At the feet of the dead, on her knees, knelt the sorrowing mother, with her grizzled hair dishevelled, and her face buried in her tremulous fingers, through which the tears were streaming, as she rocked her body to and fro.
Fully armed, three Highlanders of formidable aspect and stately bearing stood at the head of the corpse. These were Rob Roy, Callam MacAleister (his foster-brother and henchman), with Greumoch MacGregor, one of his most active and resolute followers. Each leant upon a brass-mounted and long-barrelled Spanish musket.
Grouped round were a band of hardy and weather-beaten men, in rough Highland dresses of home-spun and home-dyed tartan, all hushed into silence, with their keen grey eyes bent darkly on the corpse, or on each other, and with their brows knit as their hearts glowed for vengeance on the unknown perpetrator of this outrage; for as yet no information could be gathered from the half-drowned Oina.
Outside the door were the women of the clachan with their heads muffled in plaids, kerchiefs, and curchies, wailing as only the Celts of Scotland and Ireland wail, in a weird, wild cadence, muttering vengeance too, and suggesting to each other who might be the author of this new item to the terrible catalogue of wrongs that had been perpetrated on the MacGregors since the battle of Glenfruin had been fought, about a hundred years before.
And all this was seen by the red light of the bogwood fire, in the wavering gleams of which, as they played upon the winding-sheet, the corpse seemed always as if about to start and arise.
"Ochon, ochon, ochrie!" wailed thu mother of Colin, as she swayed herself to and fro; "the drops of the blessed dew that God sends on earth are resting on the cold cheek of my fair son this night; and they are not more pure than he was; but I knew he was doomed never to see the leaves of autumn fall!"
"How?" asked several, bending forward to listen.
"He drew the black-lot, when the cake was broken in Greumoch's bonnet on Beltane eve."
"Never say so, widow," said MacGregor; "think only that the lad died as became his father's son, boldly defending his own; God rest him!"
Here all bowed their heads, and many made the sign of the cross.