(WORKING ON) Piper to the Clan (Mary Stetson Clarke)

❧ ❧

Again I was at curst Dunbar

And was a prisoner taen,

And many weary night and day

In prison I hae lien.

Sɪʀ Wᴀʟᴛᴇʀ Sᴄᴏᴛᴛ

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

❧
Ross
McCrae

Puffs of white clouds scudded across a sky brilliantly blue on the morning of July 22, 1650, as Ross McCrae walked eastward along the rutted road skirting the Firth of Forth's southern shore. He covered the ground rapidly with a Highlander's bold stride, his long legs moving in effortless rhythm beneath his belted plaid, his head with its thatch of dark brown hair thrown back as he took great gulps of the salty air.

How deeply he missed the freedom of hill and shore he had not fully realized until yesterday, when he had been sent from crowded Edinburgh and the chafing confines of army camp to Tantallon Castle for a tally of its men and arms.

    Somewhere in the confusion of dismissals and appointments, while Scotland's leaders sought the most loyal and godly men as officers for the Army of the Covenant, the inventory for Tantallon Castle had been lost. And thankful Ross was for that mischance. For here he was, on as bright and sparkling a day as had ever dawned, walking free and unmolested, with no veteran of the continental wars barking orders at him as if he were a levied Spanish peon or Flemish farmer. How could any officer, even though he had fought under the great Gustavus of Sweden or some other European monarch, put more faith in training and drilling than in a Scot's fierce loyalty to chief and clan?

    Beside Ross trotted his collie dog, Tam, one ear pricked skyward and sharp nose lifted as he sniffed the fresh morning air. This is almost like old times, thought Ross. We might be tramping along the shore of Loch Ruich at the Laird's bidding to visit the herders' crofts and to learn what goes well or ill with the folk of Kindonal.

    Only the land was different. Unlike the deep glens and steep crags of the Highlands, the Lothian plains, rich with oats and barley, rose in long sweeps to the hills of Lammermuir, where flocks of sheep dotted the distant slopes. And just ahead was a fishing village, its sturdy houses a far cry from the rude bothies of the northwest coast of Scotland. Had he taken the right turn for Tantallon, a mile or so back?

    By the roadside two small boys vied in a contest over which could jump farther over a broad puddle. As Ross drew abreast one said, "When I'm a man, I'll be as tall as Fingal."

    Ross smiled to himself. Even here in the south of Scotland lads were raised on tales of the legendary giant and his deeds.

    The second boy stretched his small frame upward and flexed a spindly arm. "I'll grow sae big that I'll—I'll—" He paused as if searching for some preposterous feat, then finished with a triumphant smile, "I'll build a brig to the Bass, and ding doon Tantallon."

    His companion snorted. "Not e'en a giant could smash doon that castle," he said contemptuously.

    Tantallon must be nearby, Ross thought, for boys to talk of it thus. Farther on a knot of men were gathered at the market cross. He would inquire of them.

    As he came up to the group he heard one old fellow say, "She told that she dreamed the castle would fall."

    "Not Tantallon!" said another, with a short laugh.

    "Aye, that's what I heard. She said that Cromwell's men would take Tantallon."

    "No soul with a lick o' sense would believe that Tantallon's walls could be breached," a loud voice claimed. "Only a witch would say sich."

    "Och, a witch she maun be then," an old man stated, wagging his white beard. Others nodded their heads in agreement.

    Ross felt a chill running down his spine. A soldier should not be tormented by echoes of an old woman's screams as she was dragged to the stake. He thrust aside the memory of the witch-burning two weeks ago at Edinburgh and called out, "Can ye tell me, am I on the richt road to Tantallon?"

    The circle broke, and the men faced toward him, staring at a strange face. "Follow this road, and ye canna miss it," the white-bearded elder said brusquely.

    Ross sensed their eyes on his back as he walked away. An unfriendly lot, these Lowlanders. At home a man would offer to show a stranger the way and would give him the gift of his company. These folk seemed to begrudge even the giving of directions. Was it because they lived close to the Border marches? The land hereabouts had been fought over so many times, its inhabitants might rightly look with suspicion upon a newcomer.

    When he had left the village behind, and the road ahead loomed empty, Ross reached for the bagpipes slung over his shoulder. Shaking out the sheepskin bag and pipelike drones, he blew into the slim wooden mouthpiece. This would be a good time to practice the march his father had taught him a few days past. This time he must try to get the tune right. But even as he filled the bag with air and tuned the drones he knew that for all he was the seventh of his line to pipe, he could never equal Black Donald's robust notes, no more than he could match his father's bold good looks. He placed his fingers over the holes in the chanter, and the first notes of the march came forth thin and reedy. Tam, barking sharply, darted across the road and snapped at the gulls that swooped in from the North Sea. The next moment he ran toward the sheep grazing on a far hillside.

    Ross watched him go. Tam isn't all hunter nor all sheep dog, he thought ruefully, but a little of both. And it is the same with me. I veer one way as the Laird's ward and kinsman and the other as Black Donald's son. While I'm sitting at the Laird's side as he judges what penalty a man shall pay for stealing one of his neighbor's sheep, stray tunes sing in my mind and take my thoughts off the judgment. And when I'm piping a tune, I begin to question if a chieftain should rightly have the power of pit and gallows over his clan.

    But here he was again, letting his thoughts wander. Pressing the swollen bag snug under his elbow, and fingering the chanter afresh, he set his mind firmly on the march. Now the notes sang bravely in the breeze. Soon he came to the difficult part, where the tune seemed to double back on itself and then go forward again. He ran through the melody once, then repeated it. Ah, now he had mastered it, and when he was at camp again he would play it for his father and hope for his approval.

    Swinging the pipes over his shoulder, Ross quickened his pace. He had met no travelers since leaving the village. The countryside was so quiet it was hard to realize that Scotland was on the verge of war and that English troops might any day cross the border, ready to strike.

    Soon the road wound close to the shore, only a narrow ribbon of green separating it from rocky cliffs that dropped sheer to the sea. How blue the ocean was, with white caps frothing, and gulls and kittiwakes soaring and screeching above it.

    Offshore about two miles rose the steep contours of Bass Rock, standing like a craggy sentinel at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. Ross chuckled, remembering the small boy's boast. Only a giant like Fingal could build a bridge to that rocky islet.

    Soon he must glimpse Tantallon. Would it resemble the castle of Kindonal where he had spent his boyhood, its stonework golden beside the blue waters of Loch Ruich? Or would it be a fortress as black and grim as Sterling or Edinburgh Castle?

    Ahead the road rose abruptly to climb a steep hill. Coming down its slope toward him was an old woman. One clawlike hand held her shawl close about her thin shoulders. The other grasped a long stick with which she was driving a gaggle of geese. Wisps of gray hair blew about her face. Ross's throat tightened. Might she be the woman the man had called witch?

    Tam ran up and barked sharply at the hissing fowls. Ross gripped the dog's thick ruff. "Quiet, Tam," he ordered, and the dog was silent.

    The old woman had cheeks like shriveled apples. She waved her stick and called out, "Ho, laddie, ken ye the price of geese in the town?"

    Laddie, indeed! Couldn't the crone recognize a man when she saw one? A man on a mission for General David Leslie? Pulling himself up to his full six feet and trying to look older than his seventeen years, Ross asked indignantly, "Nay, and why should I ken aught o' geese?"

    Her cackled rasped in his ears. "Many a man will do murder for a taste o' guid goose before these troubles be o'er," she said darkly, and hobbled on.

    Ross looked after her uneasily. Do murder for geese when the fields were thick with grain, when dovecots swarmed with pigeons, and sheep grazed on the hills? The woman must be daft—or worse. The quicker he put distance between himself and the old harpy, the better. He started up the slope.

    At the top of the hill he forgot the woman completely. Ahead loomed a castle, its red sandstone vivid against the blue of sky and sea, its bulk majestic atop a high cliff. On this vast promontory jutting out into the Northern Sea, its walls rising to breathtaking heights, Tantallon appeared impregnable indeed. No wonder men and boys alike were certain it would never fall.

❧

Tantallon

For a mile Ross strode forward impatiently. With each step he took, the castle seemed to grow more lofty and massive. And by the time he had turned into the well-worn road to Tantallon's outer ramparts, he felt dwarfed by its steep bulk.

    Before crossing the bridge that led over a deep ditch to the castle's outer gate, Ross called Tam to him and commanded, "Begone!" The collie fixed his gaze on his master for a moment, lifted one ear as if to show he understood, then ran off and disappeared behind a low hill.

    Though some men kept their dogs ever with them, even in the kirk, Ross had long since taught Tam to go out of sight at his command. There were some places where even a well-trained dog was a nuisance, and Tantallon could be such, especially if the castle dogs were jealous guardians. Tam would not venture far, Ross was certain. And when he left the castle, the collie would be waiting, plumed tail waving a welcome.

    Two men lounged at the arched stone doorway of the high gate. One honed a halberd's point; the other munched on a piece of cheese.

    The man with the weapon rose. His beard was gray and his smile quizzical. "What might be your errand?" he asked.

    Ross stiffened. How his drillmaster would scoff at so un-military a greeting. "I'm frae General Leslie's headquarters," he said.

    If the guard was impressed he did not show it. "And I supposed ye have proof o' the same?"

    Ross drew a folded square of paper from his saffron shirt. "This is for Captain Alexander Seton," he said impatiently, and started forward.

    The man shifted his halberd so that its point was no more than an inch from Ross's chest. "Wait till I've looked at it. Then I'll judge whether ye may enter." Beneath the soft voice was a steely edge. He inspected the folded sheet, his outer lip thrust forward. A moment later he turned toward a third soldier seated at an iron-studded inner door and bawled, "A visitor for the captain. Escort him."

    The escort led Ross into the outer bailey, a spacious courtyard bright with sunshine and the flashing of birds' wings around a dovecot. The garrison would have plenty of fresh meat during the winter, thought Ross, eyeing the pigeons.

    Ahead the barbican towers rose menacingly before a curtain wall so lofty it seemed to meet the sky. As he passed over the drawbridge, Ross could see the deep ditch it spanned. Overhead hung the portcullis's iron teeth, black and threatening. When he stepped inside the grim entrance, the heavy walls seemed to press down upon him. Awed by the mass of stone, he followed his guide through a shadowy tunnel pierced by doorways, each occupied by an armed guard.

    Abruptly they emerged into a broad, sunlit inner court. Ahead and to the right were low walls stacked with fodder. Behind them was the mid-tower, flanked by broad stretches of curtain wall and two more towers, one to the east, another to the west. From the west tower stretched a row of stone buildings.

    The inner courtyard had all the activity of a village. Through an open door Ross could see a baker pulling loaves of bread from an oven. Not far away a blacksmith was shoeing a horse while another smith hammered out a pike head on an anvil. Men sat about in the sun, burnishing armor.

    At a well, two boys turned a windlass to bring up dripping buckets of water. And nearby a half dozen women scrubbed laundry in a long trough, their tongues as busy as their hands.

