“So Judas thought too, I daresay, when he fingered his filthy shekels,” said I. “I thought no man from Keppoch would be skulking aside here when his pipers blew the onset.” “Och!” said M’Iver, “what need ye be talking? Bardery and bravery don’t very often go together.” Ian Lorn scowled blackly at the taunt, but was equal to answer it. “If the need arise,” said he, “you’ll see whether the bard is brave or not There are plenty to fight; there’s but one to make the song of the fight, and that’s John MacDonald, with your honours’ leave.” We would, like enough, have been pestered with the scamp’s presence and garrulity a good deal longer; but Montrose came up at that moment and took us aside with a friendly enough beckon of his head. “Gentlemen,” he said in English, “as cavaliers you can guess fairly well already the issue of what’s to happen below there, and as Cavaliers who, clansmen or no clansmen of the Campbell chief, have done well for old Scotland’s name abroad, I think you deserve a little more consideration at our hands at this juncture than common prisoners of war can lay claim to. If you care you can quit here as soon as the onset begins, abiding of course by your compact to use no arms against my friends. You have no objection?” he added, turning about on his horse and crying to Alasdair. The Major-General came up and looked at us. “I suppose they may go,” said he,--“though, to tell my mind on the matter, I could devise a simpler way of getting rid of them. We have other methods in Erin O, but as your lordship has taken the fancy, they may go, I daresay. Only they must not join their clan or take arms with them until this battle is over. They must be on the Loch Linnhe road before we call the onset.” Montrose flushed at the ill-breeding of his officer, and waved us away to the left on the road that led to Argile by Loch Linnhe side, and took us clear of the coming encounter. We were neither of us slow to take advantage of the opportunity, but set off at a sharp walk at the moment that O’Kyan on the right flank was slowly moving in the direction of Argile’s line. John broke his sharp walk so quickly into a canter that I wondered what he meant I ran close at his heels, but I forbore to ask, and we had put a good lump of moorland between us and the MacDonalds before he explained. “You perhaps wondered what my hurry was,” he said, with the sweat standing in beads on his face, though the air was full of frost. “It wasn’t for exercise, as you might guess at anyrate. The fact is, we were within five minutes of getting a wheen Stewart dirks in our doublets, and if there was no brulzie on foot we were even yet as good as lost on Brae Lochaber.” “How does that happen?” I asked. “They seemed to let us away generously enough and with no great ill-will.”