'Stay,' said M'Rae, 'I was once. I was tried for a traitor—tried for a crime in France called "Treason," that I was as guiltless of as an unborn babe—and condemned.'
'And what did you do?'
'Some one on the ground handed me a cigar, and—I lit it.
'Nay, my dear friends, I have lost my case here. Indeed, I never, it would seem, had one.
'M'Crimman,' he continued, shaking me by the hand, 'Coila is yours.'
'Strathtoul,' I answered, 'is our blood feud at an end?'
'It is,' was the answer; and once again hand met hand across the table.
Need I tell of the home-coming of the M'Crimmans of Coila? Of the clansmen who met us in the glen and marched along with us? Of the cheering strains of music that re-echoed from every rock? Of the flags that fluttered over and around our Castle Coila? Of the bonfires that blazed that night on every hill, and cast their lurid light across the darkling lake? Or of the tears my mother shed when, looking round the tartan drawing-room, the cosiest in all the castle, she thought of father, dead and gone? No, for some things are better left to the reader's imagination.