    While Ross watched, a young girl came up to the women, a bundle of clothing in her hand. Fair hair hung limp about her face, and her eyes were downcast. "It's sae brisk a day for drying I had thocht to do my wash," she ventured.

    The women looked up, and as if at a signal, spread their arms along the trough's edge. One with bristling red hair spat venomously at the girl's feet. "There's no room!" she jeered.

    The girl cowered and retreated toward a doorway. Two men were passing. At her approach they shrank back against the wall as if they feared her long skirt might brush against and contaminate them.

    Ross's guide said impatiently, "This way to the Long Hall." He hurried along the base of the western curtain wall to a doorway just beyond the west tower. Up a curving stone stair they climbed to a landing on which a door stood ajar.

    Ross could see a larger chamber lighted by small arched windows on the courtyard side, with a hooded fireplace and two long window slits on the outer wall. The escort turned and descended the stairs, his duty done. Ross waited uncertainly outside the room, loathe to interrupt its occupants.

    A stocky man with iron-gray hair and a bristling mustache, evidently Captain Seton, was striding up and down, talking with a gentle-faced woman seated in a ray of sunlight. Her hand was poised as if she had left off her embroidering to listen to him.

    "What more proof do ye need that she's a witch?" the man growled. "Didna the gateman's bairn sicken and die after she kissed it? And ye were the one told me of her dream that the castle would fall."

    The woman's eyes widened in earnestness. "Kettie confided in me only sae that we might save ourselves. Ye have no right to condemn her for a dream. Ye have nightmares aplenty yerself."

    The man stamped his foot. "But Agnes Sampson was not my grandam."

    "It's sixty years or mair since Agnes Sampson was put to death in Edinburgh. Can ye not forget the puir soul?"

    "After she put an evil spell on Earl Angus in this verra castle? And caused his death? She deserved well the fire and the stake."

    The woman rose and put her hand on her husband's arm. "But Kettie is not her grandmother. She is as innocent of evil as I."

    The man placed a swift hand over his wife's mouth. "Let no one hear ye voice such madness."

    Ross waited to hear no more. He lifted his hand and knocked on the doorjamb.

    The captain swung to face him. "Well?" he asked impatiently.

    Ross stepped forward. "I bring a message from General Leslie," he announced. "I have orders to take inventory of your force."

    Captain Seton thrust out his hand. "Give me the letter," he ordered. "I need nae young upstart to tell me its contents."

    Flushing, Ross obeyed. A minute later he stepped back as the captain gave an angry oath and shouted, "I sent a full count to Edinburgh not two months ago. Think they I've naught to do but scratch wi' pen and ink?"

    Ross cleared his throat. "I could make the report."

    The captain laughed. "Leslie writes that I'm to make a list of my force and arms and return it by his messenger." The way he said messenger made Ross feel that there could be no lower rank possible.

    "I'll take ye wi' me and ye can do the scriving, since ye're sae eager," continued the captain. "We'll start in the Douglas Tower; 'tis nearest." He started heavily down the stairs, each thumping footstep a protest.

    The woman caught up a sheet of paper, a quill, and a small pot of ink from a table and gave them to Ross. "Pay no mind to the captain's temper," she said. "He has reason enow to be wrought up." Her smile restored some of Ross's confidence.

    In the next two hours Ross was thankful that he had not been ordered to to take the inventory alone. Even the simplest task, counting the men and officers, he could not have accomplished unaided, for there was a constant coming and going through the honeycombed fortress. He would have been hard put to locate even the many cannon. As for classifying them, he would have been at a total loss, for here were culverins in three sizes, as well as cutthroats and slangs. In addition there were many handguns, a few of the new flintlocks, but more of the old matchlocks, and even some hackbuts and harquebuses.

    After the inventory had been made, Ross was left alone to struggle with his scribbled notes. By late afternoon he had composed a reasonably neat list which numbered a total of fourscore men, eleven officers, a dozen horses, sixteen great guns, and one hundred and twenty small arms. He took the paper to the Long Hall and presented it to the captain, who scowled over it and scratched his signature at the bottom.

    Ross folded the list, put it in his shirt, and was turning to go when the woman spoke. "Will ye not ask him to tarry the nicht, husband?"

    Captain Seton rubbed one hand across his forehead. "Och, aye," he said. "Tantallon turns no man out in the dark. Tell the guard ye're to sup and sleep here."

    What was left of the afternoon Ross spent watching the two smiths. Uncanny it was what they could do with a bar of iron. First they heated it to a whitish glow, then beat it with heavy hammers. Next they thrust it back into the fire, which was made to burn fiercely by means of a bellows operated by a boy. Then came more hammer blows, more trips back to the fire, and at the last, there was a Lochaber ax with a long narrow blade and a hook at the end for catching onto a man's armor and unseating him from his horse.

    A page came running with an iron cuirass. The tasse at the bottom had come loose, and his master wanted it repaired. There was a muttered consultation, the armor was heated, and the smiths went to work. They bent so closely over the metal that Ross could not see exactly what they did. But in a short while the skirtlike projection was firmly in place, and the page bore the breastplate away.

    A smith as skilled as these would be useful at Kindonal Castle—far more so than the gnarled man there who made a botch even of shoeing a horse. Ross wondered if the Laird had thought of having one of his men trained in such work. He might speak of such a possibility on his return to the camp.

❧

Beacon

Fires

The fresh fish and peas and newly baked loaves were welcome at sundown, as was the talk of the men-at-arms. Some had fought with the Parliamentarians at Marston Moor when Cromwell had led his forces out of what seemed sure defeat into a triumph of victory.

    "Old Noll is a man I've no stomach to meet in battle," said a gray-haired guard. "Not for naught is he dubbed Ironsides."

    "Is that why ye came here instead of Edinburgh?" taunted a lean-faced stripling.

    The guard jutted out his chin. "And what's wrong wi' wantin' to be inside strong walls?"

    "The walls won't save ye if what Kettie says be true," said the stripling with a laugh.

    "Blast the witch! She'll bring a curse on Tantallon yet. Mark my words." The gray-haired man raised a warning hand.

    Later that night Ross tossed and turned wakefully. After weeks of sleeping in the open, he found the guard room stuffy and the snores of his companions anything but soporific. He rose quietly, picked up his bagpipes, flung his plaid over his shoulder, and tiptoed out into the court. No moon lighted the cloudy sky, and only a lone torch sputtered at the entrance of the middle tower.

    Ross made his way toward the east tower, and started up the curved stone staircase. After a few steps he was in complete darkness. No matter, the steps were solid, though worm and uneven. With one hand on the wall, he moved upward.

    At each landing Ross stopped to listen. All was silent. Four stories he climbed and came to the top of the great curtain wall. A guard, his shadow darker than the night, was moving along the high path. Not wanting to be ordered back to the guard room, Ross waited for him to vanish into the mid-tower, then climbed up to the platform roof and settled down behind the corbeled parapet. Here was fresh air, here was quiet, and here he was alone. Now he should be able to sleep.

    He stretched himself out, wrapping his plaid about him against the sea damp, and waited for drowsiness. It did not come. Instead he felt wide-awake and wary, as if something were about to happen.

    There's nothing to fret over, he told himself. My work is done, and by morning I'll be on my way back to Edinburgh. But still his uneasiness persisted. When a stifled cough was sounded nearby he was not surprised, only angry with himself. Because no one had challenged him, he had assumed that he was alone.

    "Who's there?" he growled, his hand on the dirk at his belt.

    "Only me," whispered a small voice. "Kettie."

    "The witch?" he asked, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. In his mind's eye he could see the old woman with her shriveled-apple cheeks.

    "I dinna feel like a witch though they call me one." The voice was unmistakably young and filled with despair.

    He had heard those tones before. Suddenly he remembered. "Ye're the lass that could find no place to do her wash?"

    "Ye saw that?" Her tone was wondering. "Ye maun be the Highlander come frae the general."

    "I am," he assented. The girl must have some sense if she recognized him as a man of the Highlands. Almost at once he was on guard again. Witches had a way of knowing things, and from what he had heard in the Long Hall, this Kettie's grandmother had been condemned and burned.

    "When did ye first ken ye might be a witch?" he asked.

    There was a sob. "When I had the dream of the castle falling. I could see the walls, all battered, and the captain's face when he stood on this very tower and called out in surrender."

    "What about the babe that died?" he asked. "Did ye put a spell on it?"

    The girl burst out weeping. "I loved the bairn. I wished it no harm."

    "Why did ye not speak out and say so?" he asked.

    "I did. But folk pointed and shouted at me, and made signs to ward off evil. And then I began to think"—the voice dropped so low that Ross could scarcely hear—"that perchance I might be different."

    "Ye look like an ordinary lass to me," said Ross stoutly. "Why do ye think ye differ from ither folk?"

    "Because o' my dreams. And sometimes I see things ahead."

    "Why do ye not leave Tantallon?" Ross asked.

    "Because I've no place to go."

    "No kinfolk? No friends outside these walls?"

    "Nay, none. And besides, of what use would it be for me to leave? I know that I'm to die here."

    "Nobody knows how he will die," said Ross.

    "I know what my death will be. I saw myself in a dream, falling down a cliff onto rocks, and the sea carried awa' my body. The cliff was like that at the seaward side o' the castle."

    Ross was silent. The girl sounded as certain of her fate as if she had sure knowledge of it. If she was not a witch, she was headed for trouble, talking this way.

    "Hae ye told anyone about this dream?" he asked.

    "Nay. I dare not talk to castle folk now."

    Ross stood up. "I'll gie ye some counsel," he said, "and ye'll do well to take it. Leave Tantallon as soon as ye can. Ye could live elsewhere, perchance in Edinburgh."

    She gave a low cry. "'Twas there my grandmother was killed."

    "Well, somewhere else," he said impatiently. "But get ye away from here, and stop sich feckless dreaming."

    Ross was turning toward the stair when suddenly his eye was caught by a pinpoint of light on a distant hilltop. The spark flared in the black night, grew to a flickering flame, then swelled to a mighty blaze.

    A beacon! One of the fires lit to warn Scotland that the English had crossed over the boundary and were even now in the Border marches. Soon there would be fighting. He must get back to Edinburgh and the clan.

    Toward the west another tiny pinprick glowed in the blackness. By now the Laird, his father, and companions-in-arms would know that the English were on the march. There would be other fires ignited on the craggy hills to the west and north until the alarm went out over all of Scotland.

    A cry sounded from the curtain wall. "The beacon!"

    Torches appeared in the court below. Men ran sleepily from the guard chambers. Footsteps thudded on the stairs, and voices rang in the rooms.

    The girl stood beside Ross. He could feel her trembling. "Dinna fear, lass," he said. "Ye'll be safe enow within these walls."

    Just then a guard burst upon them, a torch in his hand. Swift as a greyhound the girl slipped past and started down the stairs. The terror in her face was so great that Ross followed.

    They had reached the lowest level when the girl stopped at a slit in the wall. Ross halted behind her and put his eye to the narrow opening. In the courtyard was gathered a bunch of women, muttering and gesticulating. At their head was the red-haired dame of the laundry trough.

    "'Tis that Kettie has brought this harm upon us," she shouted.

