He then departed, having first saluted the Englishman
and Angus M’Aulay, who remained looking at each
other for some time in silence, and then burst out
into a fit of laughter.
“That fellow,” said Sir Miles Musgrave,
“is formed to go through the world.”
“I shall think so too,” said M’Aulay,
“if he can slip through M’Callum More’s
fingers as easily as he has done through ours.”
“Do you think,” said the Englishman, “that
the Marquis will not respect, in Captain Dalgetty’s
person, the laws of civilized war?”
“No more than I would respect a Lowland proclamation,”
said Angus M’Aulay.—“But come
along, it is time I were returning to my guests.”
. . . . In a rebellion,
When what’s not
meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen,
in a better hour,
Let what is meet be
said it must be meet,
And throw their power
i’ the dust.—Coriolanus.
In a small apartment, remote from the rest of the
guests assembled at the castle, Sir Duncan Campbell
was presented with every species of refreshment, and
respectfully attended by Lord Menteith, and by Allan
M’Aulay. His discourse with the latter turned
upon a sort of hunting campaign, in which they had
been engaged together against the Children of the
Mist, with whom the Knight of Ardenvohr, as well as
the M’Aulays, had a deadly and irreconcilable
feud. Sir Duncan, however, speedily endeavoured
to lead back the conversation to the subject of his
present errand to the castle of Darnlinvarach.
“It grieved him to the very heart,” he
said, “to see that friends and neighbours, who
should stand shoulder to shoulder, were likely to be
engaged hand to hand in a cause which so little concerned
them. What signifies it,” he said, “to
the Highland Chiefs, whether King or Parliament got
uppermost? Were it not better to let them settle
their own differences without interference, while
the Chiefs, in the meantime, took the opportunity
of establishing their own authority in a manner not
to be called in question hereafter by either King or
Parliament?” He reminded Allan M’Aulay
that the measures taken in the last reign to settle
the peace, as was alleged, of the Highlands, were in
fact levelled at the patriarchal power of the Chieftains;
and he mentioned the celebrated settlement of the
Fife Undertakers, as they were called, in the Lewis,
as part of a deliberate plan, formed to introduce
strangers among the Celtic tribes, to destroy by degrees
their ancient customs and mode of government, and
to despoil them of the inheritance of their fathers.
[In the reign of James VI., an attempt of rather an
extraordinary kind was made to civilize the extreme
northern part of the Hebridean Archipelago. That
monarch granted the property of the Island of Lewis,
as if it had been an unknown and savage country, to
a number of Lowland gentlemen, called undertakers,
