Sitting cosy in taverns with friends long after, listening to men singing in the cheery way of taverns the ditty that the Leckan bard made upon this little spulzie, I could weep and laugh in turns at minding of yon winter’s day. In the hot stress of it I felt but the ardour that’s in all who wear tartan--less a hatred of the men I thrust and slashed at with Sir Claymore than a zest in the busy traffic, and something of a pride (God help me!) in the pretty way my blade dirled on the ham-pans of the rascals. There was one trick of the sword I had learned off an old sergeant of pikes in Macka’s Scots, in a leisure afternoon in camp, that I knew was alien to every man who used the targe in home battles, and it served me like a Mull wife’s charm. They might be sturdy, the dogs, valorous too, for there’s no denying the truth, and they were gleg, gleg with the target in fending, but, man, I found them mighty simple to the feint and lunge of Alasdair Mor! Listening, as I say, to a song in a tavern, I’m sad for the stout fellows of our tartan who fell that day, and still I could laugh gaily at the amaze of the ragged corps who found gentlemen before them. They pricked at us, for all their natural ferocity, with something like apology for marring our fine clothes; and when the end came, and we were driven back, they left the gentlemen of our band to retreat by the pends to the beech-wood, and gave their attention to the main body of our common townsmen. We had edged, Splendid and Sir Donald and I, into a bit of green behind the church, and we held a council of war on our next move. Three weary men, the rain smirring on our sweating, faces, there we were! I noticed that a trickle of blood was running down my wrist, and I felt at the same time a beat at the shoulder that gave the explanation, and had mind that a fellow in the Athole corps had fired a pistolet point-blank at me, missing me, as I had thought, by the thickness of my doublet-sleeve. “You’ve got a cut,” said Sir Donald. “You have a face like the clay.” “A bit of the skin off,” said I, unwilling to vex good company. “We must take to Eas-a-chosain for it,” said Splendid, his eyes flashing wild upon the scene, the gristle of his red neck throbbing. Smoke was among the haze of the rain; from the thatch of the town-head houses the wind brought on us the smell of burning heather and brake and fir-joist. “Here’s the lamentable end of town Inneraora!” said John, in a doleful key. And we ran, the three of us, up the Fisherland burn side to the wood of Creag Dubh. CHAPTER X.--THE FLIGHT TO THE FOREST.