The bairn's face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and fell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made for her out of a rich and willing mind.
Jean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to where Mally the dappled one lay at the back.
"I must be doing it!" said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do in the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to make a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the pot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the fire when the child cluttered at the throat.
Jean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe's lilting came over the glassy bay from Stron Point.
It was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the heads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than wine makes. Dol' Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head of them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, "Here's our own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the fine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!"
On the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and furious--the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching behind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself was before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he was in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the wind to Boshang Gate.
"Halt!" cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol' Dubh's bag emptied itself with a grant.
"_Tha sibh an sol!_ You are here, cousin," said the Duke. "Proud am I to see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!"
"They did that, MacCailein. The stuff's aye to the fore."
"It's in the blood, man. We have't in us, high or low. I have but one thing to vex me."
"Well ye ken, Cornai. It's that I had not been with you to see the last crushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp's head."
"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."