insolents in camp or castle, yet it kept the poorest clansmen's head
up before the highest chief. But there was, even in Baile Inneraora,
sinking in the servile ways of the incomer, something too of honest
worship in the deportment of the people. It was sure enough in the
manner of an old woman with a face peat-tanned to crinkled leather who
ran out of the Vennel or lane, and, bending to the Marquis his lace
wrist-bands, kissed them as I've seen Papists do the holy duds in Notre
Dame and Bruges Kirk.

This display before me, something of a stranger, a little displeased
Gillesbeg Gruamach. "Tut, tut!" he cried in Gaelic to the _cailltach_,
"thou art a foolish old woman!"

"God keep thee, MacCailein!" said she; "thy daddy put his hand on my
head like a son when he came back from his banishment in Spain, and I
keened over thy mother dear when she died. The hair of Peggy Bheg's head
is thy door-mat, and her son's blood is thy will for a foot-bath."

"Savage old harridan!" cried the Marquis, jerking away; but I could see
he was not now unpleased altogether that a man new from the wide world
and its ways should behold how much he was thought of by his people.

He put his hands in a friendly way on the shoulders of us on either hand
of him, and brought us up a bit round turn, facing him at a stand-still
opposite the door of the English kirk. To this day I mind well the
rumour of the sea that came round the corner.

"I have a very particular business with both you gentlemen," he said.
"My friend here, M'Iver, has come hot-foot to tell me of a rumour that
a body of Irish banditry under Alasdair MacDonald, the MacColkitto as
we call him, has landed somewhere about Kinlochaline or Knoydart This
portends damnably, if I, an elder ordained of this kirk, may say so.
We have enough to do with the Athole gentry and others nearer home. It
means that I must on with plate and falchion again, and out on the weary
road for war I have little stomach for, to tell the truth."

"You're able for the best of them, MacCailein," cried John Splendid, in
a hot admiration. "For a scholar you have as good judgment on the field
and as gallant a seat on the saddle as any man ever I saw in haberschone
and morion. With your schooling I could go round the world conquering."

"Ah! flatterer, flatterer! Ye have all the guile of the tongue our
enemies give Clan Campbell credit for, and that I wish I had a little
more of. Still and on, it's no time for f