“Aye, in the Castle of Invergarry, my lord,” continued Hector; “and if my meal there was short, I have had a long enough walk after it to help me to digest what I ate.”
“Are you in your right mind, Hector?” demanded his lordship. “Quick, explain yourself.”
“I cannot say that I altogether intended to honour the Glengarry chief’s board with my presence,” said Hector, drawing himself up; “but having some trifling occasion of my own to pass through the Glengarry country, I rolled my plaid in a moss-hole, and took the wildest way over the hills; and thinking that I might pass unnoticed amidst the darkness and howling of a most tempestuous night, I ventured so near to the castle, that before I knew where I was, a band of MacDonells were suddenly upon me. Seeing that there was nothing else for it but to brave the danger, I had presence of mind enough to pass myself for a MacIntyre, was invited into the castle, sat at the same table, and feasted with the old raven and his vassals, and heard that young half-fledged corby Angus MacDonell plan and arrange a raid of the whole clan Conell and its dependent families against the MacKenzie country. Taking me for a MacIntyre, he told me to bear his message to him to whom I owed service. To give obedience to his will, therefore, I have travelled without stop or stay, or meat or drink, save what I took from the running brooks by the way, in order that I may now tell you, my lord, to whom I owe service as my chief, that the MacDonells’ gathering is to be for the tenth day of the moon, when their fire and sword will run remorseless through our land.”
“Hector, you are a brave man,” said Lord Kintail, “you shall be rewarded for this. Meanwhile hasten to procure some refreshment and repose; for assuredly you must sorely need both.”
I presume that it is scarcely necessary for me to tell you that Lord Kintail and his lady had a speedy and very anxious consultation together. She was a woman of very superior talents, of quick perception, and equally ready in devising expedients as prompt in carrying them into execution. It was at once agreed between them, that this was too serious and impending a danger to admit of delay in preparing to resist it. Feeling, as they did, that the clan had not yet altogether gathered its strength since the last sweeping raid which old Donald MacAngus, chief of the clan Conell, had committed on their territories, both saw the necessity of losing no time in procuring all the foreign aid they could obtain. It was therefore agreed between them as the best precaution that could be taken, that Lord Kintail should forthwith set out for Mull to procure auxiliary troops from his friend and kinsman MacLean. Preparations were instantly made accordingly in perfect secrecy for his departure; and in the course of little more than an hour after the communication of Hector’s intelligence, his lordship’s galley stood out of Loch Duich and through the Kyles of Skye, and left the straits with as fair a north-eastern breeze as if he had bought it from some witch for the very purpose of wafting him to Mull. But secrets are difficult to keep; for notwithstanding the privacy of all these arrangements, not only Lord Kintail’s destination, but the cause and object of his voyage, was known. Had the discovery been traced, perhaps it might have been found to have originated with my lady’s woman, from whom it gradually spread, until it was quickly whispered, with every proper and prudential caution as to silence, into every ear in the Castle of Eilean Donan, whence it spread like wildfire over the whole district.
The MacDonells, too, could have their scouts as well as the MacKenzies. When the hubbub occasioned by the hurried and hopeless chase after the false MacIntyre had subsided, a patient, painstaking, and most sagacious Highlander set off to try what he could make of it; and having once found a trace of the track the MacKenzie had taken, he never lost sight of it again, until he had followed him so far into the enemy’s territories, that he had to thank a most ingenious disguise which he wore for saving his neck from being brought into speedy acquaintance with the gallows-tree of Eilean Donan. This man returned immediately to Invergarry with the intelligence that the projected raid of the MacDonells was as well known in Kintail as it was in Glengarry, and that Lord Kintail himself had gone to Mull to procure the powerful aid of his cousin MacLean.
Young Angus of Glengarry was furious when he found that all his schemes, so well laid as he thought they had been, for establishing his own glory and that of the clan, had been thus baffled.
“If that yellow-bearded buck’s-head shall ever chance to cross my path again,” said he, “young as my arm is, he shall have a trial of my sword.”
“Thy spirit is good, boy,” said Allan of Lundy; “’tis like that of your father and your grandfather before you. But it will be wise in you to check its rashness until your sinews are better able to back it up. That same Hector MacKenzie whom we saw here among us, is moulded for some other sort of work than to give and take gentle buffets with a boy.”
“Thank thee, kind kinsman, for thy care of me,” replied Angus, in anything but an agreeable tone.