"'Tis well," replied MacPherson, "for honour is more precious than refined gold."
The murmur of the multitude gradually subsided and died away, like a breeze that passes through a forest, leaving it silent and still, and then not a sound was heard but the baleful rolling of the muffled drums and the shrill but sweet cadence of the fifes. Then came the word, Halt! breaking sharply the silence of the crowded arena, and the hollow sound of the three empty coffins, as they were laid on the ground, at the distance of thirty paces from the firing party.
Now the elder brother patted the shoulder of the other, as he smiled and said—-
"Courage—a little time and all will be over—our spirits shall be with those of our brave forefathers."
"No coronach will be cried over us here, and no cairn will mark in other times where we sleep in the land of the stranger."
"Brother," replied the other, in the same forcible language, "we can well spare alike the coronach and the cairn, when to our kinsmen we can bequeath the dear task of avenging us!"
"If that bequest be valued, then we shall not die in vain."
Once again they all raised their bonnets and uttered a pious invocation; for now the sun was up, and in the Highland fashion—a fashion old as the days of Baal—they greeted him.
"Are you ready?" asked the provost-marshal.
"All ready," replied Farquhar; "moch-eirigh 'luain, a ni'n t-suain 'mhairt."*