"Where? among the Buchanans or Cclquhouns?" demanded several, while the excitement grew apace.
"Among neither," exclaimed a harsh and croaking voice.
"Why—why?" asked the crowd.
"For 'tis Duncan nan Creagh who did this; Duncan Mhor, from Kintail na Bogh."
"Who spoke?" said Rob Roy, peering through the smoke which obscured the atmosphere of the hut.
"I, Phail Crubach," replied a decrepit old man, for whom all now made way, with a strangely mingled bearing of respect and aversion; for this visitor was supposed to have the double gift of prophecy and the second sight.
Phail Crubach, or lame Paul MacGregor, was the keeper of a Holy Well near the church of Balquhidder. He had been educated in youth at the Scottish College of Douay; but on becoming partly insane, he returned to his native place, and became the custodian of a spring which St. Fillan had blessed in the times of old. Near this well he lived in a hut, which was an object of terror to the peasantry, as it was almost entirely lined and patched with fragments of old coffins from the adjacent churchyard.
At the door of this strange dwelling (on which was a rusty coffin-plate as an ornament) he usually sat and watched the well and the narrow highway, ready to afford any wayfarer a draught from the spring, for which he received a small remuneration, either in coin or food—such as meal, cheese, butter, and a bit of venison, which any man might then have for the shooting thereof.
He was clad in a coat and breeches of deerskin; he was wasted in form, wan in visage, and had red hazel eyes, that glared brightly through the long masses of white hair that overhung his wrinkled forehead.
Supporting himself on a knotty stick, which had a cross on its upper end, he hobbled forward through the shrinking crowd.