To the kitchen they all adjourned, where a bright peat-fire glowed on the ground, in the centre of the wide chimney. Some of the dogs had crept in actually behind it, and lay dozing with one ear always on the alert. Wooden settles were placed in the ingle-nook for the young men, and the guests were accommodated with heavy high-backed chairs. Mrs Cameron drew her spinning-wheel towards her, and for a few minutes there were no sounds but its busy hum, and the roaring of the wind down the chimney, and amongst the old trees, and the ceaseless voice of the burn chafing in its rocky bed. "Was there not some sad story of a quarrel between the Campbells and the Stewarts of this neighbourhood?" asked Helen of the company in general, very much afraid of hearing her own voice, but still more afraid of losing the delight of hearing the story, whatever it might be, on the very spot where the events took place. "Neighbourhood!" repeated Mrs Cameron, "a neighbourhood should be a place where neighbours meet as friends, and the Campbells and Stewarts never can be friends. Did not I see a bonnie bride of the house of Stewart leave her father's house with a Campbell for her husband, and was not blood shed even on the threshold? for, as the horses started off with their white cockades, one of the lads that rode them fell from the saddle in a fit, and was trampled to death under their feet, and sickness and Borrow waited on the bride till she was at rest in her grave. There's no peace not friendship between the Campbells and Stewarts, and they should not be called neighbours." "But, mother, the young lady was asking you about the quarrel," said Dugald, "and not wishing to mend it." "The young lady is not angered with a foolish old wife," answered his mother, bursting into her loudest, harshest laugh, and laying her hand kindly on Helen's. "She will pardon me, for I was born a Stewart, and I cannot hear with patience when any talk of the natural enemies of my family. Do you tell how it fell out, Ian, for your English is better than mine," said she, addressing her eldest son. It should be remembered, that Gaelic being so universally spoken in the Western Highlands, English is only acquired in a degree to be spoken fluently by people of some education, and is pronounced by them with a softness and delicacy amounting to an appearance of affectation. Ian Cameron related his story deliberately, and in choice language, giving each word and idea time to take effect before it was succeeded by another.