I stood up, pulled out my plaid-pin, and let the folds off my shoulder, and stood revealed to her in a Diarmaid tartan.
“You see we make no pretence at being other than what we are,” I said, softly; “are we welcome to your whey and to your fire-end?”
She showed no sign of astonishment or alarm, and she answered with great deliberation, choosing her Gaelic, and uttering it with an air to impress us.
“I dare grudge no one at my door,” said she, “the warmth of a peat and what refreshment my poor dwelling can give; but I’ve seen more welcome guests than the spoilers of Appin and Glencoe. I knew you for Campbells when you knocked.”
“Well, mistress,” said M’Iver, briskly, “you might know us for Campbells, and might think the worse of us for that same fact (which we cannot help), but it is to be hoped you will know us for gentlemen too. If you rue the letting of us in, we can just go out again. But we are weary and cold and sleepy, for we have been on foot since yesterday, and an hour among bracken or white hay would be welcome.”
“And when you were sleeping,” said the woman; “what if I went out and fetched in some men of a clan who would be glad to mar your slumber?”
John studied her face for a moment It was a sonsy and simple face, and her eyes were not unkindly.
“Well,” he said, “you might have some excuse for a deed so unhospitable, and a deed so different from the spirit of the Highlands as I know them. Your clan would be little the better for the deaths of two gentlemen whose fighting has been in other lands than this, and a wife with a child at her breast would miss me, and a girl with her wedding-gown at the making would miss my friend here. These are wild times, good wife, wild and cruel times, and a widow more or less is scarcely worth troubling over. I think we’ll just risk you calling in your men, for, God knows, I’m wearied enough to sleep on the verge of the Pit itself.”
The woman manifestly surrendered her last scruple at his deliverance. She prepared to lay out a rough bedding of the bleached bog-grass our people gather in the dry days of spring.
“You may rest you a while, then,” said she. “I have a husband with Keppoch, and he might be needing a bed among strangers himself.”