“He’s fechtin’ the Macleans noo,”
cried out one of the men, who had some English, and
the others chattered vigorously for a minute in their
own Gaelic.
The candle was now guttering on the window-ledge.
These glories over, Donald came hard up against the
end of them all—the Chief dead at his feet,
slain by his own hand. For a time he faltered,
playing only in little, melancholy snatches.
Then he got surer, and the music began to come in
blasts. He was seeing his way, learning what it
all meant to him and the Maclachlans. Weird mun
hae way. Destiny must work itself out. We
children of a day are helpless before it.
The flame fell to a golden bead as the music grew
in strength and purpose. There was a burst of
light, a peal of triumph, and the music and the flame
went out together.
Across the road I raced, threw open the door, and
rushed in. Everything was dark and still.
“Donald!” I called passionately.
There was no reply. I crept on tip-toe to the
fire and kicked the embers into a flame.
Donald was lying dead across the dead body of his
Chief, his dirk buried to the hilt in his own heart.
* * * *
*
At daybreak we buried them side by side in one grave
on the top of Shap, their feet pointing northward
to their own mountains. When the last clod had
been replaced, and a great boulder reverently carried
up to mark the spot, I turned, covered my head, and
prepared to go, but the men stood on. I looked
back. They were loath to go. Something that
should be done, had been left undone.
I divined what they had in mind, turned back, bared
my head as they uncovered, and repeated the Lord’s
Prayer aloud.
I am thankful to this day to those men whom fools
and bigots call savages. They taught me to pray
again.
“Man Captain,” said the one who had English,
as we walked away in a body, “ye wad mak’
a gran’ meenister.”
I could not withhold a smile, but before I could reply
there was a scattered rattle of shots from the dip.
Looking around, I saw a body of enemy horse on the
lower hill across the valley to my left.
We were overtaken. We should have to fight.
MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT
On the tenth day of my captivity, hope glimmered for
the first time. When a man has been penned up
in a dull room for ten days, with half-a-hundred-weight
of rusty iron shackling his wrists and ankles, with
poor food, and little of it at that, to eat, he can
extract comfort out of a trifle.
In my case the trifle was a smile, her first smile
in ten days. So far she had been as sulky as
she was shapeless, bringing me my poor meals either
without saying a word or, at best, snapping me up and
saying that I got far better treatment than a rebel
deserved.
She never told me her name, and I never learned it
from any other source, so ‘she’ she must
remain for me and my tale. She was perhaps thirty,
perhaps five feet high, the shape of a black pudding,
with stony, rather than ugly, features, and cruel,
cat-like eyes. I hated her handsomely till she
smiled at me.
