“It was a good ploy missed, I'll not deny.”
“What about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?”
“As foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy, MacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your forebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of Geordie's Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand true Gaels in all the fellow's corps.”
“To read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!”
“A bantam's crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the neck of it at any time up to Dunedin.”
“They made a fair stand, did they not?
“Uch! Poor eno'—indeed it was not what you would call a coward's tulzie either.”
“Well, well, that's over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. Slochd a Chubair gu bragh! Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and bairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes' bite and sup. Who's that with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is't Rob Donn?”
“It is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the diversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he put an end to.”
“There's luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything. March!” Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the boys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob Donn left the company as it passed near his own door.