Ronald stopped abruptly, with a shudder of excitement at the remembrance of that day. Ian, thrilled to forgetfulness of the cold and the dead fire, waited with eyes eager through the dark. “One came up to me,” continued Ronald, “and asked me for my plaid. ‘Dundee is dying,’ he said; I followed to where he lay. Dunfermline held him off the ground; they took my plaid and laid it under him to keep him off the heather. “‘How goes the day?’ he asked faintly. “Dunfermline answered, very white: ‘Well, for King James, but I am sorry for ye, Jock.’ “‘If ’tis well for the King, ’tis the less matter for me,’ said Dundee, but there was an awful look in his eyes and I think he thought of his wife and the boy he had never seen. He did not speak again; I think he would not; he turned his face away and died as the victory shout rose up the glen. “Dunfermline covered him with my plaid. ‘The war is over,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘Dundee is dead.’ “I helped to carry him to his grave, and I took his spy-glass from his sash; ’twas broken with his fall, but I kept it for rememberance. I loved Dundee. Would I lay with him in his nameless grave in Blair Athol!” His voice sank miserably into silence, and there was no sound. The clouds drifted apart over a snowy moon; there was a sense of utter desolation abroad, the cold peace of loneliness. Ronald rose and walked away from his brother toward the moonlight with the wind cool on his face; he shook with a stormy agony and cried out low and passionately: “Would I had died with Dundee before I had been poisoned with love o’ thee, Margaret Campbell!” CHAPTER VIII MACCALLUM MORE The Countess Peggy sat in the drawing-room of her lord’s handsome house in Edinburgh and measured out tea with a heavy rat-tailed spoon. It was a fine chamber with smooth polished cream-colored walls and long French windows, hung with flowered curtains of a dull pink; the furniture, black and a little heavy, caught in its clear-cut Jacobean facets the light from the dozen candles in a silver stand that burnt over the tea-table. The Countess wore a purple gown with paniers and a fine lace kerchief fastened with diamonds on her bosom; a screen of drawn red silk stood between her and the fire and cast a glow over her face and neck, lay reflected, too, in the hollow of the shining white and pink cups. There was a fragrant smell of tea and the gentle hiss of boiling water from the silver kettle; it was a comfortable room, a comfortable hour; the Countess’s green eyes were soft with content like a soothed petted cat’s before a fire. Her one companion lay back lazily on a low settee and gazed, rather vacantly, into the fire; he was a slight man with a fretful weak face, pale eyes too full, and a thin irresolute mouth. He was handsomely dressed, and for all his unprepossessing appearance, carried an air of high lineage, wealth, position and power.