“We took the oaths—I went through the snows to Inverary and took the oaths.”
“Too late!” she answered bitterly. “Too late! Too long you dallied—and maybe I also am too late!”
Again he interposed.
“But we are under the government’s protection—I was assured of that.”
She came a step forward and her glance took in the men assembled against the background of thick peat smoke; in her gray garments, falling straight from shoulders to feet with her eager, colorless face, she looked like some embodiment of the mists from the mountains that had drifted through their doors; they moved a little away from her as if they were in an awe of her person that overweighed any anxiety that they might have felt as to her message; she saw this and trembled in her desire to convince them of the terrible import of her warning; she recalled to them the hatred of the Campbells; she spoke of what she knew of the policy of the government; of how their submission had been suppressed. She said Breadalbane was at Kilchurn arming his clan, that Argyll was holding Inverness, that soldiers were quartered in Argyllshire and were marching even now from Fort William; she related her own wild journey, the difficulties, the perils, how she had come from England, hastening, never stopping, that she might warn them of the doom preparing; that she might arrest a bloody execution, and her eyes went to the figure of Ronald Macdonald, who leaned quietly against the rude wall close to her.
When the tide of her words had come to an end she stood with panting bosom and dilated eyes, waiting.
While she spoke the circle of her audience had grown; men, women and children, they were gathered round the hut door, while within stood the old chief and his family with somber faces. But there was silence and no movement from any of them. The girl turned to Ronald with a strange smile.
“You know me, Ronald Macdonald?—you think that I speak the truth?”
He answered slowly:
“I know you and I believe.”