She was pale, cold, severely bruised by being tossed from rock to rock, and lay there to all appearance dead. He placed a hand on her heart; he opened and patted her clenched fingers; he placed his warm ruddy cheek to her cold face, and his ear to her mouth, to ascertain whether or not she breathed.
Then taking her up in his arms as if she had been an infant, he wrapped his plaid around her, and with rapid strides, hastened towards the smoke, which curled greyly against the now darkened sky, and indicated where the clachan or village stood.
This man was Robert MacGregor of Inversnaid and Craigrostan, otherwise known as Rob Roy, or the Red, from the colour of his hair, and who, by the proscription of his entire clan, had been compelled by law to add the name of Campbell to his own, for reasons which will afterwards be given to the reader.
CHAPTER III.
THE ALARM.
He soon reached Inversnaid, which lay about three miles distant.
At first he walked but slowly, comparatively speaking, as he believed the girl to be quite dead; but the motion of her limbs, as he proceeded, having caused the blood to circulate, he perceived with joy that she still lived, and then he increased his pace to a run, which soon brought him to the cottage of her father, Callam MacAleister (i.e., the son of the arrowmaker), to whose care he consigned her; and the bed of the little sufferer was rapidly surrounded by all the commiserating gossips and wise-women of the clachan.
No doctors were required by the hardy men of these secluded districts. Their wives and daughters knew well how to salve a sore; to bind up a slash from an axe or sword; to place lint on a bullet-hole, or on a stab from a dirk; while valerian, all-heal, liver-wort, and wild carrot, bruised in a quaichful of whisky, formed the entire materia medica of the matron of a family. So men lived till patriarchal years, strong, active, and fearless as mountain-bulls; for sickness was unknown among them.
Of these female family physicians, Rob's wife, the Lady of Inversnaid, was the queen in her time and locality.
Inversnaid is a small hamlet on the estate of the same name which formed the patrimony of Rob Roy. It lies two miles eastward from Loch Lomond, on the bank of a small stream, which falls into the great sheet of water, from a lesser, named Loch Arklet, a place of gloomy aspect.