Once it looked like the last of Calum Dubh. He was facing Niall Mor, sword and targe, and Niall Mor changed the sword to the other hand, pulled the _sgian-dubh_ from his garter, and with snapping teeth pushed like a lightning fork below MacKellar's target. An Elerigmor man ran in between; the little black knife sunk into his belly with a moist plunge, and the blood spouted on the deer-horn haft.
"_Mallachd ort!_ I meant yon for a better man," cried Niall Mor; "but it's well as it is, for the secret's to the fore," and he stood up dour and tall against a new front of Mac-Kellar's men.
Then the sky changed, and a thin smirr of warm rains fell on the glen like smoke; some black-cattle bellowed at the ford in a wonder at where their herds could be, and the herds--stuck, slashed, and cudgelled--lay stiffening on the torn grass between the gap and Mac-Kellar's house. From end to end of the glen there was no man left but was at the fighting. The hook was tossed among the corn; the man hot-foot behind the roe, turned when he had his knife at its throat, to go to war; a lover left his lass among the heather; and all, with tightened belts, were at the old game with Clan Diarmaid, while their women, far up on the sappy levels between the hill-tops and beside the moor-lochs, span at the wheel or carded wool, singing songs with light hearts and thinking no danger.
Mor and his sturdy lads from Camus, the breeder of soldiers--back through the gap and down on the brae to the walls of Calum Dubh.
"'Illean, 'illean!" cried Calum; "lads, lads! they have us, sure enough. Oh! pigs and thieves! squint mouths and sons of liars!"
The cry gathered up the strength of all that was left of his clan, Art and Uileam, the Maam lads, the brothers from Drimlea and two from over Stron hill, and they stood up together against the Carnus men--a gallant madness! They died fast and hard, and soon but Calum and his two sons were left fencing, till a rush of Diarmaids sent them through the door of the house and tossed among the peats.
"Give in and your lives are your own," said Niall Mor, wiping his sword on his shirtsleeve, and with all that were left of his Diarmaids behind his back.
To their feet stood the three MacKellars.