    "She should be chased awa',"offered a stout female.

    "And free to set her spells on other innocent folk? Nay. Let her die as her grandam did—and good riddance!" The woman waved the torch, her mouth working in frenzy.

    "Like her grandam, at the stake?" quavered an older voice.

    "Aye—at the stake. Witches maun needs be burnt." Shrieks and shouts echoed the cry.

    "We maun find the witch!"

    The crowd started to move along the eastern curtain wall. The girl's slender frame was quaking. Listening to the mob, Ross felt none too steady himself. He must act—and quickly. Soon they would come to this tower.

    Shaking out the folds of his plaid, Ross put his left arm around Kettie, pulled her close, and wrapped the woolen folds about them both, covering her from head to ankles.

    "Do we walk in the shadows," he said, "wi' ye on the dark side, ye'll nae be seen."

    Hidden in the tartan's length, the girl matched her pace with his, step by step, along the courtyard's edge to the mid-tower. A group of guards were gathered there. Ross hesistated.

    A soldier looked up and said, "Oh, 'tis the Highlander. If ye're wantin' to get back to Leslie ye maun wait till the morn when the drawbridge be let doon."

    Ross turned and walked slowly back toward the east tower, then set out beside the low wall that bordered the seaward escarpment. Far below, the sea beat in distant surf. He could feel the girl trying to hold him back.

    "Go not here," she whispered frantically "Not by the cliffs."

    "'Tis the only way," he said firmly, "if I'm to take ye to Mistress Seton."

    He could feel her yielding to his direction and knew he had been right to think of the captain's wife, just as he was right in his decision to skirt the unlighted side of the court in order to reach the Seton's quarters. He could hear the captain's voice booming out from the ramparts. His lady would be alone, and might give the girl succor.

    "Let me walk on the inside, awa' from the cliff," begged a muffled voice.

    "Ye'll be in mair danger of being seen there," he said. "Hold fast to me. I'll no' let ye fall."

    The crowd of women had grown. Surely there were more than a dozen now. In addition there were a few men, their fists and voices raised in anger. Ross quickened his pace, then slowed. He must try to appear like a man merely passing time till the dawn.

    The night wind was cool upon his face. Forcing a saunter, Ross marched his swaddled companion around the borders of the courtyard. Undetected they passed the sea gate and the outward walls. Ahead lay the bakehouse and kitchen, both empty and dark. Then he saw that the crowd had turned and headed for the foot of the Douglas Tower, the very place that he must go to enter the Long Hall.

    While he paused, Kettie plucked at his sleeve. He saw that she was peering through a gap in the plaid. "In here," she whispered, and led him up a short flight of steps just beyond the kitchen. It was to the back entrance of the Long Hall. Above was a broad doorway. At his knock it was opened by Mistress Seton, a candle in her hand.

❧

The

Haven

Before Ross could say a word, Kettie tumbled out of the plaid and to her knees before the woman, her eyes wide in terror.

    The captain's wife looked at Ross. "I canna keep her here," she said, and stooped to smooth the girl's fair hair. Then she straightened, listened a moment to the cries in the courtyard, and beckoned them both to follow.

    Ross put his arm under Kettie's and urged her along behind Mistress Seton through a doorway into a small chamber at the end of the Long Hall, next to the Douglas Tower. She pushed aside a tapestry on the wall, disclosing a door which she unlocked with a key that hung from her girdle.

    "Ye maun go down those stairs," she said, pointing.

    Kettie shrank back against Ross. "Not the dungeon!"

    The woman smiled. "Do ye think I would send ye there? These steps lead around the dungeon to an old haven where small boats used to find shelter. It was partly destroyed in a storm, and has not been used for sae many years that scarce any know of it now. Once ye are down, go alang the beach until ye be out o' sight o' the castle. At first light climb the cliff and go to my old nurse at the cottage on the Broxburn in Dunbar, just off the Great Road. Take her this so that she will know it was I sent ye." She unclasped a brooch  from her bodice and pressed it into the girl's hand.

    Captain Seton's voice sounded in the Long Hall. "Ho, wife!"

    "Go now!" Mistress Seton gave Ross a shove. He stumbled onto the stairs, Kettie behind him, as the door swung shut. The darkness was blacker than any he had ever known. Thoughts of Tam waiting near the outer gate, the clan in arms without him, the message he bore for Leslie, all whirled in his mind. Then he felt Kettie's fingers, cold as ice, on his arm. Only one thing mattered now, getting the girl safely away from her accusers.

    He started to take a step, tripped on an end of the plaid, and almost fell. Frantically he yanked it over his shoulder next to the bagpipes and hitched his belt tight around the folds. Then he put his hand out to the cold stone of the wall and began the descent, the girl clinging to his back like a limpet.

    The steps were of rough stone, uneven in height, but steady. For that he could be thankful. One slip and who knew how far they might fall?

    Round and round, down and down they went, like two ants on a corkscrew. He could feel himself growing giddy with the circling motion. The walls grew colder and were wet with slime. The air was heavy with moisture. How much farther must they descend?

    Ross halted to clear his spinning head, then continued down the steps. Suddenly he stepped into ankle-deep water so icy that he almost cried out. At the same moment his hand met the rough planks of a door. His fingers raced over the wood and found a heavy bar swollen with damp. Heaving with all his might, he raised it and pulled the door inward. In a moment he and the girl stood in a hollow space at the foot of the great cliffs.

    Together Ross and Kettie clambered along the shore, putting distance between themselves and the castle. Over rocky outcroppings and shallow beaches they made their way to the northwest, the night seeming less dark after the blackness of the stairwell. At last they rounded a steep crag. Now we cannot be seen from Tantallon, thought Ross, and he helped Kettie climb up on a large boulder. Its top, broad and dry, must be above high water. He eased himself onto the rock and let out a long breath. So far, so good. Besdie him Kettie was shivering.

    "What might ye be afraid of now?" he asked impatiently.

    "I'm cald," she said, her teeth chattering.

    He unbuckled his plaid and gave it to her. "Now ye maun try to get some rest," he ordered, and stretched out on the rock.

    For some reason—the stony bed, the night's events, or thoughts of the morrow—he could not sleep, and was almost relieved when he heard Kettie's whisper.

    "What name might ye be called by?"

    "Ross McCrae," he said shortly.

    "It has a brave ring. Is your hame far distant?"

    "Clear across Scotland and well to the north." For a minute he could see Loch Ruich's clear waters ringed by wooded hills. He could even see himself returning to Kindonal, piping a march of victory while the castle folk cried out a welcome.

    "What o' your parents?" asked Kettie.

    "My mother died when I was a babe," he said. "The Laird, being childless, raised me like his ain." He paused and added, "My father is piper to the clan."

    No need to mention the shame he felt when folk whispered behind their hands that he was the son of the Laird's poor dead cousin, her who ran off with a piper when she could have made a proper match. That Black Donald still tuned his pipes in Kindonal Castle and marched at the head of the clan was a weakness on the Laird's part, said gossips. But Ross wondered if perhaps his father's enemies were merely jealous of his fame and skill in piping and his rugged good looks.

    "I've not a soul to care for me," said Kettie wistfully.

    "Ye'll have Mistress Seton's nurse," said Ross, yawning. The girl was quiet, and in a few minutes her soft breathing told him she was asleep.

❧

Kettie's

Dream

Soon Ross too dozed off. How long he slept he could not tell. A muffled scream aroused him.

    He jerked awake in the gray dawn. "Be still!" he muttered. "Do ye want them to find us?"

    Kettie was huddled in his plaid, one hand to her mouth, her dark eyes wide with fear. "I could see ye," she blurted, "as clear as ye are now. 'Twas a fearful dream."

    Her fright was contagious. Ross tried to laugh as he asked, "And was I on the castle wall with the captain? Or falling off the cliff with ye?"

    "Far worse. Ye were in the midst of battle with the dead and dying all around. I could smell the blood and hear the cries." She put her hands over her ears.

    Himself in the midst of battle? Perhaps she had indeed the gift of foresight. Doubt gnawed at him now as it did every time he raised his claymore, the two-edged Highland sword, in a practice drill. "Did I fight bravely?" he asked.

    Her eyes widened. "I couldna tell. The dream changed. I saw ye again, and ye were on a ship wi' other men sailing awa' across the ocean."

    The girl must be daft. He had no mind to go to sea. Kettie's dreams could be no more than the nightmares every person had at one time or another.

    "Ye're o'erwrought from last night's chase," he said. Partly to take her mind off her troubles, partly to steady his own nerves, he drew the chanter from his bagpipes and put it to his lips. Detached from the bag and drones, it produced a flutelike sound that would not be heard at any distance.

    A gay little tune he had in mind, one that he had heard his father play in a lighthearted moment. He blew into the slender tube, his fingers remembering their places as the song came softly to life.

    In some uncanny way the music changed between his mind's intent and the notes that came forth. Perhaps it was the fault of wind and wave, soughing and swishing. Perhaps because he had only the chanter on which to play. But in some way beyond his power, the song was not the merry lilt he had hoped for, but an eerie, haunting melody.

    For a few minutes he kept on. No instrument could thwart him. But the sorrowful keening continued.

    Disgusted, Ross slid the chanter into his belt, and noticed that the light had become stronger. Standing up, he stretched, and squinted at the cliff above. "Come alang," he said to the girl, and jumped down from the boulder.

    They found a rough path up the cliff, and by clinging to stone outcroppings, climbed to the top. Beyond, the land rose in a slow and steady sweep. All was gray and desolate, with only a faint glow lighting the sky.

    They had not gone far beyond the cliffs when a furry form raced through the misty light, barking in joy. "Tam!" Ross knelt at the dog's side and threw his arms around him, while the animal lapped at his face and whined in delight.

    Then Ross saw that Kettie had retreated to a distance and was cowering. "Will he bite?" she asked fearfully.

    "Not unless I tell him to," said Ross. "Come ye here and gie him a pat."

    But Kettie would not move. Finally Ross went up to her, Tam at his side, and forced her hand onto Tam's head. The dog twisted around, sniffed at her fingers, and then licked them in approval.

    Kettie gave a cry of pleasure. "He likes me!" Timorously she patted the smooth fur.

    Together the three set out, keeping close to some hawthorne hedgerows, and swinging wide to the south to avoid Tantallon.  With luck they would not be sighted from the castle.

    At a steady pace they continued through the glory of sunrise. By full daylight the land had come alive. Shepherds gathered flocks to drive them into the hills. Farmers scattered dry straw in the fields and set fire to the ripening barley and oats, in order that their grain could not be used by the advancing English army.

    The road was filled with people. Women with bundles over their shoulders, leading children by the hand, hastened to the town for safety, some to North Berwick and some to Dunbar. Old men wheeled barrows of provisions. And a few stout fellows armed with pikes or claymores hurried to Edinburgh. No one paid any attention to the young Highlander with a dog and a girl. All were too concerend with their own troubles, set off by the beacons that had flared in the night.

    At a cottage in the fold of the hills, Ross bought two loaves and some cheese. Farther on he and Kettie came to a ravine cut by a burbling brook.

