With a laugh and a fast leap Calum Dubh stood back on the edge of the rock again.
“Crook-mouths, fools, pigs' sons! did ye think it?” he cried. “Come with me and my sons and ye'll get ale, ay, and death's black wine, at the foot of Scaurnoch.” He caught fast and firm at John-Without-Asking, and threw himself over the rock-face. They fell as the scart dives, straight to the dim sea of mist and pine-tip, and the Diarmaids threw themselves on their breasts to look over. There was nothing to see of life but the crows swinging on black feathers; there was nothing to hear but the crows scolding.
Niall Mor put the bonnet on his head and said his first and last friendly thing of a foe.
“Yon,” said he, “had the heart of a man!”
BOBOON'S CHILDREN
FROM Knapdale to Lorn three wandering clans share the country between them, and of the three the oldest and the greatest are the swart Macdonalds, children of the Old Boboon.
You will come on them on Wade's roads,—jaunty fellows, a bit dour in the look, and braggart; or girls with sloe-eyes, tall and supple, not with a flat slouching foot on the soil, but high in the instep, bounding and stag-sure. At their head will be a long lean old man on crutches—John Fine Macdonald—
Old Boboon, the father and head of the noblest of wandering tribes.