"I gnashed my teeth with rage, for I knew that M'Lean loved the boy—the hope of his house—even as his own life, and more. But why protract this story? among you, there are many who know it but too well. It has an echo yet in Mull; for there my vengeance gave a name to a mountain which, as yet, had been unnamed since Time began.
"I was too true a son of Alpin to take unwary measures. I bided my time for revenge, and the time came, though slowly; for the passing fishermen of Aros, the traffickers of Tobermory, and the pilgrims who came to drink of St. Mary's well (from which that clachan took its name), told me how Una had lost all sense of shame and honour; and, to the eternal disgrace of her father's name and mine, was living with M'Lean, even as Fair Helen lived with Paris. Her aged father sent a duine-wassal, proposing to lend me four hundred swordsmen, three brass cannon, and ninety archers, if I wished to assail M'Lean under his roof-tree; but I declined, for the men of Mull were too many for us, and I brooded over a deeper revenge.
"M'Lean proclaimed a great hunting-match, and it took place on St. Duncan's day—exactly one year after Una had left me. All the men of Mull were there; M'Coll of that Ilk, the M'Donalds of Aros, the M'Leans of Duairt and those of Lochbuy. As a poor fisherman from Lochlinnhe, disguised in bonnet, kilt, and plaid of undyed wool, with a long beard, and a face so pale and wan, that not even Una would have known me, I mingled with the hunters. For three days the sport continued, and one great stag—the prince of the island—after escaping many a spear, bullet, and arrow—after flinging the strongest of the grey dogs aloft on its branching antlers—and after swimming Loch Uisc and Loch Ba; was slain by my foe at the foot of a great hill which overlooks a narrow valley, above which it rises on pillars of basalt, two hundred feet in height. He laid the horns at the feet of Una, who, regardless of the darkened brows, averted faces, and muttered reprehensions of the Highland chieftains, was queen of the chase, and presided at the feast on the greensward, where a thousand men sat down to banquet on the fruits of their prowess, while the war-pipe and harp, the uisquebaugh, the ale of the Lowland bodachs, and the wine of the Frenchman and Spaniard, made the merriment ring between the mountain peaks.
"I alone was sad. A snake was in my breast. Una sat beside M'Lean, and with painful acuteness my eye saw every movement of both. When their hands touched, or their eyes met, my heart seemed to burn, and my pulses beat like lightning. I knew that there was a glare in my eye, and a terrible expression in my face, that would discover me, and reveal the wild thoughts of murder and assassination that were rising in my heart; and yet my Una was so beautiful, her smile was so full of fascination, and her deportment so full of unstudied grace, that, though I might loathe, I could not wonder at M'Lean for loving her, and robbing me of a being so adorable. But Hector of Lochdon, with all his barbarous magnificence, could never love as I—her husband—loved her.
"His son, the little boy M'Garadh, recognised me through all my disguise, my agony of visage, and outward change; and, creeping to my side, he clambered into my arms. As if he had been my own, I loved this child; but now I felt something strange fluttering about my heart, and with a pang that hovered between the throb of pleasure and the thrill of rage, I clasped the boy to my breast; and then, holding him aloft in one hand and my naked dirk in the other, I sprang with a wild shout from, the sward where the hunters were carousing, and rushed up the side of the mountain.
"''Tis M'Alpine!' cried a hundred voices; ''tis Red Angus of Gometra!' I soon reached a shelf of overhanging rock, some ninety feet above the hunting-party, and there I paused.
"'M'Lean—Hector of Lochdon!' I cried with a wild voice, and the aspect of a madman, for I felt there was madness in my brain, and the emotions of a devil in my heart; 'from the summit of this rock I will dash your son to its foot, if you slay not the infamous woman who sits beside you!'
"'Shoot—shoot!' he exclaimed; 'to your bows and hand-guns! Aid me, M'Coll—Aros—Duairt, and Lochbuy!' But these chiefs looked darkly on, and made no response.
"'Dost thou pause, villain?' I cried again; 'then hear me.—I swear by the four blessed gospels of God, by the Holy Iron, and by the grave of Alpin, that I will dash this screaming child brainless at your feet, if you do not—this instant—and with your own hand, slay the wretch who sits beside you!' I swung the fair-haired child above my head, and his cries came faintly downward to his father's ear. Then could I feast my eyes upon that father's agony; as trembling in every limb, with sword unsheathed, he gazed alternately upward at me and downward at his pallid and voiceless paramour, who bowed her beautiful head like a lily to the blast, and had bared her white bosom to the impending steel; for well she knew that M'Lean loved his boy, the hope of his house, better than her—the tool of guilty pleasure, the plaything of an hour.
"'Red Angus!' cried M'Lean, in a choking voice; 'I will restore your wife, and with her yield a thousand head of cattle, a hundred targets of brass, and as many Spanish guns; I will yield you the best farm I possess, with the salmon-fishings of Lochdon, to thee and thine for ever, freely and irredeemably, but spare my boy!'