    "Shall we break our fast by yon burn?" Ross asked. He could hardly wait to taste the fragrant loaf. He was kneeling down, scooping water in his hands and drinking thirstily, when he heard Kettie give a low cry of pleasure.

    "Look!" she said. "Wild strawberries!"

    While Ross cut the loaves and cheese with his dirk Kettie gathered some of the juicy red berries. A few minutes later she offered Ross a handful and began picking more for herself. Then she sat down near him and accepted gratefully the bread and cheese he held out to her.

    The ravine offered shelter from the sea breeze; the sun shone warmly. Ross stretched out on the bank. The bread and cheese had satisfied his hunger; the taste of the berries was still sweet in his mouth.

    Kettie sat a few feet away, Tam curled beside her. She was feeding him bits of her loaf. When he licked her hand in gratitude, she stroked his head fondly. For a girl who had been mortally afraid of dogs a few hours ago, she had certainly changed.

    In a high sweet voice Kettie began to sing. Ross closed his eyes, listening to the ballad.

There were two sisters sat in a bower;

Binnorie, O Binnorie.

There came a knight to be their wooer

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

He courted the eldest wi' glove an' ring.

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

But he loved the youngest above a' thing

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    The tune was one that Ross knew well. He slipped the chanter from his belt, put it to his lips, and blew into it softly. Kettie's eyes lit up with pleasure as she continued her song.

The eldest she was vexed sair,

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

And much envied her sister fair

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    Together Kettie and Ross went through the entire ballad with its tale of the drowning of the younger girl, the harper's taking strands of her hair to string his harp, and the songs he played thereon.

The lasten tune that he played then,

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

Was woe to my sister, fair Ellen,

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    When the final plaintive note had died away, Ross shook out his chanter and started up guiltily. For a few minutes he had completely forgotten that he was on a mission for General Leslie and that the English were even now marching into Scotland.

    "Come alang," he ordered impatiently.

    By midday they had covered the dozen miles to the shepherd's hut, having skirted about the town of Dunbar. Ross had no trouble finding the cottage. It was set in a hollow beside the Broxburn, a short distance from where the stream crossed the Great Road on its way to the sea. The burn carved a deep gully along the foot of the high hill that rose from its southern bank; Doon Hill it was called.

    The old nurse sat in her doorway spinning. Suspicious at first, she melted at the sight of the brooch, and held out her arms to Kettie. "Welcome ye are to bide here. Me man's gone to the hills with the sheep, but I'll no' leave me hame for any Sassenachs, e'en though they be led by Cromwell."

    Ross turned away, whistling Tam to his side. Now that the nurse had taken charge of the girl, he could hurry north to Edinburgh, deliver his report, and rejoin his comrades.

    He had gone only a few paces when Kettie ran up behind him. Snatching his hand, she bent and pressed her lips to it.

    "I canna gie ye proper thanks," she said. "Ye hae saved my life and I'll ne'er forget. God willing, I may be o' help to ye one day."

    Ross pulled his fingers away impatiently. "Dinna fash yersel' o'er me," he said. "An' forget about yer dreams. They're naught but fancies."

    Kettie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and curved her lips in a wan attempt at a smile. Ross turned abruptly and strode off. But for many a mile the memory of her pathetic face swam between him and the road.

❧

Edinburgh

Ross walked until late afternoon, then climbed onto a cart laden with cheese and dried fish.

    The driver, leather-faced and stooped, said, "Aye. I'm drivin' the beasts till I get me victuals well inside Edinburgh and the siller safe in me pocket. I'll not chance me stores being stole by the English."

    The driver, leather-faced and stooped, said, "Aye. I'm drivin' the beasts till I get me victuals well inside Edinburgh and the siller safe in me pocket. I'll not chance me stores being stole by the English."

    "Could ye spare me a bite?" asked Ross, offering a coin. The driver produced oatcakes and a stone bottle of ale. Refreshed, Ross stretched out on the load, a large circular cheese at his head and a pile of fish at his back. In a few minutes Tam leaped up beside him. Ross hardly felt the jolting of the wheels on the rutted road and did not waken until twilight, when a sentry near Leith shouted a challenge.

    At the outskirts of the city Ross jumped to the ground, calling out his thanks to the driver. Then he made his way through the thickly packed camp.

    It was still a marvel to him that the Scottish army was composed of so many different elements. There were hard-bitten mercenaries, returned from Europe, who carried themselves as if they alone had any knowledge of war. There were Lowland levies, called to arms recently, and the regular Lowland regiments of the standing army. And there were Highland regiments and Highland levies like himself and others of his clan who had followed the Laird's call to arms.

    Above the massed tents flew many-hued flags, their bright colors as varied as their devices. Some were narrow, some broad, and some swallow-tailed. Far off in the distance rose the insignia of the royal banner, the lion rampant in gold on the shield of Scotland. Ross wondered what the young King Charles was thinking now. Was he jubilant at the prospect of battle? Or did he, like Ross, harbor secret doubts as to his own prowess?

    As Ross approached the Laird's tent, he passed a stocky man audibly engaged in evening devotions. Lachlan Maclachlan, the weaver, would not think of kneeling in prayer, such subservient posture being too reminiscent of popery for a strict Presbyterian.

    "'I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart.'" Lachlan's voice did not waver as Ross went by.

    Near the entrance of the Laird's tent, Hugh MacPherson was crouched over a small fire. At Ross's step he rose. With his fair hair and slight figure, he looked little more than lad, although he was two years Ross's senior and a married man. The Laird's clerk, he was forever penning notes to his dear Jeannie and wee bairn in the time between writing official messages.

    "Has the Laird kept ye working late tonight?" Ross asked.

    "Nay, he's sore ill," Hugh said. "Fair shakin' himself apart with a chill."

    "The ague again," Ross said. "I thocht as much when heard Lachlan's choice of Scripture. Hark ye, he's still at it."

    "'If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book,'" came Lachlan's voice, heavy with warning, "'then the Lord will make all thy plagues wonderful.'"

    Hugh sighed. "Lachlan is afraid that the Laird is toо worldly."

    "Would that he might find a more hopeful verse," Ross said. "The last time the Laird was taken ill he feared he'd not recover. I'll go in to him." Ague or not, the Laird, as his commanding officer, was the one to whom he must deliver the tally.

    "Take this wi' ye and see if ye can get him to sup a bit." Hugh handed Ross a cup of heated wine.

    The Laird was stretched out on a pallet, a blanket pulled to his chin. His sharp-featured face was white in the candlelight, his jutting nose and hooded eyes giving him the look of an aging falcon. Tremors shook his body.

    Ross knelt down and put one arm under the older man's head, lifted it, then held the cup to his lips. The Laird swallowed weakly and sank back.

    "Ah, lad, ye're back. Did ye get to Tantallon?" So faint was his voice that Ross had to strain to hear it.

    "Aye, and a fine fortress it is, as solid as the rock it stands on."

    "And ye got the tally for Leslie?"

    "'Tis here." Ross drew out the folded paper. "Shall read it to ye?"

    The Laird's eyelids drooped. "Nay. Ye maun deliver it to the general." A spasm contorted his face.

    Suddenly Ross was aware of his deep love for the Laird. Only to him had the older man revealed the tenderness that lay beneath his flinty exterior. "Are ye in pain?" he asked. "I'll fetch a surgeon."

    "One came this morning." The words were very low. "I was better off before he bled me."

    "Is there no way I can help ye?" Ross asked. He had never felt more helpless in his life.

    "Nay. Get ye to Leslie." The Laird looked full at Ross, and in that instant he saw the shadow in the stern eyes.

    Ross pressed the veined hand in farewell, not trusting himself to speak. Outside he handed the cup to Hugh, and whistled Tam to his side. Then he set out, now and then lifting a hand in greeting to fellow clansmen as he went. He almost stopped beside Duncan Muir, stretched out beside a small fire. Though Duncan did not hold a command post, he could no more help being a natural leader than he could help being over six feet and brawny as a giant. At home the villagers waited always for him to voice an opinion or to act. Invariably their actions and opinions mirrored his. Was Duncan aware of how seriously ill the Laird was? But Duncan was deep in conversation with John Davison, the schoolmaster who had recently come to Kindonal, so Ross continued on his way.

    Farther on he heard the squawling notes of bagpipes as players filled their sheepskins. Inside a cluster of men stood his father and two other pipers. Black Donald towered above the rest, his head high, his handsome face flushed.

    "Ho, lad," he called out. "Ye're just in time to aid me in upholdin' the honor of Kindonal. Bring out yer pipes and we'll show these McLeans how a pibroch should rightly be played."

    Ross could hardly belicve his ears. His father must think his playing had really improved! He started to reach for his pipes. Then he knew he must refuse.

    "I canna stop now," he faltered. "I'm carryin' a message to the general."

    Black Donald towered over Ross. "Is a wee paper to come before a father's wish, and the honor of the clan?" he thundered, liquor strong upon his breath. Pipers were deep drinkers, as everyone knew. Something about the blowing gave a man a powerful thirst, his father had explained.

    "The Laird told me to deliver it tonight," maintained Ross. Didn't his father realize that the English had crossed the border?

    "And who is closer to ye, the Laird or the man whose blood runs in yer body?" demanded the piper.

Ross put one hand on his father's arm. "There's naught I'd rather do than play the pibroch wi' ye, and I'm honored that ye ask. But this message may be o' import to General Leslie, so I maunna tarry."

    As Ross sped away with Tam close at his heels he could hear his father's pipes snarling an angry protest. Not alone for his dark hair and beard had Black Donald earned his name. Yet Ross could not help but marvel at the skill with which he could make the bagpipes sing out his every mood, from high excitement to dark gloom. Of late his music had been mainly of storm and strife.

    Near Calton Hill a sentry bristling with weapons challenged Ross. He strode forward into streets full of movement, glad that previous trips with the Laird had acquainted him with the layout of the city.

    Lights gleamed from the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Across the way at the White Horse Inn more lights shone, and from the open door and windows issued bursts of excited talk. All along the road called the Canongate there was constant movement of people outside the great houses of the nobility. Men hurried here and there preceded by lackeys carrying torches. Grooms with horses waited at doorways.

    Up into High Street Ross hastened, past the shadowy Church of St. Giles and the gloomy prison, the Tolbooth, where a lone torch at the gate cast an eerie light on the severed head of Montrose. Thank God the Earl's execution and dismemberment had taken place in May, before Ross had first reached Edinburgh, and that he had escaped having to watch the spectacle. It had been bad enough standing guard at the burning of a witch a fortnight past. He put his hand out and touched Tam's rough coat for reassurance.

    Ross continued his climb, reached the heights of Castle Hill, and crossed the moat to the castle's portcullis gate. In the courtyard a troop of cavalry waited, the horses' hoofs ringing sharply on the paving stones. Past one guard after another Ross made his way upward, each time explaining his errand, until he reached the Crown Square. Here асtivity had reached a fevered pitch. Officers and soldiers moved in and out of the buildings that stood on each side of the quadrangle.

