“We were in a trap,” said he, drawing with a stick on the smooth snow a diagram of the situation. “We were between brae and water. I am no man of war, and my heart swelled at the spectacle of the barons cut down like nettles. And by the most foolish of tactics, surely, a good many of our forces were on the other side of the loch.”
“That was not Auchinbreac’s doing, I’ll warrant,” said M’Iver; “he would never have counselled a division so fatal.”
“Perhaps not,” said the cleric, drily; “but what if a general has only a sort of savage army at his call? The gentry of your clan——”
“What about MacCailein?” I asked, wondering that there was no word of the chief.
“Go on with your story,” said M’Iver, sharply, to the cleric.
“The gentry of your clan,” said Gordon, paying no heed to my query, “were easy enough to guide; but yon undisciplined kerns from the hills had no more regard for martial law than for the holy commandments. God help them! They went their own gait, away from the main body, plundering and robbing.”
“I would not just altogether call it plundering, nor yet robbing,” said John, a show of annoyance on his face.
“And I don’t think myself,” said Sonachan, removing, as he spoke, from our side, and going to join the three others, who sat apart from us a few yards, “that it’s a gentleman’s way of speaking of the doings of other gentlemen of the same name and tartan as ourselves.”
“Ay, ay,” said the minister, looking from one to the other of us, his shaven jowl with lines of a most annoying pity on it—“Ay, ay,” said he, “it would be pleasing you better, no doubt, to hint at no vice or folly in your army; that’s the Highlands for you! I’m no Highlander, thank God, or at least with the savage long out of me; for I’m of an honest and orderly Lowland stock, and my trade’s the Gospel and the truth, and the truth you’ll get from Alexander Gordon, Master of the Arts, if you had your black joctilegs at his neck for it!”
He rose up, pursing his face, panting at the nostril, very crouse and defiant in every way.