“I cannot—ye will be hurt—let me be with ye—ye can command me.”
She gave her arm such a sudden wrench that his grasp was slackened for a second and in that second she had freed herself and was running back through the darkness toward the deadly circle of light.
As she reached the first hut the red glare that lit the way showed things that made her blood run cold.
The soldiers had left their work to pursue those that had fled into the mountains; Hamilton was late; it had been bungled; some of the avenues from the Glen were left unguarded and so many of the Macdonalds had escaped.
She hurried on through smoking ruins and sinking fires; to right and left lay the dead, frozen in their blood; stained and torn plaids were scattered over the heather; here and there a musket was flung down or a dirk, or a household implement hastily snatched up and cast aside.
The flames of the burning huts were sinking under the snow; the cold numbed Delia’s very senses, horror and dread were frozen into apathy; the icy air, the bitter soft snowflakes chilled the heat of wrath and terror in her blood.
She came through the dismantled dwellings to Makian’s house; it still stood; the door was broken off and a man with his plaid over his face lay across the threshold; by his white beard, blood-stained and trodden into the mire, she knew it for the old chief.
She crept past him and into his ruined home; the peat fire still flickered upon the hearth; the place was warm despite the wind that whined through the torn door.
In the very center of the room a man lay on his back with his hands outspread.
Delia stole to the fire and stirred it into flame, casting on peat from the pile beside her; then, as the light leaped up she turned to the prostrate man and saw that he was Ronald Macdonald; she went on her knees in silence and lifted his head onto her lap; he made a little movement and put his hand over his breast; she saw that his coat was torn and stained and that the sluggish blood was dripping from a cut in his forehead. With a shudder she looked about her, called aloud till she grew frightened of her own echoing voice and was silent for very horror. Half-mechanically she tore off the cambric ruffles from her sleeves and then gently laying him back upon the floor, crept to the door. In a little hollow of the rocks she saw the snow had collected; hither she carried an earthenware pot and filled it and brought it back and set it on the fire and waited its melting with a silent, wild face and busy fingers tearing her ruffles into strips.