"'Wretch!' I replied; and once more swung the unhappy child aloft; 'if thou and all thy posterity yielded to me their possessions on earth and their share of paradise, I would not spare thy whelp, nor will I now if thou sparest her who sits beside thee! Once!'
"'Shoot—shoot!' he cried to his Leine Chrios.
"Thirty archers bent their bows and drew their arrows to the ear, but relinquished them; thirty long-barrelled guns were levelled at me, but were lowered again, for the gillies feared to shoot the boy.
"'Dost them hear me?—twice!' I cried, swinging the child again, for I was mad, but had no intention of throwing the boy, alone at least. I intended to spring down with him, that we might perish together.
"Trembling with terror for the safety of his child, and urged by the fierce persuasions of his Leine Chrios, who considered the life of the heir of more value than the lives of a hundred adulterous women, M'Lean ran his sword into the heart of Una! She bent over the blade and died at his feet.
"From the edge of that frightful precipice I saw the white bosom of my wife, and the blood (red as the checks of her tartan plaid) that dyed her yellow kirtle. Then the light left my eyes, the strength of my hands relaxed, and the boy fell from them into the valley below. From that abyss I heard a terrible cry ascend to the summit of the basaltic columns; there was a confused discharge of fire-arms; bullets and arrows whistled about me; I reeled like a drunken man, a swoon came over me, and I remember no more.
"The poor child had been killed. In my madness and helplessness I destroyed him; and, to this hour, the men of Mull call that rocky hill which had no name before, Ben Garadh.*
* The Hill of Garadh. This is still a tradition of the Isle of Mull.
"Why prolong a tale so painful? Grey dawn was stealing along the narrow Sound and tumbling sea; and morning was reddening the summits of the hills when I awoke, or recovered, to find myself in silence, with honest M'Coll of that Ilk (who now commands our pikes), standing by me, while his men were in the valley below. All the other huntsmen had departed, and taken with them the bodies of the dead. He had protected me at the risk of his life; for our fathers had fought side by side in the same galley, at the battle of the Bloody Bay.
"'You must fly, Angus,' said he; 'for all the Isles cannot afford you long a hiding-place, and the Lowlanders will not receive you.'