    On the steps of the Parliament Hall Ross was challenged by a brusque red-faced man in a buff coat and tartan trews, who took the inventory thankfully. "The meeting has just finished. I'll give this to the general as he comes out. Wait ye here in case he wants to question ye."

    The great doors opened, guards clicked to attention, and group of men surged out, at their head a bent, crooked, gray-haired man. Ross recognized General David Leslie, commander in chief of the Army of the Covenant. Men said that what he lacked in physical strength he more than made up for by his skill in military administration, learned in the hard school of the continental wars.

    The general unfolded the tally, ran his eye over the contents, and spoke to the man in the buff coat. At his bidding Ross drew near.

    "This lists the men and munitions," Leslie said in a dry voice. "What of Tantallon itself? Are the walls in good repair?"

    Ross paused, recalling the various parts of the castle's battlements. He could not remember one piece of stonework that had crumbled.

    "As solid as any I've seen," Ross said.

    "What one man builds, another devises a means to destroy," said Leslie dourly. He turned away, and Ross knew that he was dismissed.

    Down the castle's curving stone roadway he retraced his steps, between steep walls lit by flaring torches, out under the portcullis gate and across the broad courtyard. Then down the Lawnmarket, the High Street, and through the Nether Bow Port in the city wall.

    Just beyond its archway, in the Canongate, a low wagon stood at the side of the causeway. A man toasted meat pasties over an iron pot filled with glowing coals. Ringed about him were a group of soldiers.

    "Hot meat pies! Who'll hae one o' my nice hot pies?" the man cried.

    The fragrance of pastry and spicy meat was tantalizing. Suddenly Ross was ravenous. He felt for a coin and joined the circle. "I'll take one," he called out.

    The man next to him, heavy-set and brown-haired, turned his head. His mouth was crammed full, and flakes of crust were on his lips. Trust Dougal MacFarlane to have scented out any tasty treat. Even as a boy in Kindonal had loved good food above all else.

    For a few moments Dougal could do nothing but chew. Then he gave a mighty swallow and said, "We'd best eat hearty tonight. The word is that we go out tomorrow meet Cromwell."

    Tomorrow! So that was the reason for all the activity in the city. A thrill of excitement—or was it dread?—shot through Ross. Tomorrow he would know for certain whether or not he could swing his claymore in a mortal blow. The McCrae arms bore an upraised hand grasping sword with the word Fortitudine across it. Could he live up the line's tradition and fight bravely?

    The vendor was holding a crisp pasty toward Ross. He dug into his sporran, the small leather bag hung from his waist, for a penny, took the pie, and sank his teeth into its succulent richness. Beside him Tam gave a plaintive whine. Ross handed the vendor another penny, and tossed the pasty to the collie. A hasty gulp, and the meat pie was half gone; another gulp, and it had disappeared.

    Later Ross and Dougal returned together to camp. Only a few fires glowed in the darkness, and the sentries' challenges were low-voiced. At the Laird's tent all was quiet. Hugh slept soundly just outside the entrance. And the Laird tossed in fitful slumber.

    Ross wrapped himself in his plaid and, with Tam at his back, settled himself at the Laird's feet, tormented by a nameless fear. The ague is nothing new, he told himself. The Laird had been plagued with it for years. Still he could not erase from his mind the strange shadow he had detected in the old man's eyes.

❧

For King

and Covenant

Not the next day, nor the one after, nor the one following did Ross find his mettle put to the test on the field of battle. He and his fellow clansmen formed part of the force that General Leslie posted between the Port of Leith and the city of Edinburgh to form a line of defense across the entrance to the heart of Scotland. With Scottish fortifications on Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat, the high promontories overlooking the city, it was no wonder that Cromwell did not attempt an attack.

    Word of the English army's movements filtered through the Scottish camp. Cromwell had spent two days at Mordington, just over the Border, then marched on to Cockburnspath and to Dunbar, where his forces received supplies by ship from England.

    Ross thought of Kettie in the shepherd's hut near the Great Road, the very route the English had taken. Had Kettie and the nurse taken flight, fearing the rumored brutality of the Fnglish? Or had they believed the promises of the proclamations that Cromwell had had posted in the market squares? One of them had been brought to camp and passed around among the Scots.

    The paper, addressed to the people of Scotland, declared that in Charles Stuart and his party there could be no salvation, that Cromwell and his men sought the real substance of the Covenant, and that it would go "against their hearts to hurt a hair of any sincere servant of God."

    Ross wondered if any armed force could be trusted to abide by such a statement in time of war.

    That night after a meal of peas and fish and oatcakes, the Kindonal men discussed the proclamation around their fire. Tam was stretched out at Ross's feet.

    Dougal MacFarlane scratched his head with a grimy forefinger. "All this talk about King and Covenant fair muddles me brain," he complained.

    "I ken that we're in arms now for young King Charles and the Covenant," Ross said, "but I'm not certain of all that has gone before."

    ""Tis a muddling business," Duncan Muir agreed. "Even Leslie's regulars find it a puzzle why they should be fighting against Cromwell now, when six years ago at Marston Moor they stood shoulder to shoulder with his men."

    John Davison looked up, his thin face and gray hair lit by the fire's glow. "I'm older than the rest of ye, and I can recall every step. Ye might say this present trouble began o'er ten years past, when King Charles decided he wanted the Scots to worship in his kirk with his bishops ruling us as they did the English."

    Ross did know about that. Hadn't he been brought up on the tale of Jenny Geddes flinging her stool at the head of the minister in St. Giles when he read for the first time the hated English service?

    "'Twas then," continued Davison, "that the Scots drew up the National Covenant for the defense of Presbyterianism against Episcopacy and sent it throughout all o' Scotland for the signatures of the people. When Charles heard o' this defiance o' his authority, he marched against Scotland. But our soldiers met him at the border and drove him back. And he was forced to come to terms with us. Only Charles didna keep his word and went against his agreement, so a year or so later our army marched south across the border. That time the Scots stayed in the north of England till the English accepted our kirk."

    "Me head's fair spinnin'." Dougal complained.

    "Be quiet and ye might learn something," Ross said.

    Davison went on, "Then Parliament took away so much of King Charles's power that he thought to gain it back by fighting. Since he had not enow power to raise an army in England, he came to Scotland and tried to form a Scottish force. But he got nowhere-only one man would listen to him, and that was the Earl of Montrose."

    "May God rest his soul!" said Duncan Muir with a deep sigh.

    Ross thought of the head on the Tolbooth gate, and felt a stab of pity. Although Montrose's enemies among the Covenanters had recently declared him a traitor and had brought about his execution, many Scots deemed the Earl a man of honor who had died for his loyalty to his sovereign.

    "The English were fighting betwixt themselves; the whole country was torn by civil war. One side wanted

Parliament to have power; the other held out for the king. When the first were near defeat, they cried out to Scotland for help, just as the king himself had. But not until Parliament signed our Solemn League and Covenant would we send an army into England to oppose the king. By this pledge Parliament agreed to preserve the Presbyterian religion in England, Scotland, and Ireland."

    Ross had been but a lad when the Covenant was signed, but he remembered it well. The Laird had procured a copy of the document and had himself gone over it with Ross, making him read each word aloud. He could recall the scene as if it were yesterday, the Laird and himself at the long table in the Great Hall. He had been sleepy and had begged to be excused.

    "Nay," the Laird had said, "the words will mean much in your lifetime. Ye maun listen, and ye maun remember the Covenant."

    "After the signing of the Covenant," Davison continued, "came the battle of Marston Moor, when Scots and Parliament's forces fought side by side. After Cromwell was wounded, Alexander Leslie saved the day by ordering the Scots cavalry against the Cavaliers. Aye, we saved Cromwell's skin that day!"

    "But why be we against Cromwell now?" Dougal asked.

    "Mainly because of religion," Duncan Muir said bitterly.

    "If I had my way, religion could go to...." He broke off at Davison's warning glance.

    "With all the fighting in England, the army opposing the king grew stronger and stronger, until it was the army and not Parliament that had the real power. And the leaders of the army had no mind to keep the Covenant. They were against having Presbyterianism as the only religion in the land, Cromwell and his soldiers being Independents," said Davison.

    "What might be an Independent?" Dougal demanded.

    "A man who wants to worship as he likes," Davison said shortly. "There's a lot more to it than that, but that's enow for this nicht. In any case, our quarrel with Cromwell, a good part of it, is over this question of religion. But a good part of it too has to do with the execution of the king."

    Ross remembered it well. A little over a year ago Charles I had met death in London by the headsman's ax. His son, Charles Stuart, here this very night with Leslie's army, was recognized as sovereign only by the Scots.

    "They had no right to cut off King Charles's head," said Dougal. "A king is a king; he's no' like common folk."

    "Most of Scotland felt that way," Davison said. "That's why, now that Charles Stuart has signed the Covenant, we look upon him as King of Scotland."

    "Aye, and we'll make him King of England, too!" boomed the hearty voice of Black Donald as he joined the group.

    Ross looked at his father expectantly. Would he ask him now to practice a part of the pibroch? The next moment Black Donald spoke again, and Ross's spirits sank.

    "Would some o' ye like to come on a foragin' sally wi' me? I hear there's a pedlar wi' a stock of usquebaugh no' far down the line."

    Davison turned away. "Not I," he said. It was hard on a former schoolmaster to be interrupted in the midst of a lesson. Moreover, he had never developed a taste for whiskey. thinking it dulled the wits.

    Dougal was on his feet. "I'll gae wi' ye, Donald," he said eagerly. "Think ye there might be a bite to eat, too?"

    "I might as well join ye," rumbled Duncan Muir. "Though dinna expect me to match ye swallow for swallow."

    Ross was starting to his feet to join the others when Black Donald turned on his heel. "A fine trio we'll make," he said. "Now let's awa'!"

❧

The

Ravens

Ross sank back beside the fire, too hurt to move. His father had not acknowledged his presence by word or glance. Ross had thought all that was behind him. During his boyhood Black Donald had ignored him thus, paying him no more heed than one of the Laird's servant lads, or gillies.

    Not until a year ago had his father so much as spoken to him. Ross had been walking alone one day beside Loch Ruich when Black Donald suddenly appeared and said abruptly, "That ye're the verra spit and image o' me I'll no' deny. But that ye hae our line's skill wi' the pipes, ye hae yet to prove. "Tis time ye learned the feel o' the chanter."

    Fiercely he had extended the bagpipes, and Ross had blown air into the sheepskin and tuned the drones as

directed. But when he pressed air from the bag, his fingers on the chanter, he had managed only a few weak notes. His father had laughed raucously. "What good is yer book learnin' if ye canna pipe as yer grandsirs did?"

    Ross had tried again, and a short while later he knew that he would never be satisfied until he had mastered the instrument. Suddenly it seemed very important that he be able to play tunes both merry and mournful, but chiefly the martial music that set men's minds and hearts afire.

    From that time on Black Donald had taught Ross some of the skills that had been handed on from father to son for seven generations. He was a moody, exacting teacher, but Ross welcomed the lessons, not only because they satisfied his thirst for music but because they offered him a chance to become acquainted with his father. It was long before he learned that Black Donald had never ceased grieving for the gentle girl who had died in Ross's infancy. Knowing that, Ross could forgive him his tempestuous outbursts.

