Keppoch looked rather shamefaced, like a man expecting to do a good deed by stealth who suddenly finds it fame.
"Och," said he, "it was just a widow woman that had a bit coo, and some o' my lads met the coo. And the coo it cam' after them, and the widow woman she cam' after the coo; and then, puir body, she asked me if I was a Christian man, and I said, 'No; I was a McDonald.' And she said that so was she. So because she was a McDonald, I gied the puir woman back her coo. It wasna a guid coo, ony way. But she was very gratefu'. She said she was gaun to be mairried again, and that the man—an Appin Stewart, greedy hound!—wadna hae her without the coo."
[CHAPTER XLIV]
GREAT DUNDEE
At Keppoch the months passed slowly enough for our two exiles. They heard no news from the south—of Barra nothing, no word of Kate McGhie. The country about them was in a constant ferment—gatherings here and there on behalf of King James; false reports about the doings of the Hamiltonians and Conventiclers in Edinburgh; reports that the Westland Whigs were marching to exterminate the lads of the glens, in revenge for the doings of the Highland Host. They had sworn (so the tale ran) to take back to Ayrshire and Galloway the booty of the "Seventy-nine," which still constituted the best part of the plenishings of most Highland cottages to the north of the lands of Breadalbane and McCallum More.
It was hard to wait in blank ignorance; but Wat knew that his best hope of coming to his own again, and so to the winning of his love, was to abide the chances of war, and by good service to the king to deserve the restoration of his fiefs and heritages.
Luckily for the two outlaws, no French officers came to Keppoch, nor any, indeed, who knew either Scarlett or Wat, otherwise their lives had not been worth an hour's purchase. But as week after week went by, they became great favorites with McDonald, and were taken on several occasions to see Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiell—a wise, silent, benignant man, who at first said little, but contented himself with watching them silently and subtly from under his eyebrows.
"I remember your father," he said, suddenly flashing a look on Wat.
"You remember my father?" repeated Wat, eagerly; "I did not know he had ever been in the Highlands."