The air rather than the words moved MacGillivray and his soldiers who listened. Their heads were bowed and their eyes were sad, for their hearts and souls, their memory and their love, were far away—away to the land where, at that hour, the silver moon was casting the shadows of the heath-clad mountains on the grassy glens below; away to the Braes of Lochaber, the shores of Lochiel, and the deep blue lochs that form a chain of watery links in the great glen of Caledonia; away to the land of the clans, the soil from whence their fathers sprang, and where their graves lay under the old sepulchral yew, or by the Druid clachan of ages past and gone; away from the lone woods and mighty wilds of that Far West, which in the next century was to become the home of their children, where the expatriated men of Sutherland, Barra, and Breadalbane were to find a refuge from the avaricious dukes, the canting marquises, and grinding factors of the Western Highlands, and from their infamous system of modern oppression, tyranny, and misrule, which has decreed that the poor have no right to the soil of their native country.
All were hushed and still in the group as the Highland girl sang—for, though a wedded wife, and on the eve of being a mother, Mary was but a girl yet—when hark! the report of a musket on the outer bastion broke the stillness of the evening hour, and an officer of the mainguard rushed, sword in hand, towards the startled listeners.
"Munro,", he exclaimed; "Colonel Munro—a column of French are in sight, and already within range of cannon-shot."
"So close, Captain Dacres?"
"And in great strength," added the officer.
"And the Indians—those diabolical Iroquois?"
"Fill the woods on every side—they are already at the foot of the glacis. Hark!" continued Captain Dacres, as a contused volley was heard, "the mainguard are opening a fire on their advanced files."
The colonel kissed his child, and with an impressive glance consigned it to the care of Mary.
"Fall in, Sixtieth!" he exclaimed, rushing into the barracks, where the alarm was now general. "MacGillivray, get your lads of the Black Watch under arms, and let them pick me off those brown devils as fast as they can load and fire again. Gentlemen, to your companies; we shall have grim work to do before another sun sets on the waters of the Horican."
In ten minutes the troops in the little garrison were all under arms, for the men came rushing, cross-belted, to their colours, while the log huts echoed again and again to the long roll of the alarm drum—that peculiar roll, which, when heard in camp or garrison, makes the blood of all quicken, as it is the well-known warning "to arms;" and now the pipes of Alisdair Bane (a pupil of Munich Dhu, or Black Murdoch MacInnon, the old piper of Glenarrow) lent their pibroch to swell the warlike din, while the troops loaded, and fresh casks of ball-cartridge were staved and distributed by the sergeants in rear of each company.