pulled down on the back of his head like a morion, to hide the
absence of ears that had been cut off by the law for some of his
Appin adventures. He was a person who never saw in most of a day's
transactions aught but the humour of them, and as we ran from this
shrieking beldame of Camus, he was choking with laughter at the ploy.

"Royal's my race," said he at the first ease to our running--"Royal's
my race, and I never thought to run twice in one day from an enemy. Stop
your greeting, Callum, and not be vexing our friends the gentlemen."

"What a fury!" said Master Gordon. "And that's the lady of omens! What
about her blessing now?"

"Ay, and what about her prophecies?" asked M'Iver, sharply. "She was not
so far wrong, I'm thinking, about the risks of Inverlochy; the heather's
above the gall indeed."

"But at any rate," said I, "MacCailein's head is not on a pike."

"You must be always on the old key," cried M'Iver, angrily. "Oh man,
man, but you'r