'You are a noble fellow,' exclaimed Fanny Clavering, patting his brawny shoulder with her pretty hand, while her fine eyes sparkled; 'I shall never—never forget you.'
'Miss Clavering,' said Sir Horace, coldly; 'you forget yourself.'
Then came the tossing of the caber—a tree which is cut short off by the roots, and must be balanced by a man in the palms of his hands, and which he must toss completely round in the air, so that it may fall endlong in a direct line from him. In this feat, none ever excelled a little tribe named the Mac Ellars, who for more than a thousand years had resided in Glen-tuirc; but about twelve months before this time, they had been expelled with great cruelty by Snaggs. Their huts were burned down, and several persons who were old and bedridden, were wounded—three mortally—by the soldiers from Fort Augustus. These had been ordered to fire through the thatched roofs to force the people out, after which the whole were driven at the bayonet's point to the sea-shore, where they were ironed and embarked on board the famous evicting ship, the Duchess, which awaited them at Isle Ornsay, to convey the whole tribe to the nearest port of the American coast; so, when the caber was carried to-day, the strong hands that were wont to toss it high aloft, amid the honest shouts that woke the rocky echoes of Ben Ora, were now assisting to clear the vast forests of that Far West, where the sun of the clans is sinking.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SEVEN BULLETS.
Now came the rifle-shooting, which deserves an entire chapter to itself. The first prize was no less than a hundred sovereigns; the second was fifty.
Laura Everingham and Fanny Clavering had constituted themselves the patronesses of this feat of skill; but though the purses, on the acquisition of which the whole energies of Callum and myself were devoted—in no spirit of vain-glory, as I have said, but goaded on by the spur of sheer adversity—was made up by them and their female friends; yet Fanny by her air and bearing, her energy, in short by the very noise she made, assumed the supreme direction of affairs; thus the gentler Laura, in her little white crape bonnet and lace shawl, seemed a mere appendage to her beautiful, brilliant, and 'Di Vernon' looking friend.
Fanny was a free and dashing girl, with whom you must have fallen in love, my bachelor friend, for she was one who made herself everywhere as much at home as the fly in your sugar-basin. She wore a broad hat and feather, which gave a piquancy to her fine eyes and expressive features. She had on a dark green riding-habit, with yellow gauntlets, and carried a gold-headed switch. She was a showy girl—the pet of the Household Brigade, and the counterpart of her brother the Guardsman, only a little more merry, and much more wilful. She was a good horsewoman, and rode hurdle-races and steeple-chases; a good hand at whist, rather a sharp stroke at billiards, and would deliberately sweep up the pool with the prettiest white hands in the world. She waltzed divinely, was considered glorious in a two-handed flirtation, or private theatricals, where she shone to admiration as 'Di Vernon,' or the 'Rough Diamond.' Fanny could make up a good book on the Oaks, and had always a shrewd guess as to the winner of the Derby; she had the Army List and the Peerage at her taper finger-ends, and knew all the last novels and music as if they had been her own composition. Once upon a time she was nearly riding herself for the Chester Cup; and those who peddled and punted at mere county races, she despised as heartily as if she belonged to the Hussars or the Oxford Blues. In short, Fanny knew everything from the Deluge to the deux-temps, and from the misfortunes in the Crimea to the mystery of crochet—moreover, a word in your ear, my dear reader, our charming friend had some thousand pounds per annum in her own right, and 'expectations' without end.
She had urged the more timid and retiring Laura to club their prize for the rifle-shooting; and now she appeared on the ground with a smart grooved rifle in her hands, to compete with all comers, on the part of herself and of the shrinking Laura, who had never laid her little hand upon a fire-arm in her life, and begged to be excused doing so now.
About thirty Highlanders, armed with rifles, crowded near her, but respectfully waited until Mr. Snaggs, whom she had requested to assist her, called over their names as they stood on the list, and to each as he stepped forward, the factor somewhat ostentatiously handed a—religious tract.