ll its smoke told of occupation;
the castle frowned as of old, and over all rose Dunchuach.

"O Dunchuach! Dunchuach!" cried M'Iver, in an ecstasy, spreading out
his arms, and I thought of the old war-worn Greeks who came with weary
marches to their native seas.

"Dunchuach! Dunchuach!" he said; "far have I wandered, and many a town
I've seen, and many a prospect that was fine, and I have made songs
to maids and mountains, and foreign castles too, but never a verse to
Dunchuach. I do not know the words, but at my heart is lilting the very
tune, and the spirit of it is here at my breast."

Then the apple rose in his throat, and he turned him round about that I
might not guess the tear was at his eye.

"Tuts," said I, broken, "'tis at my own; I feel like a girl."

"Just a tickling at the pap o' the hass," he said in English; and then
we both laughed.

It was the afternoon when we got into the town. The street was in the
great confusion of a fair-day, crowded with burgesses and landward
tenants, men and women from all parts of the countryside still on
their way back from flight, or gathered for news of Inverlochy from
the survivors, of whom we were the last to arrive. Tradesmen from the
Lowlands were busy fitting shops and houses with doors and windows, or
filling up the gaps made by fire in the long lands, for MacCailein's
first thought on his return from Edinburgh had been the comfort of the
common people. Seamen clamoured at the quay, loud-spoken mariners from
the ports of Clyde and Leven and their busses tugged at anchor in the
upper bay or sat shoulder to shoulder in a friendly congregation under
the breast-wall, laden to the beams with merchandise and provender
for this hungry country. If Inneraora had been keening for the lost of
Inverlochy, it had got over it; at least we found no public lamentation
such as made our traverse on Lochow-side so dreary. Rather was there
something eager and rapt about the comportment of the people. They
talked little of what was over and bye with, except to curse our Lowland
troops, whose unacquaintance with native war had lost us Inverlochy.
The women went about their business, red-eyed, wan, silent, for the most
part; the men mortgaged the future, and drowned care in debauchery in
the alehouses. A town all out of its ordinary, tapsilteerie. Walking in
it, I was beat to imagine clearly what it had been like in its placid
day of peace. I could never think of it as ever again to b