"When that day comes, the lamb shall share the lair of the lion, and the cushat-dove shall seek the nest of gled and iolar," replied the harper, still smiling.
"Whence come you, and where is your home?"
"The Isle of the Pigmies, in the west—far away amid the sea," replied the harper with a sigh; "and would, MacGregor, I were there now, where its black rocks are covered with sheets of snowy foam, where the wild sea-birds wheel and scream above the breakers, and where the level sunshine and the rolling sea go far together into its gloomy caves and weedy chasms."
The harper referred to one of the Western Isles, a little solitary place, where stand the ruins of a chapel, and where it was believed a dwarfish race were buried of old; "for many strangers digging deep into the earth have found, and do yet find," says Buchanan, "little round skulls and the bones of small human bodies, that do not in the least differ from the ancient reports concerning pigmies."
"I am grieved, harper, that you should die so far from your kindred and their burial-place," said Rob, gravely.
"Die! wherefore should I die?" asked the harper, starting, while his countenance fell.
"Oogh ay!" exclaimed several MacGregors, who were yawning and crowding round; "just let the bodach be hanged at once, and then we shall go to sleep again."
"Or would you prefer to be drowned?" said Greumoch; "Loch Arkeig is close by, and the water there is warm and deep."
"Neither is my wish," said the harper, fiercely; "I am a guiltless man, and demand my freedom!"
"Why were you in the ranks of the king's rebels at Glensheil?" asked Rob, sternly.