“But the Provost’s gone, man!” said I, “and his family too.”
“My cousin Betty is not gone among them,” said he; “she’s either in the castle yonder—and I hope to God she is—or a prisoner to the MacDonalds, or——”
“The Worst Curse on their tribe!” cried John Splendid, in a fervour.
Betty, it seemed, from a narrative that gave me a stound of anguish, had never managed to join her father in the boats going over to Cowal the day the MacDonalds attacked the town. Terror had seemingly sent her, carrying the child, away behind the town; for though her father and others had put ashore again at the south bay, they could not see her, and she was still unfound when the triumph of the invader made flight needful again.
“Her father would have bided too,” said MacLachlan, “but that he had reason to believe she found the safety of the castle. Lying off the quay when the light was on, some of the people in the other boats saw a woman with a burden run up the riverside to the back of the castle garden, and there was still time to get over the draw-brig then.”
MacLachlan himself had come round by the head of the loch, and by going through the Barrabhreac wood and over the shoulder of Duntorval, had taken Inneraora on the rear flank. He had lived several days in a bothy above the Beannan on High Balantyre, and, like ourselves, depended on his foraging upon the night and the luck of the woods.
We lay among the whins and bramble undisturbed till the dusk came on. The rain had stopped, a few stars sedately decked the sky. Bursts of laughing, the cries of comrades, bits of song, came on the air from the town where the Irish caroused. At last between us and Dun-chuach there seemed to be nothing to prevent us venturing on if the bridge was clear.
“If not,” said Sir Donald, “here’s a doomed old man, for I know no swimming.”
“There’s Edinburgh for you, and a gentleman’s education!” said John Splendid, with a dry laugh; and he added, “But I daresay I could do the swimming for the both of us, Sir Donald I have carried my accoutrements dry over a German river ere now, and I think I could convey you safe over yon bit burn even if it were not so shallow above the bridge as I expect it is after these long frosts.”
“I would sooner force the bridge if ten men held it,” said MacLachlan. “I have a Highland hatred of the running stream, and small notion to sleep a night in wet tartan.”