The enemy drew off at a command of their captain, and into the edge of the wood that came up on the left near our summit. We lost our interest in them for a time, watching a man running up the little valley from the right, above Kilmalieu. He came on waving his arms wildly and pointing ahead; but though he was plain to our view, he was out of sight of the enemy on the left.
A long black coat hampered his movements, and he looked gawky enough, stumbling through the rushes.
“If I didn’t think the inside of Castle Inneraora was too snug to quit for a deadly hillside,” said John, “I could believe yon was our friend the English minister.”
“The English minister sure enough!” said half-a-dozen beside us.
“Here’s ill-luck for us then!” cried John, with irony. “He’ll preach us to death: the fellow’s deadlier than the Clanranald ban ditty.”
Some one ran to the post beside the governor’s house, and let the gentleman in when he reached it. He was panting like a winded hound, the sweat standing in beads on his shaven jowl, and for a minute or two he could say nothing, only pointing at the back of our fort in the direction of the town.
“A parish visit, is it, sir?” asked John, still in his irony.
The minister sat him down on a log of wood and clutched his side, still pointing eagerly to the south of our fort No one could understand him, but at last he found a choked and roupy voice.
“A band behind there,” he said; “your—front—attack is—but—a—feint”
As he spoke, half-a-dozen men in a north-country tartan got on the top of our low rear wall that we thought impregnable on the lip of the hill, and came on us with a most ferocious uproar. “Badenoch!” they cried in a fashion to rend the hills, and the signal (for such it was more than slogan) brought on our other side the Clanranald gentry.