He and I were the last of the Clanranalds. Brother I had had, but he had died two years before, and my mother had long since preceded him. My father and I had been much together at Clanranald House, and I loved him with a devotion, I think, which passed that entertained by most Scottish maids for their fathers. I did not desire to marry anybody. I wanted my father's life saved. I wished to be back again at Clanranald House, the old, sweet, free life flowing on as it did before this bastard Monmouth and his futile ambitions came athwart our path. But that was not to be. Surely some other way might be found to stop the messenger. I strained my wits hard to devise one. "Madam," said Master Dunner, who had been scrutinising me searchingly as these thoughts ran through my troubled brain, "you know how gladly I would assume the adventure myself, were it not..." He looked down very sadly at his poor clubbed foot and shrunken limb, which had made him an attorney instead of a soldier. He was older than my father, too, and could with difficulty sit a horse. "I know your will, sir," I interrupted quickly, catching him by the hand, "but that is not to be thought of." "What, then?" That he, with all his shrewdness and resource, should ask the question of me, a woman, proved as nothing else the hopelessness of the situation. Yet the question was a sharp spur to my imagination. It seemed to force choice among the men who had paid court to me at Clanranald House in happier days. "Let me think," replied I, as I passed in rapid review the various young gentlemen of my acquaintance. There was not one of them who was acceptable as a husband in the least degree to me. There must be some other way, and yet... I came to a sudden decision. "I will do it myself," I said boldly with a flash of inspiration. "You, my lady?" exclaimed the attorney in great amaze. "Why not I? I can use a small sword with most men of my acquaintance. My father hath given me much of his own skill, and I have never hesitated to cross blades in friendly bout with any of our guests at home. As for other weapons, I have often ranged moor and glen with the Earl; I have brought down a stag and know the use of small arms." "But you are a woman." "Can I not for the nonce be a man?" I asked. "What's to hinder, indeed?" "And do you imagine that, even if you were to attempt to carry out this mad scheme, you could get the better of a tried soldier, an experienced man of the world as rumour accrediteth Sir Hugh Richmond to be?" asked the old man with a slightly ironic touch. "Since time and the world began, Master Dunner, weak woman, backed by her wit and finesse, hath got the better of strong man," I replied with spirit. "But you are proposing to approach him as a man." "I shall be not less a woman for all that," I retorted triumphantly, veering to the other side of the argument, "and being all a woman and half a man..." "Which half, madam?"