Over Etive and through the Benderloch, and through Appin and even up to Glencoe, by some strange spasm of physique--for she was frail and famished--the barefooted old _cailleach_ of Carnus came after us, a bird of battle, croaking in a horrible merriment over our operations. The Dark Dame we called her. She would dance round the butchery of the fold, chanting her venomous Gaelic exultation in uncouth rhymes that she strung together as easily as most old people of her kind can do such things in times of passion or trance. She must have lived like a vulture, for no share would she have in our pots, though sometimes she added a relish to them by fetching dainties from houses by the way, whose larders in our masculine ignorance we had overlooked. “I would give thee the choicest of the world,” she would say. “What is too good for my heroes, O heroes of the myrtle-badge?” “Sit down and pick,” John Splendid bade her once, putting a roysterer’s playful arm round her waist, and drawing her to the fire where a dinner stewed. Up she threw her claws, and her teeth were at his neck with a weasel’s instinct But she drew back at a gleam of reason. “Oh, darling, darling,” she cried, patting him with her foul hands, “did I not fancy for the moment thou wert of the spoilers of my home and honour--thou, the fleet foot, the avenger, the gentleman with an account to pay--on thee this mother’s blessing, for thee this widow’s prayers!” M’Iver was more put about at her friendliness than at her ferocity, as he shook his plaiding to order and fell back from her worship. “I’ve seldom seen a more wicked cat,” said he; “go home, grandam, and leave us to our business. If they find you in Lochaber they will gralloch you like a Yule hind.” She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as she flew. We left the Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber, and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling, calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald and a blessing on Argile. His lordship sat at the helm of a barge, his face pallid and drawn with cold, and he sighed heavily as the beldame’s cries came after us. “There’s little of God’s grace in such an omen,” said he, in English, looking at the dim figure on the shore, and addressing Gordon. “It could happen nowhere else,” said the cleric, “but in such a ferocious land. I confess it, my lord--I confess it with the bitter shame of surrender, that I behold generations of superstition and savagery still to beat down ere your people are so amenable to the Gospel as the folks of the Lowland shires. To them such a shrieking harridan would be an object of pity and stern measure; they would call her mad as an etter-cap, and keep her in bounds: here she is made something of a prophetess------”