He darted down the hill to meet her, but Callum was there first. Callum was on his way up from the barn, and the little blue figure flew to him and made the rest of the journey to the house perched triumphantly upon his broad shoulder, screaming with delight, and calling upon Scotty, her own dear Scotty, to come and meet her.
But for all his joy, as she approached Scotty drew back shyly behind the rosebushes. The first meeting with Isabel was something of an embarrassment, for she always pitched herself upon him and insisted upon kissing him, more than once sometimes, if he wasn't watchful, and it was certainly an unseemly thing for a boy of his size to be kissed by anybody. But the ordeal was soon over, and when they had all rejoiced over her and measured her height against the door-frame, where two niches showed how she and Scotty had stood last summer, and admired her growth, and warned Scotty to take care or she would soon be as tall as he was, the elder folk gave their attention to Weaver Jimmie and left the children to their own devices.
As usual the Weaver was the bearer of important tidings.
"It's a fine job Tom Caldwell thinks he's got this time!" he declared with an embarrassed hitch of one big foot over the other, and a rather nervous glance towards Callum.
"What's that?" inquired Rory, coming up to the door with his two pails of foaming milk. "We always like to know what our relations will be doing," he added with a sly chuckle.
Weaver Jimmie looked more embarrassed than ever. He attacked his whiskers and became so absorbed in their subduing that his audience grew impatient.
"Out with it, man!" cried Callum, and thus adjured, the Weaver told his story. When he had finished, it appeared that a much graver danger than a Fenian raid threatened the Glen, for what should Tom Caldwell and all those Irish louts from the Flats be up to now but an Orangemen's raid!
Big Malcolm removed his pipe and glared at the speaker.
"What is it ye will be saying, man?" he demanded harshly. Weaver Jimmie looked encouraged, and avoiding Callum's eye, he gave further details. Tom Caldwell had lately been the means of organising an Orange lodge in the Flats, and at their last meeting the brethren had decreed that, upon the coming 12th of July, they must have a celebration. It was to be no ordinary affair either, Pete Nash himself told him; but such a magnificent spectacle as the pioneers had never yet witnessed. Pete had received orders to prepare dinner for fifty guests and whiskey for twice as many. There was to be a grand rally early in the morning at the home of Tom Caldwell, who was to personate the great Protestant monarch, and at high noon a triumphal march up over the hills and down into the Glen to the feast,—with fifes and drums and a greater display in crossing the Oro than King William himself had had in crossing the historic Boyne.
Big Malcolm sat silent, his fists clenched. He was a Glencoe MacDonald, and, like all his clan, had an abhorrence of the name of Orange running fiercely in his veins. But he was saying to himself over and over that he who had repented of all his strife, who had set his face firmly against the evils of the day and become a leader of the new movement that was bringing the community into a higher and better life, he certainly must not be the one to stir up dissension. And yet, to have a celebration in their own glen in honour of the MacDonalds' betrayer!