The Catechist, sombre fellow, already into his Sabbath, though 'twas only Saturday nine o' the clock, came through the whins and cast about him a glance for bagpipes. He had seen Maclean's arrival with misgiving. A worthy man, and a face on him like the underside of a two-year skate-fish.
Col Maclean turned on him a visage tanned as if it had been in the cauldron with the catechu of the barking nets.
"Take you a firken too, and rest you, Catechist," said he. "You see I have not my pipes to-night, but I'm at sgeulachd."
But the Catechist sat not; and leaning against a net-pole sighed.
"'Twas two years after that," said Col, again into the rapture of his story, "when my regiment went to the land of wine, where we battled beside the French. I assure you we did nobly! nobly! Nor, on the soul of me! were the Frenchmen slack!"
"The French," ventured Patrick Macneill, "are renowned in story for all manly parts. Oh King! 'tis they have suffered!"
"'Tis myself, just man, that is not denying it! We were yonder in a land like Keppoch desolate after the red cock's crowing. The stars themselves, that are acquaint with grief, and have seen great tribulation in the dark of Time would sicken at the sight of it! Nothing left of the towns but larochs—heaps of lime and rubble where the rat made habitation, and not one chimney reeking in a hundred miles. Little we ken of trees here in the Islands, but they were yonder planted thick as bracken and cut down to the stump the way you would be cutting winter kail. And the fields that the country folk had laboured!—were the Minch drained dry, the floor of it would seem no likelier place for cropping barley or for pasturing goats.
"There was a day of days, out yonder, that we mixed up with the French and cleared the breadth of a parish of am boche, who was ill to shift. But the mouth of the night brought him back on us most desperate altogether, and half we had gained by noon was lost by gloaming.
"Five score and ten of our men were missing at the roll-call.
"The Cornal grunted. 'Every man of them out of Lewis!' says he; 'they're either dead or wandered. Go you out Col Maclean with your beautiful, lovely, splendid pipes, and gather at least the living.'