The soldiers had left their work to pursue those that had fled into the mountains; Hamilton was late; it had been bungled; some of the avenues from the Glen were left unguarded and so many of the Macdonalds had escaped. She hurried on through smoking ruins and sinking fires; to right and left lay the dead, frozen in their blood; stained and torn plaids were scattered over the heather; here and there a musket was flung down or a dirk, or a household implement hastily snatched up and cast aside. The flames of the burning huts were sinking under the snow; the cold numbed Delia’s very senses, horror and dread were frozen into apathy; the icy air, the bitter soft snowflakes chilled the heat of wrath and terror in her blood. She came through the dismantled dwellings to Makian’s house; it still stood; the door was broken off and a man with his plaid over his face lay across the threshold; by his white beard, blood-stained and trodden into the mire, she knew it for the old chief. She crept past him and into his ruined home; the peat fire still flickered upon the hearth; the place was warm despite the wind that whined through the torn door. In the very center of the room a man lay on his back with his hands outspread. Delia stole to the fire and stirred it into flame, casting on peat from the pile beside her; then, as the light leaped up she turned to the prostrate man and saw that he was Ronald Macdonald; she went on her knees in silence and lifted his head onto her lap; he made a little movement and put his hand over his breast; she saw that his coat was torn and stained and that the sluggish blood was dripping from a cut in his forehead. With a shudder she looked about her, called aloud till she grew frightened of her own echoing voice and was silent for very horror. Half-mechanically she tore off the cambric ruffles from her sleeves and then gently laying him back upon the floor, crept to the door. In a little hollow of the rocks she saw the snow had collected; hither she carried an earthenware pot and filled it and brought it back and set it on the fire and waited its melting with a silent, wild face and busy fingers tearing her ruffles into strips. She searched the hut for wine, but there was none; broken, empty bottles lay among the fallen cards. As best she could she washed his wounds and bound them up, made her cloak into a pillow for him and edged him a little nearer the fire. Then she fell into sick weeping, shuddering tears as she wiped the blood from her fingers. He moved again and spoke: “Have they gone?” She caught the whisper and bent over him. “Yes.” He moaned faintly. “I am so cold—and sick—lift me up a little.” She took his head onto her lap again; his eyes, a ghastly, icy blue in his white face, fluttered open. “Have any escaped?” he whispered. “God knows—Macdonald.”