    There were other things his father confided in him, too. "Och, 'tis a strang weird that is laid on a piper. He canna gie in to his ain sorrow, but maun e'er lift up the spirits o' the clan." Black Donald's tone was grave. "Many is the nicht when the Laird and our men hae sat doleful about the fire that the need has come o'er me to pipe out demons that plagued 'em-demons of fear and despair that hung in the blackness. There was need to pipe new heart into 'em, too. that in the morn they might rise un wi' new strength and courage."

    Black Donald ran a lean finger over the polished drones. "An' that is the reason I maun gie ye the same teachin' on the bagpipes that I had frae me father. 'Tis not just the notes ye maun learn. "Tis the reachin down deep in ain soul to gie ithers the spirit they may hae forgot."

    Ross had made no secret of his desire to play the bagpipes, and the Laird had put no obstacle in his way. Only once, with the arrival of the call to join the Army of the Covenant. Then he had said to Ross, "I had hoped ye might remain here at Kindonal to carry on till my return."

    Black Donald had stormed, "I've watched ye make a milksop of me son. And now ye'd deny him the right to march wi' the clan!"

    A milksop, was he? Ross had burned with anger. "I'll not stay behind. I'll go to battle!" he had declared. And here he was. He had thought of war as a swift strike upon the enemy, a time for bravery and courage. So far he had seen only long delays and no action.

    Staring into the fire, Ross thought he had never felt more lonely in his life. He patted Tam's smooth head, thankful for the collie's presence. Most of his evenings since leaving Kindonal he had spent with the Laird and Hugh. But now they were in camp close to Edinburgh, the Laird being too ill to move with his men, and Hugh, as his aide, remaining with him.

    Has the Laird recovered from the chills and fever? Ross wondered. He had hated to go off and leave the sick man, but he had been ordered to join the force that formed the line of defense. Just this morning he had seen two ravens quartering the sky over the Laird's camp. He had looked away, trying to convince himself that they were merely hunting. But he could not shake off the supposed significance of such a flight-an omen of death.

    The fire had nearly gone out, and a chill was in the air. There's no point in brooding here, Ross thought. He might as well get out his pipes and practice the new march.

    Usually the mere act of blowing air into the sheepskin gave him a feeling of excitement. Tonight he felt no rise of spirits, but doggedly set the bag under his arm, the blowpipe to his lips, and his fingers at their places on the chanter.

    The first notes squealed forth uncertainly. Ross gripped the bag firmly with his elbow and blew gustily into the mouthpiece. He was not Black Donald's son for nothing. He must possess some fragment of his father's skill.

    Determinedly he stepped out, matching his pace to the notes. The drones pointed skyward over his shoulder, and the brave tones of the march soared through the air. Louder and faster he played, gaining confidence with each rippling skirl. Finally the march ended in a triumphant burst sound, and Ross halted, out of breath.

    Only then did he notice that groups of men nearby had stopped their talk, and that John Davison had quit his pallet and stood with a smile on his lips.

    "Ye've a braw touch wi' the pipes, lad," he said. "Fine enough to lead the clan to battle."

    Ross shrugged. Small chance of that with Black Donald in his present mood.

    Ross had freed the blowpipe and was shaking the moisture ture from it when he saw Hugh MacPherson hurrying toward him. Hugh's eyes were dark with shock and his face was distorted with grief.

    "The Laird is dead!" he blurted.

    The words sounded unreal in Ross's ears. For a moment he stood silent. The Laird had been father and mother to him when he was small, comforting his hurts, and visiting his bedside at night when he was ill with childhood ailments. He had taught Ross to read, his thin finger pointing to each letter in turn. During the past year he had taken Ross with him on brief journeys and had discussed clan matters with him as if training him for future leadership. Ross's mind could not encompass a world without the Laird's presence.

The following day the Laird's company of Highlanders were granted a brief leave from their posts of duty to

accompany their leader to his grave. At the head of the clan were Black Donald and his son. Marching beside his father, his heart nearly bursting, Ross poured all his grief into the keening and wailing music. The sound rose in a torrent of anguish. Afterward, men said that rarely had Scotland heard a pibroch so moving and so sorrowful.

❧

The

Trap

On the next day, the Sabbath, the English advanced from Haddington to Musselburgh, taking a stand about four miles from the Scottish army. All of Monday Ross and his companions waited in the pouring rain for the word to attack. The only command was for the line to stand fast, but word filtered through the ranks that a body of Cromwell's men had advanced toward the fortified hills and been driven off. Tuesday was swallowed up by continued waiting, as far as most of Leslie's men were concerned, although a troop of Scottish cavalry attacked the English rear guard as the enemy force returned to Musselburgh.

    Huddled in a tent on the damp ground, the Kindonal men aired their views. Tam lay quiet beside Ross, his sharp nose resting on his paws.

    "I didna march all this way to stand like a scarecrow in the rain," stormed Dougal.

    "Nor I," Hugh said. "All I want is to get this o'er fast so I can get back to Jeannie and the babe."

    "There are more ways o' fightin' than clashin' in combat," Duncan observed. "Think ye not that wet and hunger can weaken a force? We hae all of Scotland's stores behind us; the English hae naught but what they can bring in by ship."

    "I say, gie us the chance to fight it out, man to man, blustered Black Donald. "I've yet to meet the Sassenach who can match this arm and blade." He drew his claymore and brandished it in the small space the tent afforded.

    "I wouldna want to meet ye in battle," said John Davison quietly, "nor do I want to feel yer blade's bite now. I'll breathe easier when ye put it awa'."

    Black Donald's blade rasped into its scabbard, and the talk continued. Suddenly trumpets sounded. Tam barked shrilly.

    "'Tis the signal to move!" Dougal cried.

    But though all waited in hushed expectancy, no command came. In the distance bands of cavalry rode off.

    "Maun we sit here forever?" Black Donald thundered.

    His ire rose further when Davison observed mildly, "Just ye wait and see. Yon Leslie is a canny man."

    "Canny at lettin' the English slip through his fingers," muttered the piper.

In the morning the cavalry returned, reporting some losses. The line of defense remained unbroken and un-

moved.

    During a week of storm and rain the Scots held their position. For all his secret doubts as to whether he could actually use his sword on a human being, Ross was becoming heartily sick of inaction. Almost anything would be better than this endless delay.

    Then came word that the stormy weather had made impossible the landing of stores at Musselburgh, and so Cromwell had fallen back again to Dunbar.

    Ross wondered anew about Kettie. How was she faring during the English occupation of Dunbar? Night after night her white face tormented him, and he wished he had thought of asking her to accompany him to Edinburgh.

    All the rest of August month Ross and his companions held Leslie's line fast. The English marched here and there, tempting Leslie to come out from his strong position and do battle. But the Scottish general remained firmly entrenched.

    It was a month of sorry weather and sour dispositions. There was extra work keeping rust from swords and muskets and trying to dry sodden clothes. But there was food enough to fill empty stomachs. And the English, so rumor said, were fast running out of supplies.

    For himself, Ross would have liked fewer words and more action during the month. There had been more than enough words. Manifestoes from the invading English general and his officers to the Scots had begged them to lay aside their arms and listen to reason, insisting that the English were seeking the true substance of the Covenant and that both nations should work toward the same purpose. To this the General Assembly at Edinburgh made lengthy reply, which Cromwell answered in turn. Again there was a refutation of Cromwell's reply, and at length solemn declarations of intent to do battle.

    On Saturday, the last day of August, the English were encamped just beyond the Scots, near Edinburgh. Before nightfall the English had burned the rude huts they had been occupying and had marched back toward Dunbar.

    Ross was holding his damp plaid over a fire when he heard a distant command. In a few minutes came the order to form ranks.

    Action at last! Ross flung the still steaming plaid over his shoulder and buckled it about his waist, his sporran at the front, his dirk at one side, and his claymore at the other. On his back he hung his targe, a round shield of wood and leather. Then he picked up his bagpipes and went to his father.

    Black Donald stood waiting, his cheeks puffed as he blew air into his instrument. Then, his foot tapping impatiently, he grinned at Ross and said, "Shall we gie them a rouse, ye and I?"

    Ross looked at the dark eyes afire with excitement and the brilliant smile. At that moment he would have followed his father anywhere.

    In answer he lifted his blowpipe to his lips. No clan would have more stirring music; no piper would blow

with more spirit. Today he would make Black Donald proud of his son.

    They set off, the cry of the clan loud in their ears. "Sgur Urain!" came the shout, again and again. It was the name of a mountain in Kindonal where an early victory had taken place. Ross was confident that the battle in which they would soon be engaged would be a victory too.

    But there was no battle that day. All through the night and the next day, which was the Sabbath and the first day of September, Leslie did no more than press close upon the rear of Cromwell's army.

    Just outside of Dunbar the Scots swung to the south, around the English forces, and climbed the heights of Doon Hill. The rain was beating down in great gusts that night, and Ross could see little of the land around him as he fashioned a rude shelter from corn stalks. Tam was with him, having followed the clan on its march. The wet sheaves provided poor shelter, but with Tam warm at his back, Ross slept.

    The next morning, even in the sweeping rain, he could tell that General Leslie had chosen a rare vantage point. From the long sweeping hillside Ross could see the English forces camped on the lowlands below, separated from the Scots by the Broxburn, the small stream in a deep ravine that edged the margin of Doon Hill. To the right was the Great Road to England, now in the control of the Scots, who could cut off any attempted English retreat along the highway to the border. And the Scots far outnumbered the English. There must be twenty-three thousand of Leslie's men spread out on the high slope of Doon Hill, and only half as many with Cromwell encamped on the soggy plains. Surely Leslie had caught the English in a trap from which they could not escape.

    Beyond the English force lay the dark roofs of Dunbar, and behind the town surged the North Sea, foaming with whitecaps and lashed by rain. Ross could smell the salt in the wet gusts that stung his face.

    Far below on the bank of the Broxburn, near where it crossed the Great Road, Ross could make out the outlines of the hut where he had left Kettie. Now English troops occupied the low building.

    That afternoon Tam ran barking to a small thicket. Following him, Ross found a small boy crouched miserably under a blackberry bush. "What might ye be about?" Ross inquired.

    "I came but to see were there any brambles," the boy said, digging dirty fists into his eyes. "We Dunbar folk be sair empty."

    The lad was no more than skin and bones. He must be telling the truth.

    "If I had a bite, I'd share it wi' ye," Ross said. The last of the Scottish army stores had been distributed yesterday morning, a bare handful of meal to each man.

    "Do ye ken the shepherd that lived in the hut on the Broxburn?" Ross asked.

    "Aye," the boy answered guardedly.

    "What befell his wife and the girl?"

    The lad looked puzzled. "The boy, ye mean? He and the old woman went into the town. They're lodged near the kirk."

    "Do ye know aught of a girl that was wi' the dame?" Ross pressed. He had not seen a boy on the day he had left Kettie. Perhaps he had been in the hills with the sheep.

