The suspense parched me at the throat till I thought the rasping of my tongue on the roof of my palate seemed like the scraping of a heath-brush in a wooden churn. Unseen we were, we knew, but it was patent that the man above us would be round in front of us at any moment, and there we were to his plain eyesight! He was within three yards of a steel death, even had he been Fin MacCoul; but the bank he was standing on--or lying on, as we learned again--crumbled at the edge and threw him among us in a different fashion from that we had looked for. My fingers were on his throat before I saw that we had for our visitor none other than young MacLachlan. He had his _sgian dubh_ almost at my stomach before our mutual recognition saved the situation. “You’re a great stranger,” said John Splendid, with a fine pretence at more coolness than he felt, “and yet I thought Cowal side would be more to your fancy than real Argile in this vexatious time.” “I wish to God I was on Cowal side now!” said the lad, ruefully. “At this minute I wouldn’t give a finger-length of the Loch Eck road for the whole of this rich strath.” “I don’t suppose you were forced over here,” I commented. “As well here in one way as another,” he said “I suppose you are unaware that Montrose and MacDonald have overrun the whole country. They have sacked and burned the greater part of Cowal; they have gone down as far as Knapdale. I could have been in safety with my own people (and the bulk of your Inneraora people too) by going to Bute or Dunbarton, but I could hardly do that with my kinsfolk still hereabouts in difficulties.” “Where, where?” I cried; “and who do you mean?” He coughed, in a sort of confusion, I could see, and said he spoke of the Provost and his family. “But the Provost’s gone, man!” said I, “and his family too.” “My cousin Betty is not gone among them,” said he; “she’s either in the castle yonder--and I hope to God she is--or a prisoner to the MacDonalds, or----” “The Worst Curse on their tribe!” cried John Splendid, in a fervour. Betty, it seemed, from a narrative that gave me a stound of anguish, had never managed to join her father in the boats going over to Cowal the day the MacDonalds attacked the town. Terror had seemingly sent her, carrying the child, away behind the town; for though her father and others had put ashore again at the south bay, they could not see her, and she was still unfound when the triumph of the invader made flight needful again. “Her father would have bided too,” said MacLachlan, “but that he had reason to believe she found the safety of the castle. Lying off the quay when the light was on, some of the people in the other boats saw a woman with a burden run up the riverside to the back of the castle garden, and there was still time to get over the draw-brig then.”