Sonachan was quite as bitter. “I don’t think,” said he, “that it matters very much to you, sir, what Argile may have done or may not have done; you should be glad of your luck (if luck it was and no design), that kept you clear of the trouble altogether.” And again he plunged ahead of us with Ardkinglas, to avoid my retort to an impertinence that, coming from a younger man, would have more seriously angered me.
The minister by now had recovered his wind, and was in another of his sermon moods, with this ruffling at Mac-Cailein’s name as his text.
“I think I can comprehend,” said he, “all this unwillingness to talk about my lord of Argile’s part in the disaster of to-day. No Gael though I am, I’m loath myself to talk about a bad black business, but that’s because I love my master—for master he is in scholarship, in gifts, in every attribute and intention of the Christian soldier. It is for a different reason, I’m afraid, that our friend Barbreck shuffles.”
“Barbreck never shuffles,” said John, stiffly. “If he did in this matter, it would be for as true an affection for his chief as any lalland cleric ever felt for his patron.”
“And yet, sir, you shuffle for another reason too. You do not want to give your ridiculous Highland pride the shock of hearing that your chief left in a galley before the battle he lost had well begun.”
A curious cry came from M’Iver’s lips. He lifted his face, lined with sudden shadows, to the stars that now were lighting to the east, and I heard his teeth grind.
“So that’s the bitter end of it!” said I to myself, stunned by this pitiful conclusion. My mind groped back on the events of the whole waeful winter. I saw Argile again at peace among his own people; I heard anew his clerkly but wavering sentiment on the trade of the sword; I sat by him in the mouth of Glen Noe, and the song and the guess went round the fire. But the picture that came to me first and stayed with me last was Argile standing in his chamber in the castle of Inneraora, the pallor of the study on his face, and his little Archie, with his gold hair and the night-gown, running out and clasping him about the knees.
We struggled through the night, weary men, hungry men. Loch Leven-head may be bonny by day, but at night it is far from friendly to the unaccustomed wanderer. Swampy meadows frozen to the hard bone, and uncountable burns, and weary ascents, and alarming dips, lie there at the foot of the great forest of Mamore. And to us, poor fugitives, even these were less cruel than the thickets at the very head where the river brawled into the loch with a sullen surrender of its mountain independence.
About seven or eight o’clock we got safely over a ford and into the hilly country that lies tumbled to the north of Glencoe. Before us lay the choice of two routes, either of them leading in the direction of Glenurchy, but both of them hemmed in by the most inevitable risks, especially as but one of all our party was familiar (and that one but middling well) with the countryside. “The choice of a cross-road at night in a foreign land is Tall John’s pick of the farmer’s daughters,” as our homely proverb has it; you never know what you have till the morn’s morning. And our picking was bad indeed, for instead of taking what we learned again was a drove-road through to Tynree, we stood more to the right and plunged into what after all turned out to be nothing better than a corrie among the hills. It brought us up a most steep hillside, and landed us two hours’ walk later far too much in the heart and midst of Glencoe to be for our comfort. From the hillside we emerged upon, the valley lay revealed, a great hack among the mountains.