    "Nay, there was no girl," stated the boy. Then he asked, "Will there be a battle?"

    "That I canna tell," said Ross. "But ye had best get back the same way ye came, lest ye be harmed." He watched the boy dart into the thicket again, then disappear.

    Tormented by thoughts of Kettie, he wondered if she had been taken ill. Or perhaps she had been discovered and forced to return to Tantallon. His mind shied away from the consequences of such a return. Where could she be if not with the old nurse? His mind went round and round like a bird seeking escape from a cage.

    About four in the afternoon came the order for the artillery to move down Doon Hill toward the burn. There were grumblings and protests. Why was Leslie leaving so strong a vantage point? Soon the infantry was commanded to follow. By nightfall Ross waited with his company on the lower slopes of the hillside. On his right the cavalry moved with metallic clank and rattle toward the level ground near the pass of the Broxburn.

    "Old Noll's headquarters are in Broxmouth House, I hear, just t'ither side o' the highway," volunteered Black Donald. "Leslie must be planning to send our cavalry to capture him i' the morn."

    "Where did ye pick up that bit o' news?" Duncan asked.

    "O'er a jug of usquebaugh, where else?" said the piper, laughing. "When officers get a thirst they're not above sharin' what they ken."

    Ross whistled Tam to his side, wrapped up in his plaid, and settled himself under a bush. The rain was still falling, and the wind was whipping it about madly. He had almost forgotten what it was to be dry. But at midnight he must stand watch, and if he were to stay awake then he must try to snatch some sleep now. Tam pressed against his back. Soon they were both deep in slumber.

❧

The

Attack

"Up, lad, to stand yer watch!"

    Ross was roused by Duncan's hand on his shoulder. A shower of drops fell on him as he rose stiffly to his feet and clasped the damp folds of his plaid about his shivering frame. Tam pressed against his leg, and Ross patted the dog's rough coat.

    A few feet away Black Donald slept heavily. Other men huddled in wakeful groups, talking in low voices.

    "The time is nigh," said Duncan soberly. "Leslie will strike with the sunrise, or I'm much mistaken."

    Ross stooped and picked up his claymore, the weight of the two-edged sword as heavy in his hand as the heaviness in his mind. He tried to shrug off his disquiet. Yesterday's rainstorm had been enough to down the spirits of any man. With daylight there would be battle and certain victory.

    He left Duncan to settle down in the space he had quit, and with Tam by his side walked to the top of the hill. After reporting to the officer in charge, he began to tramp back and forth from his post to the next. It was good to walk. The movement stirred some semblance of warmth in his limbs.

    The ground was wet and slippery, the grain and grass that covered the hillside having been trampled to a muddy mass in the movements of the past few days. The air, however, was clear. In the dark sky the clouds thinned now and then to reveal a faint glow from the partially obscured moon.

    Here and there a man knelt in earnest exhortation to the Lord to make His faithful soldiers of the Covenant victorious in battle. To Ross's ears came the words: "Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight; my goodness and my fortress; my high tower and my deliverer; my shield and He in whom I trust."

    Englishmen were probably sending up similar prayers from their side of the Broxburn, thought Ross. In all their proclamations and notices they made firm claim that they were fighting for the Lord of Hosts.

    A chill breeze, remnant of the gale that had lashed the coast for days, blew against Ross's face. He studied the dark masses on the plain below where campfires dully glowed. Was he imagining it, or was there some movement in the enemy's left flank?

    On his next turn, Ross spoke to the officer in command. "Hae ye noted that the English are moving toward the road?"

    The man peered into the night. "They've been moving about for hours. What odds where they go? They've no place to march but out to sea."

    A messenger approached. "Gie the order to extinguish all matches but two to a company," he said. "The supply is nigh exhausted."

    Matches were cords used to fire the priming of matchlock guns. Later, just before the battle, the infantry could relight their matches. Flintlock guns were more practical, their spark being available on a moment's notice, but they were new and in short supply.

    Ross passed along the order, then resumed his pacing. Of all the hours in the twenty-four, those from midnight until dawn seemed the longest. And the lowest. Then a man's spirit was at its ebb. Even his strength failed.

    Resolutely Ross forced his flagging limbs to action. Back and forth he went, stopping and peering into the dark, turning and marching again, taking care all the time lest he slip. Beside him trotted Tam, close as a shadow.

    Hours passed, and high in the sky the moon gleamed out from behind the clouds. A pale streak of dawn shone over the distant shore. Ross tensed. Soon Leslie would order a move.

    Suddenly, far down to his right, a peal of trumpets sounded. There was a vast clanking of armor, the neighing of hundreds of horses, and a mighty shout, "The Lord of Hosts!"

    The attack! It had come! And from the English!

    Ross whirled to see the sleeping Scots come clumsily to life. Men who had been keeping their muskets dry under their plaids hastily unwrapped them. Those with matchlocks ran about seeking a light from the too few whose matches had not been extinguished. Pikemen milled this way and that, hastily trying to form ranks. Gunners crawled from beneath their weapons to fumble with shot and charges. Everywhere was utter confusion.

    Tam barked, and Ross grasped his thick ruff. A dog had no place in battle. Putting his face close to the animal's, Ross commanded firmly, "Begone!"

    Not waiting to watch the collie run off out of sight, Ross hurried from his hilltop post, down past shouting, jostling men, to his own group. Where was his father? He should be rallying the clan. There he was, half under a shock of corn, and still sleeping amidst the din. In a frenzy Ross jerked him to his feet.

    Wild-eyed, Black Donald gazed about. "Good God! A surprise attack!" He clutched at his bagpipes and frantically blew air into the sheepskin.

    Ross snatched up his own pipes, tucked the bag under his arm, and started filling it with anguished speed. He was fingering the chanter when he heard a burst of notes beside him. His father was calling the clan to arms, the wild sounds tearing across the crowded turmoil with an eerie compulsion.

    Ross joined his notes to his father's, his heart swelling with an almost unbearable excitement. Far down Doon Hill on the right wing near the highway came the thundering clash of metal on metal. Ross could make out a mass of English horsemen, a tumultuous wave of bristling weapons, pressing upon the Scottish cavalry. The two opposing forces surged together with a clanking of armor, the defiant cries of riders, and the shrill scream of horses. The onrushing steeds halted, then fell back. Ah! The English were beaten. Ross knew a thrill of triumph. Of course Leslie's men had prevailed. A moment later he stared in wonder. The English were riding forward again. And with wild battle cries the Scottish cavalry moved to clash with them.

    Then the press of men cut off Ross's view. From all around him rose exultant shouts. "The Covenant! The

Covenant!" Highlanders and Lowlanders roared their defiance.

    Ross played on, caught up in fierce excitement. He and Black Donald moved down the hill, side by side, their bagpipes skirling madly in a brave rush of sound. Down they strode over wet grass and through mud, the clan pressing close behind.

    Ahead other Scots were tightly massed on the steep banks of the gully, and beyond, across the brook, were arrayed the ranks of Cromwell's army.

    Scottish officers shouted commands, striving to make themselves heard above the din. Close by, others roared countermanding orders. Leslie's forces churned in unutterable chaos.

    Suddenly, on the English side of the gully, there were flashes of fire from snaphances and matchlocks, bursts of smoke, and the thunder of fieldpieces as artillery and infantry fired into the milling Scots. Shot tore into the thickly gathered Scots. Ross heard shrieks of pain all around him.

    Some men surged forward, others backward, tripping over the fallen and slain. Never in his blackest nightmares had Ross pictured such frightful pandemonium. His anguish was the greater that he could in no way retaliate, but could only stand helplessly while enemy bullets ripped through Scottish limbs.

    In the stampede Ross's bagpipes were torn from his grasp, and he was pushed roughly to the ground. Struggling to his feet, he strained to catch a glimpse of his father but could not.

    Ross wrenched his claymore free and held it ready, but surrounded as he was by his own countrymen, he dared not swing. He had never known such sickening, fearful frustration.

    The English fire continued, wreaking havoc among Leslie's forces. It was answered by a few scattered bursts from the Scots. If only a thrifty officer had not given that fateful order to extinguish matches!

    For what seemed a hellish eternity Ross struggled to move ahead. In front of him a man fell, clutching at his chest. Beyond, an officer was waving a sword in the air, urging his men forward, when a ball carried away his arm. Beside him a youth spun around with an unearthly screech, his belly ripped open. Above the sound of cannon rose the screams of men in agony.

    Ross clung tightly to his sword. If only he could get near enough the enemy to use it. He must make at least one Englishman taste the brutal slaughter that was felling his comrades. He heard again the cry, "The Covenant!" and made another frenzied effort to force his way forward.

    The ranks ahead opened for a moment, and he could seе English pikemen descending the bank of the ravine, a fearsome array of pointed steel. Then they started up the Scots' side of the gully, a well-nigh impregnable force.

    Ross tried to stand his ground. If he could strike one blow, just one blow for Scotland! Then there was a clamor from the right wing, and he was swept backward by a mighty surge of men and beasts in a hideous tangle of flying hoofs and broken, bleeding bodies. The English cavalry had broken through the Scottish horses and driven them down upon the foot regiments!

    Ross could feel the press of bodies against his own as the infantry struggled to get out of the way of the advancing horses. Then the line of soldiers collapsed under the brunt of the cavalry. Men fell to be trampled underfoot. Mounts and riders alike were sheathed in metal, each a galloping arsenal of sharp edges and bared weapons that tore through the light garments of the foot soldiers and into their flesh and bone.

    Frantic with fear, Ross tried to dodge the crazed beasts that plunged and reared all about him. A horse clumsy with heavy armor stumbled above Ross. In terror he dropped his claymore to clasp the stirrup and swing himself out of the way. The steed's dead rider fell across Ross, and the horse plunged onward.

    Ross tried to scramble to his feet, but was caught in a maelstrom. He tried to dodge an onrushing horse. Then he felt a mighty blow on his head, and knew no more.

❧

Defeat

The chanting of a psalm aroused Ross. He opened his eyes. In one swift glance he could see enough to make him close them immediately.

    Almost directly in front of where he lay, surrounded by the dead and dying, was a troop of horsemen, their blood-red shirts made livid by the first rays of the rising sun. At their head was a powerful man in cuirass and helmet, his strong-featured face raised to the sky. His nose was long and bulbous, his mouth broad, with a large mole under his lower lip, and his eyes were lit by exaltation as he led the troop in chanting:

Let God arise, and scattered

Let all His enemies be;

And let all those that do Him hate

Before His presence flee!

O give ye praise unto the Lord,

All nations that be;

Likewise ye people all, accord

His name to magnify!

For great to-us-ward ever are

His loving kindnesses;

His truth endures forevermore:

The Lord O do ye bless!

    The troopers repeated the verses in well-drilled unison. Ross opened his eyes a crack at the conclusion and saw that other horsemen were galloping up to their leader, wave after wave of them, like an onrushing tide. This man with the exalted air who sat so strongly at the head of the cavalry-this man must be Oliver Cromwell, commander in chief of all the English forces, Ironsides himself!

