Colkitto Macdonald and his Irishry and the Athol clans came, as the world knows, to Argyll, and carried the flambeau and the sword through every glen in the country-side. Into our peaceable neighbourhood, so harmless, so thriving and content, they marched on a winter’s end—wild bearded fellows, ravenous at the eyes, lean as starved roebucks, cruel as the Badenoch wolves. They put mother and child to the pike; the best men of all our Gaelic people found the hero’s death when standing up against these caterans, but uselessly. Carnus, Cladich, and Knapdale are thick with green spots where Clan Diarmaid’s massacred people fell in the troubles. To that rich and beautiful country the spring of the year comes always with vigour for the young heart. One feels the fumes of myrtle and fir in the head like a strong wine. It is the season of longing and exploits, and, if adventure is not in the way, the healthy young blood will be stirred to love or manly comradeship. Then the eye is keenest for the right girl, or (it may happen) the boon companion comes by the right chance, and leads the one waiting for him into the highroads where magic is at every corner, and old care is a carle to snap a finger at. There are no meats so sappy, no drink so generous and hearty, no sleep so sound as in that age and time. It was in that season that the two men of my story met at a _ceilidh_, as we call a night gossiping, in a tacksman’s house in Maam. There had been singing of the true Gaelic songs and telling of Gaelic stories. A fellow, Alan, sat in a dusky corner of the room with a girl, Ealasaid, and they had little heed of song or story, but whispered the sweet foolishnesses of their kind in a world of their own, till a man new over from Cowal—Red John, by the byname—stood to his feet and sang a Carrick ditty. “I never heard better,” said Alan in the girl’s ear, for the new man and his new song had cried them back to the company. “Good enough, I’m not denying,” said she, “but he looks slack; you never saw a man with a low lip so full and a laugh so round and ready who was not given to wandering.” “Where from?” asked young Alan, his eyes roving between the girl and the man singing. “From—oh! from good guidance,” said she, flushing; “from the plain ways of his more common and orderly neighbours—from the day’s work.” “The day’s work,” said Alan, “had no great hold on my fancy, and still and on I’m not what one would call lazy. I wish, do you know, I could sing yon jovial gentleman’s songs, and think life so humoursome as I’ll warrant a man with that laugh finds it.” He learned Red John’s best songs before summer-time, for Red John was his boon companion.