For the second time in so many days we tasted food, a handful of meal to the quaich of water--no more and no less; and James Grahame, Marquis of Montrose, supped his brose like the rest of us, with the knife from his belt doing the office of a horn-spoon. Some hours after us came up the Camerons, who had fallen behind, but fresher and more eager for fighting than our own company, for they had fallen on a herd of roe on the slope of Sgur an Iolair, and had supped savagely on the warm raw flesh. “You might have brought us a gigot off your take,” Sir Alasdair said to the leader of them, Dol Ruadh. He was a short-tempered man of no great manners, and he only grunted his response. “They may well call you Camerons of the soft mouth,” said Alasdair, angrily, “that would treat your comrades so.” “You left us to carry our own men,” said the chief, shortly; “we left you to find your own deer.” We were perhaps the only ones who slept at the mouth of Glen Nevis that woeful night, and we slept because, as my comrade said, “What cannot be mended may be well slept on; it’s an ease to the heart.” And the counsel was so wise and our weariness so acute, that we lay on the bare ground till we were roused to the call of a trumpet. It was St Bridget’s Day, and Sunday morning. A myriad bens around gave mists, as smoke from a censer, to the day. The Athole pipers high-breastedly strutted with a vain port up and down their lines and played incessantly. Alasdair laid out the clans with amazing skill, as M’Iver and I were bound to confess to ourselves,--the horse (with Montrose himself on his charger) in the centre, the men of Clanranald, Keppoch, Locheil, Glengarry, and Maclean, and the Stewarts of Appin behind. MacDonald and O’Kyan led the Irish on the wings. In the plain we could see Argile’s forces in a somewhat similar order, with the tartan as it should be in the midst of the bataille and the Lowland levies on the flanks. Over the centre waved the black galley of Lorne on a gold standard. I expressed some doubt about the steadfastness of the Lowlanders, and M’Iver was in sad agreement with me. “I said it in Glenaora when we left,” said he, “and I say it again. They would be fairly good stuff against foreign troops; but they have no suspicion of the character of Gaelic war. I’m sore feared they’ll prove a poor reed to lean on. Why, in heaven’s name, does Mac-Cailein take the risk of a battle in such an awkward corner? An old soldier like Auchinbreac should advise him to follow the Kilcumin road and join forces with Seaforth, who must be far down Glen Albyn by now.” As we were standing apart thus, up to us came Ian Lorn, shaking the brogue-money he got from Grahame in his dirty loof. He was very bitter. “I never earned an honester penny,” he said, looking up almost insolently in our faces, so that it was a temptation to give him a clout on the cunning jowl.