It was a year of danger, wounds, and rapine; still the MacNeishes, in their wave-surrounded fortress, defied all, and escaped every attempt to capture or destroy them; for still their boat was the only one whose keel ploughed the waters of Lochearn. And now approached St. Fillan's Day, 1523, the first anniversary of their disastrous defeat in Glenboultachan. In honour of this returning day of victory, Lady Aileen MacNab invited all the principal duine-wassals of her tribe to a great feast or festival; and to procure various accessories for the banquet and carousal MacIndoir, the standard-bearer, with other adherents of trust, were sent to the town of Grieff, which is situated on the slope of the Grampians. Having made all their purchases of provisions, wine and fruit, &c., they were returning with four laden sumpter-horses; but when crossing the Ruchil; at a place where it flowed through a thicket of pines, a shrill whistle was heard. Then followed shouts of wild fury and exultation, and MacIndoir found himself surrounded by Finlay MacNeish and his desperate followers, who by some means had obtained intelligence of his journey to Crieff. They were armed with rusty swords and battered targets, and were clad in little else than skins of the wolf and deer. Gaunt men they were; hollow-eyed, fierce and savage in aspect. Their long unshaven beards flowed over their breasts, and their matted hair, without covering or other dressing than a thong or fillet of deerskin, waved in the breeze or streamed over their naked shoulders like the manes of wild horses.
"The Neishes, by the arm of St. Fillan!" exclaimed MacIndoir, drawing his sword in anger and dismay.
"Yes, the Neishes, by the mass, the pope, and St. Fillan to boot!" replied the aged chief, with gloomy ferocity expressed in every lineament of his face, as he turned up the sleeves of his tattered doublet and grasped his two-handed sword; "we have long been supping the poorest of bruith,[*] but now we shall have the good cheer of those sons of the devil who oppress us. Come on, my children—come on!"
[*] Gaelic—hence the word broth.
A brief struggle ensued; and while defending himself bravely, MacIndoir vainly threatened the caterans with the "kindly gallows of Crieff," the power of William Earl of Monteith, who was then steward of Strathearn; and, more more than all, with the dreadful retribution which Lady MacNab and her sons would assuredly demand if their goods were plundered or spoiled.
Shouts of derisive laughter were his sole reply, and they mingled strangely with the cries of the wounded, the imprecations of the victors, and the clash of blades, which at every stroke scattered sparks of fire and blood-drops through the sunny air. In a few minutes MacIndoir was compelled to seek safety in flight; while his followers were all cut down, and the four sumpter-horses, with their burdens, captured. Using their swords and dirks as goads, the MacNeishes drove them at a furious pace down the hills towards Lochearn, in a solitary creek of which, under a shroud of ivy, willow, and waterdocks, they had concealed their boat, on board of which they rapidly stowed their plunder. The four horses were then denuded of their trappings, hamstrung, and left to limp away or die in the pine forest; while the MacNeishes, with a shout of defiance, shipped their oars, and as their long fleet birlinn cleft the clear waters of the lake and shot towards the little wooded isle, on the summit of which pale Muriel, with a beating heart, awaited them, the song of exultation raised by MacCallum Glas, as he sat harp in hand in the prow, and the chorus of twenty voices that joined his at intervals, reached the ears of the panting MacIndoir, when he paused on the brow of a neighbouring rock, and pressing the blade of his dirk to his trembling lips, swore to have a terrible revenge for the affront they had put upon him and the stern wife of his late chief, an affront which, to a Celt, seemed an outrage upon all laws divine as well as human.
On reaching Kennil House he related to Lady MacNab the events of his journey from Crieff, stating that the sumpter-horses with their burdens were gone, and that his whole party, consisting of six men, had been cut to pieces by caterans.
"By the Neishes?" she exclaimed in accents of rage.
"By the old wolf in the isle of Lochearn; and the blood of six of our people has soaked the heather."
"Yet thou returnest alive to tell the shameful story!" was her fierce exclamation, as she smote him on the beard with her clenched hand, and her twelve tall sons gathered round her, muttering threats and growls of anger, all the deeper that they knew them to be futile, as the deep lake rendered the isle impregnable. They formed a hundred fierce schemes of wholesale slaughter, and for the total destruction of the wasps' nest—for so they termed the retreat of the Neishes; but as the waters of the lake were too broad for armed men to swim them, and no boat could be procured, their projects ended in nothing but a settled wrath, all the deeper that it was without resource or vent; so night closed in, and they sat in moody silence in their mother's hall. Its windows overlooked Loch Tay, the waters of which were flushed in one place by the light that lingered in the ruddy west; and in others its deep blue was studded by the tremulous reflection of the stars. From the margin of the loch the beautiful and evergreen pines spread their solemn cones darkly over mountain and valley, as far as the eye could reach. Virgil praises their beauty in gardens; but the Mantuan bard never saw the wiry-foliaged and red-stemmed pine, that twists its knotty and tenacious roots round the basaltic rocks of the Scottish mountains, or he had found a fitter subject for his muse.