The future fate of the few stout men who adhered to him, their chief, cost him but little thought. He knew that they would, too probably, all die in detail, falling, as their forefathers fell, by the edge of the sword; but the future of his little daughter, the last of all his race, pressed heavy on the old man's soul, for he would rather have seen her in her grave than the prisoner, it might be the bondswoman, of the abhorred MacNabs. He would gladly have committed her to the care of Alpin Maol, the priest of St. Fillan, that she might be sent to the abbot of Inchaffray, and by him be placed in the charge of some noble lady or holy woman; but the priest abode where his church stood, far from the isle of bondage, in the very heart of the enemy's country, and the aged Finlay had no means of communicating with him by message or letter.
Muriel was now three years old, and her beauty was expanding as her days increased. She was pale and colourless, but her hair was jetty black, and her quiet dark eyes expressed only sadness and melancholy thoughts, for, child though she was, the sauvagerie which surrounded her, and the sombre gloom of her white-haired sire, a man whose whole heart and soul, whose every thought and plan and prayer were dedicated to retributive vengeance, impressed her with awe; and she shrank from all his grim followers save MacCallum Glas, or the grey son of Columba the citharist, the bard of the tribe, to whose care her mother had committed her on that night of horror in which she perished in their burning mansion, the night succeeding the defeat in Glenboultachan.
The darkness of Muriel's eyes contrasted powerfully with the dazzling purity of her skin, which the tribe believed to be the result of a charm given to her mother by a certain wise-woman, who advised her to dip violets in goat's milk and morning dew, and to bathe the child therewith; for, according to an old Celtic recipe, "Anoint thy face with the milk of goats in which violets have been dipped, and there is not a chief in the glens but will be charmed with thy beauty."
So said the citharist in his song; but MacNeish, as he made the sign of the cross on her pure and innocent brow, exclaimed,—
"Thou art but a fool, grey Callum, for, by the great stone of Glentiarkin! her beauty cometh from no other charm than the breath of her Maker."
And in every foray he sought to bring some gaud or trinket of silver or of gold to deck his daughter, the child of his old age, the last of his doomed race; the little idol who shed a ray of light upon his melancholy and desperate household in that wild and desolate isle.
So passed a year.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE NEISH'S HEAD—STORY CONTINUED.
Thus to her children Luisa speaks—she cries,
With you, my sons, my fate, my vengeance lies!
Live for that cause alone, with it to fall,
A bleeding mother's is a holy call.
Portugal: a Poem.