Moreover of late, the white stag had been frequently seen, and had even ventured to approach the lights in our cottage windows.
This animal, which the most expert of our foresters had failed to slay, was a tall, powerful, and gigantic stag, with antlers of remarkable size and beauty—royal antlers—i.e. having three points on each horn. These proud appendages it never cast; at least none had ever been found. According to the unvarying story of the hunters, stalkers, and keepers, it was known to have been in existence for more than two hundred and fifty years; for Lachlan Mohr's father, Torquil Mac Innon, who was slain by an arrow at the battle of Benrinnes (excuse this antiquarianism, good reader, but your Welshmen, Celts and Irishmen, are full of such old memories), wounded it in the right ear, the half of which he shot away. Thereafter a fleet and fierce, but stately white stag, minus an ear, had roved, and was now affirmed to be roving, in the woods of Glen Ora.
If this was indeed the same that Torquil covered with his long Spanish arquebus, it must have rivalled those of Juvenal, or the hawks of Ælian, which lived for seven hundred years. Be this as it may, if on the shores of Lochtreig there was a white stag which never died, why should there not be another on the shores of Loch Ora? this was deemed unanswerable.
The swift white stag which now haunted the woods of the Mac Innons was certainly (as I had often seen by my telescope) minus the ear which tradition alleged old Torquil shot away; and this miraculous animal was affirmed to be the same which had passed the tent of Lachlan in the night before he was slain at Worcester, and which appeared before the calamities of Culloden. It had been visible often of late, and the poor unlettered Gael of the glen spoke of it in whispers one to another as a certain warning of the total ruin about to overtake them.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE EVICTION.
Whispering of these things, the men of the glen recrossed the mountains, but slowly and silently, for the voice of the pipe was heard no more on the gloomy heath; the boom of the climbing waves had died away on the distant beach, and evening was reddening the dun heathy slopes of the Ben when we drew near our home, and a cry of alarm burst from those who were in front of our funeral party. Large columns of smoke were seen to ascend from the hollow, and to curl in the clear air between us and the sky.
A chill came over the hearts of those who accompanied me. As for myself, I deemed, as I have said, that misfortune had shot the sharpest shafts at me, and now that I had nothing more in this world to care for, or to fear; but yet I felt a sore pang, when, on arriving at a gorge of the hills, rightly named Gar-choine, or The Place of Lamentation, for there the Campbells had once defeated the Mac Innons, we came in sight of the beautiful natural amphitheatre of Glen Ora, and saw thirty columns of smoke ascending from as many cottages, and uniting in one broad and heavy cloud of vapour, that rolled like mist along the mountain sides. On the slope of the hill were clustered a crowd of women and children, screaming and lamenting, while at the far extremity of the glen, where the narrow and winding road that led to Inverness dipped down towards the Caledonian Canal, we perceived a train of carts laden with furniture—the miserable household gear of our poor cotters; while the bayonets of a party of soldiers who escorted it—like a Spanish treasure or a Roman triumph—flashed a farewell ray in the setting sun, for resistance had been anticipated by Mr. Ephraim Snaggs; and thus he had borrowed an unwilling party from the detachment which usually garrisons the secluded barrack at Fort William.
The glensmen paused on the brow of the hill which overlooked their desecrated homes, and their voices rose with their clenched hands in one heavy and terrible imprecation; then with a shout they rushed down towards their wives and little ones, where a fresh scene of grief and sorrow awaited them; for now we were homeless, and 'landless, landless,' as ever were the race of Alpine in the last century.
Snaggs and the Sheriff had taken their measures well to evict the people, destroy their dwellings, and seize the furniture when no resistance could be offered; by choosing a time when all the men of the glen were absent at my mother's interment. Yet they took nearly as many precautions before venturing up the side of the Loch Ora, as if the clans were still in their most palmy days, when Lachlan Mohr feasted his brave men on the best beeves of the Campbells, and had five hundred targets, and as many claymores, hung in his hall.