“Aye,” said the Highlander calmly, raising his bugle again to his lips.
At the next blast those on the bailey wall thrust their torches, still burning among the chinks of the logs, and swarmed to the ground as speedily and as safely as those on the main building had done. Now the lighted torches that had been thrown on the roof of the castle, disappearing a moment from sight, gave evidence of their existence. Here and there a long tongue of flame sprung up and died down again.
“Can nothing be done to save the palace?” shouted the excitable Frenchman. “The waterfall; the waterfall! Let us go back, or the castle will be destroyed.”
“Stand where you are,” said the chief, “and you will see a sight worth coming north for.”
Now almost with the suddenness of an explosion, great sheets of flame rose towering into a mountain of fire, as if this roaring furnace would emulate in height the wooded hills behind it. The logs themselves seemed to redden as the light glowed through every crevice between them. The bastions, the bailey walls, were great wheels of flame, encircling a palace that had all the vivid radiance of molten gold. The valley for miles up and down was lighter than the sun ever made it.
“Chieftain,” said the legate in an awed whisper, “is this conflagration accident or design?”
“It is our custom,” replied MacNab. “A monarch’s pathway must be lighted, and it is not fitting that a residence once honoured by our king should ever again be occupied by anyone less noble. The pine tree is the badge of my clan. At my behest the pine tree sheltered the king, and now, at the blast of my bugle, it sends forth to the glen its farewell of flame.”