Sir Alasdair gave a gesture of contempt and cried, “Faugh! we’ve heard of the raxed arm: he took care when he was making his tale that he never made it a raxed leg.”
Montrose edged up at this, with a red face and a somewhat annoyed expression. He put his gloved hand lightly on MacDonald’s shoulder and chided him for debate with a prisoner of war.
“Let our friends be, Alasdair,” he said, quietly. “They are, in a way, our guests: they would perhaps be more welcome if their tartan was a different hue, but in any case we must not be insulting them. Doubtless they have their own ideas of his lordship of Argile——”
“I never ask to serve a nobler or a more generous chief,” said M’Iver, firmly.
“I would expect no other sentiment from a gentleman of Argile’s clan. He has ever done honestly enough by his own people. But have we not had enough of this? We are wasting our wind that should be more precious, considering the toils before us.”
We found the descent of Corryarick even more ill than its climbing. The wind from the east had driven the snow into the mouth of it like a wedge. The horses, stepping ahead, more than once slipped into drifts that rose to their necks. Then they became wild with terror, dashed with frantic hooves into deeper trouble, or ran back, quivering in every sinew and snorting with affright till the troopers behove to dismount and lead them. When we in the van reached the foot of the come we looked back on a spectacle that fills me with new wonder to this day when I think of it,—a stream of black specks in the distance dropping, as it were, down the sheer face of white; nearer, the broken bands of different clansmen winding noiselessly and painfully among the drifts, their kilts pinned between their thighs, their plaids crossed on their chests—all their weapons a weariness to them.
In the afternoon the snow ceased to fall, but the dusk came on early notwithstanding, for the sky was blotted over with driving clouds.
At the head of Glen Roy the MacDonalds, who had lost their bauchles of brogues in the pass, started to a trot, and as the necessity was we had to take up the pace too. Long lank hounds, they took the road like deer, their limbs purple with the cold, their faces pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. “There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat,” the Major-General had said. It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile below them.
But the Campbells were not in Glen Roy. They had been there and skirmished for a day among their old foes and had gone back to Lochyside, little thinking the fires they left in the Cameron barns at morning would light the enemy on ere night The roofs still smouldered, and a granary here and there on the sides of the valley sent up its flames,—at once a spur to the spirit of the MacDonalds and a light to their vengeance.
We halted for the night in Glen Spean, with Ben Chlin-aig looming high to the south, and the river gulping in ice beside our camp. Around was plenty of wood: we built fires and ate as poor a meal as the Highlands ever granted in a bad year, though it was the first break in our fast for the day. Gentle and simple, all fared alike—a whang of barley bannock, a stirabout of oat-and-water, without salt, a quaich of spirits from some kegs the troopers carried, that ran done before the half of the corps had been served. Sentinels were posted, and we slept till the morning pipe with sweet weariness in our bones.