"All! Conn Ceud Catha was a boy when compared to him, as you shall soon find, false thief of a MacRae."
"A swim in the linn will be good for one of your temper," said the tall Cateran, as he took up the girl, and regardless of her shrieks, rushing to where the torrent that flowed towards Loch Lomond poured over a brow of rock forming a cascade that plunged into a deep pool below, he tossed her in, without ruth or pity.
In falling, Oina caught the stem of a tough willow, and clung to it with all the tenacity a deadly fear could inspire. The rush of the foaming torrent was in her tingling ears, and its snowy spray covered her face, her dress, and floating hair, as she swung over it. She closed her eyes and dared not look; but her lips prayed for mercy in an inaudible manner, for the power of speech had left her. And now, with her weight, the willow bent so low that at last her feet and ankles dipped in the rushing water; while with a pitiless frown, the wild MacRae—for so this tribe was named, from their fierce, lawless, and predatory habits—surveyed her from the bank above. Then saying, "Oich—oich, but the Griogarich are folk that are hard to kill," by a slash of his long axe he severed the willow, and with a faint shriek Oina vanished into the cascade that foamed beneath!
Duncan nan Creagh then hastened to overtake his gillies, who by this time had driven the cattle across the stream, which they forded in the old Scottish fashion, with their swords in their teeth, and grasping each other's hands to stem the current, which, otherwise, must have swept them away singly, as it came up to their armpits.
They then wrung the water from their plaids, and driving the cattle at full speed by point and flat of sword, hurried up a gloomy and lonely ravine, and soon disappeared, where the sombre evening shadows were deepening over the vast mountain solitude.
Well did they know that the vengeful MacGregors, whom some aver to be the Children of the Mist, would soon be on their track, following them with blade and bullet, hound and horn.
The poor boy soon expired, but the girl was not destined to perish. She was swept by the torrent round an angle of the rocks, towards a pool, where a young man was fishing.
He saw her body whirling in the flood, and without a moment of hesitation, cast aside his bonnet and plaid, his rod and dirk, and plunging in, soon caught her in his arms.
Being powerfully athletic, he stemmed the fierce brown torrent, which ran like a flooded millrace, bearing along with it stones, clay, and dwarf trees, the spoil of the hills that look down on Loch Dochart; and, after a severe struggle, he reached the bank and laid the girl on the grass.
"Oina!" he exclaimed, with deep commiseration, on removing the masses of wet brown hair from her pallid face, for he recognized her to be the child of his own foster-brother.