He became the glory of his own island, and a toast at fairs in all the Islands. “Alasdair Dhu” was the name on every lip; his wife shared his popularity, and people sent her gifts of sheep and fowl from as far as the mainland. And all she would say was, “What a silly thing! An island of men against one man in a dream! If I had just had him here!”
IV.
The Captain, who had been with his corps in the Lowlands, came home, thought hard, and made a plan. “If my factor is so fond of nature, I must fight him with that same,” he said, and for two weeks before Lammas he had every man in his service building a dam below the pass of Kincreggan. It was so clever a way of getting the better of Alasdair Dhu that the men who admired him most now turned most readily to spoil him. They cut down big firs on either side of the pass, so that the trees fell over and jammed between the cliffs. When the pile was high enough they backed it up with brushwood and turf till it looked like a lofty wall.
“I’m thinking that will do now,” said the Captain when it was done. “Let us have the first of the floods of Lammas, and you will see a rat come squealing from his hole.”
When the dam was finished it was dry weather, the river at the pass a trickle; but the Captain’s own luck was with him, for the very next day a storm burst on the Islands. He went to the top of Ben Buidhe, and joined the folk there who were looking down on Kincreggan. They saw a spectacle! The river, pit-black in its linns and cream-white in its falls, gulped down the narrow gorge as if all the waters of the world were hasting there; the cliff above the keep was streaming, the path to the house was flooded, the cattle were belly-deep in the fold, and bellowed mournfully. Every minute saw the water perceptibly rise till it lay like a loch deep about Kincreggan House. By the time the gloaming came on the glen the water washed the lintels of the lower storey.
“It’s a dour rat, by my troth!” said the Captain. “I thought we would have heard squealing by this time.” He shook the rain from his plaid, and set off for home. Some say he was heedless of Macaulay’s fate; others more plausibly argue that he knew very well Macaulay had friends on the hillside who would rescue him when the need arose.
However it was Macaulay got out of his trap, he got out by himself, with his clerk behind him. The lad ran over the island, took a boat to Arisaig, and never came back again; the factor reached the door of his home at dark an amazing figure in drenched and savage garments, with a dirk lying flat against the brawn of his bare arm. He burst upon his wife like a calamity, but she never blenched. The kettle hung upon its chain; with a thrust of her foot she swung it over the fire, and rose to her feet to put a hand on the shoulder of her soaking lord.
“Oh, Alick! come in, come in!” she said, and so mighty he looked and strange in the room that had known the decent lawyer, it seemed to her as if he filled it. The river ran from his garments, and when he moved, the hides on his feet sucked upon the flooring.
“They tell me at Kilree the Captain is here,” he said, looking uplifted about him, keeping the blade of his weapon out of her sight.
“He is just come,” she answered, “and is in front there, keeping your place for you.”