    Then Cromwell lifted his arm and cried out, "The Lord God of Hosts!" With a rattle of swords and armor, and a jarring thud of hoofbeats, the cavalry rode off.

    Ross sank again into unconsciousness. When he next revived, he tried to lift his head. It hurt ferociously, and his exploring fingers found a huge swelling over his temple where he had been dealt a heavy blow. He struggled to his feet and picked up a sword that lay nearby.

    His head swimming, Ross looked at a scene of terrible carnage. The air was filled with the cries of the wounded, and the ground was littered with bodies. Some lay at grotesque angles, others moved feebly. In the distance the English cavalry galloped after a horde of horsemen and foot soldiers who ran in unutterable confusion.

    Defeat. Utter rout. Surely this must be a nightmare. Ross stumbled along. Miraculously he had escaped death. And for the moment he was free. Somehow he must get away from the battlefield before the English returned from their pursuit of the rest of the Scottish army and took him prisoner. If he ran now, hiding in the hedgerows, he might with luck reach the wild parts of the Lammermuir Hills, then take a circuitous route to Tantallon Castle. In that fortress he would be safe from any attack.

    Ross had taken a few steps when with a pang he remembered his father. Might he be among the fallen? His head reeling, Ross started to look among the bleeding bodies, some writhing, some stiff. Swiftly he scanned the bloodied faces, the distorted limbs. Not many Scots had Black Donald's height and breadth. If he lay nearby—and in the melee he could not have moved far—he should be easy to identify.

    Breathlessly Ross searched, his ears filled with the piteous cries of the wounded. He had begun to think that his father must be among the routed soldiers fleeing the conquering host, when a sprawled form caught his eye.

    Black Donald lay in a pool of blood, his head half severed from his shoulders, and tilted at a crazy angle. His dark eyes stared vacantly at the sky; his lips were curled back from his strong teeth. His bagpipes were caught under his arm.

    Ross began to tremble and fell to his knees. He heard sobs and put a hand to his mouth. The sobbing was his own.

    The staring eyes looked up at him. I must cover them, he thought, and he plucked at his father's plaid. The wool was blood-soaked and worn, not fit for a shroud.

    Hardly knowing what he was doing, Ross unclasped the belt at his father's waist and pulled the threadbare woolen cloth away. As he turned the body, air that had been trapped in the bagpipes was released, emitting a high weird sound like a lament.

    Shaking, Ross doffed his own plaid and wrapped his father's head and body in its folds. After he had fastened the belt about the bound corpse he looked around frantically. More than cloth would be needed if the body were not to be torn to pieces by preying birds or beasts.

    Nearby was a trench with sodden ashes at the bottom. Men had dug it yesterday to shield their fire from the wind. Ross heaved and tugged at the wrapped corpse, and dragged it to the pit. The hole was too shallow for a proper grave, but it would have to serve.

    He must cover the body now. With his bare hands he started to claw at the loose earth beside the pit, then picked up a shield beside a slain clansman a few feet away and used that to push dirt over the lifeless bundle. When he had finished, he stood shaking uncontrollably. Through chattering teeth he said, "Peace. Rest ye in peace."

    Looking about, Ross saw that among the fallen there was scattered movement. Others like himself must have lost consciousness or feigned it, and now that the cavalry had moved on, were attempting to find some refuge from the avenging fury of Cromwell's army. No one expected the Roundheads to give quarter.

    Ross picked up his father's worn plaid and bagpipes, wound them into an awkward bundle, and started up the slope. His numbed brain held only one thought-flight.

    He had gone a few steps when he saw a burly figure attempting to rise. One arm hung helpless, dripping blood. It was Duncan Muir, with his sword arm slashed open. Ross made his way over prostrate bodies to his friend's side.

    "Could I but rip a bit off my shirt," said Duncan, "I might stanch the flow."

    At Ross's feet was a body with out-flung limbs, the head crushed to a shapeless mass. This was no time to be squeamish. In frantic haste Ross tore a length from the dead man's saffron tunic and bound the cloth tight about Duncan's arm. The blood oozed through, but no longer streamed over the massive hand.

    They set off together up the hillside. Ross stole a glance over his shoulder at the plain where the English infantry was swarming over the steep banks of the ravine.

    "Make haste," urged Ross. "We may yet get awa'."

    "We can gie it a try," muttered Duncan.

    If the flattened grain were not so slippery, if the dizziness in my head were not so great and my legs not so reluctant to obey, I might have a chance, thought Ross. Behind him Duncan Muir panted hoarsely. His usually ruddy face had paled beneath his shock of sandy hair.

    "Can we but reach the woods ahead," Ross gasped. Hе forced his trembling legs toward a stand of trees on the side of the hill.

    They were a few rods from the woods when a band of horsemen galloped from a fold of the hills. Ross reached for his claymore. He would go down fighting. But even as he raised it, the sword was struck from his grasp by a soldier on a dun horse. Ross staggered back, his hand numbed by the force of the stroke.

    Tensed, he waited for the next swing of the horseman's blade. Its metal mirrored the sun's rays and dazzled him. A gruff voice shouted, "Stay your hand, Bruton. We're to capture not kill them."

    The sword moved, and Ross could see the speaker, a slight dark man on a black horse.

    "Capture? And to what end? There's only one way to keep a Scot from taking up arms again." The man called Bruton had a narrow face, twisted now in hatred.

    "Orders from Cromwell himself," said the other. "Detail guard to return these men to the field, and let's get on. There are hundreds yet on the loose."

    Dimly Ross saw a soldier pick up his claymore. When a rough hand plucked the dirk from his belt, he fought down an impulse to resist. No one in his right mind would be fool enough to give the man on the dun horse an excuse to strike again. This time he might not stay his hand.

    Suddenly the soldier snatched at the rolled-up plaid that Ross carried. "What might be in here?" he demanded, and whipped the bundle open.

    The bagpipes fell to the ground. The soldier kicked at them. "Ye'll have no use for those where you're going," he said. Then he flung the empty plaid back to Ross.

    Duncan Muir, standing at Ross's side, was swaying. His massive frame sagged. ""Tis over," he said grimly, "for us all."

❧

The

Smugglers' Caves

Herded with thousands of other prisoners on the lower slopes of Doon Hill, Ross and Duncan waited side by side through the long hours of the morning and early afternoon.

    Ross sat with his knees drawn up, his head resting on them. He had never known such a splitting pain in his head.

    When he moved he was nearly overcome by dizziness. And the gnawing ache in his middle was a reminder of his hunger. How long since he had last eaten a decent meal? Two days? Three? His throbbing head reeled with the effort of remembering.

    Over the battlefield flocks of ravens rose and fell in ever increasing swarms. Ross turned his back on the sight. He had seen what ravens could do to a sheep, and he had no wish to watch what they might do to the dead, or worse yet, to the dying. There was some small comfort in the knowledge that his father's body was safe from the rapacious beaks.

    A short distance away a voice said, "'Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.'"

    Surely those must be Lachlan's sententious tones. Ross looked over his shoulder and saw the weaver. One hand was clenched on his breast, and he was saying with an agonized expression, "'God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.'"

    When Lachlan lifted up his head, Ross waved and called out. Lachlan gave a cry of recognition and made his way toward Ross and Duncan.

    "I thoucht I was the only ane from Kindonal who was ta'en," he said.

    "Only the Lord kens how many there be," said Duncan.

    Lachlan lowered himself to the ground, and the three sat in wordless misery.

    Above and beneath Ross's physical pain was the agony of his father's death. He thrust the memory away. It was enough to accept the fact of defeat. He could not fathom the mystery of it.

    Yesterday the Scots had outnumbered the English nearly two to one; they had the advantage in position as well as numbers. Today they were a vanquished army. Hundreds lay dead on the field; other hundreds lay wounded among them. And all about was an ever increasing throng of captives.

    Some were Highland levies like himself, some were Lowland levies, but the greatest segment were those who formed the main core of the regular army. He heard a man nearby say that two hundred colors had been taken, the whole baggage and trainband, and all the artillery, great and small, including thirty guns. The battle might well be called "Dunbar Rout." The voice went on to say that ten thousand Scots had been captured. Looking at the endless sea of bitter faces around him, Ross could believe that figure. But what of the others from Kindonal? Did Hugh and Dougal and John Davison still live? Or did they lie dead on the battlefield?

    Of more immediate concern was the fate of the prisoners. Rumors ran about the crowded hillside. Cromwell would put them all to the sword. He would keep them here until they starved. Or he would send them south to England.

    In the middle of the afternoon the mounted troopers that had been guarding the prisoners started forming the mass of Scots into a double file along the Great Road, facing them toward the south. Some horsemen rode at the head of the long column, others at the rear, while the majority were strung out along the line, one to every twenty prisoners.

    "To England it is," muttered Duncan Muir. He wavered beside Ross, cradling his injured arm, his lips pressed tight in pain. Ross was silent. Of what use were words?

    While waiting for an order to move, Ross studied two men just ahead in the line. One was thin, the other heavyset, Lowlanders by their speech and native to the area.

    "We'll be goin' by Cove Harbour, past me Annie's house," the slight one said.

    "And by Margery's, too. Think ye they'll be lookin' out fer us?" the other asked.

    "Likely they'll be hidin' in the cow stalls in the byre," the first said.

    "Aye, or in the smugglers' caves."

    "Would that we were there now!" the thin chap said wistfully.

    "Och, aye!" The second man sighed gustily.

    A horseman rode alongside, sword in hand, his spurs jangling. "March, you scum, march!" he ordered. Ross recognized Bruton, the man who had nearly run him through in the morning.

    Trying not to jar his aching head, Ross walked stiffly forward. The straggling line moved slowly, urged on by the mounted guard. On either side were trampled fields, drying in the sun. Here and there a clump of daisies shone white and gold, and poppies gleamed scarlet. Laverocks sang and pewits swooped, as if this were any September afternoon, not the black day on which the Scottish army had met bitter defeat.

    Now and then the long file passed a cottage. But though he scanned each small window with care, Ross could detect no sign of human habitation. What folk there were inside, if indeed there were any, must be cowering out of sight. The column had covered perhaps six miles when the two Lowlanders began talking again.

    "Just around this next bend," said the slight one.

    "I ne'er thought to go by Margery's house in so sorry a state," the other said mournfully.

    They slogged on. Just ahead on the edge of a deep ravine, leading seaward, stood a cow barn, and on the other side of the road was a cottage. From its open doorway stepped two pretty girls in bright gowns, their hair decked with ribbons and flowers, their smiles welcoming.

    "I canna believe me eyes!" the stocky man exclaimed. "Do ye see what I see?"

    After miles of deserted roadside, the sight of the girls was enough to shock any loyal Scot. Ross watched sourly as Bruton and the nearest horseman rode up to the cottage and reined in.

    "Would ye like some cakes and a bit of a drink?" one of the girls called out. Was Ross imagining it, or did her voice tremble?

    "Would ye nae like to come in?" the other invited. Her cheeks were very red, and she kept her eyes fastened on the cavalrymen.

    The prisoners in front of Ross had stopped in their tracks. One lifted his fist. "To think that my Annie would shine up to a Sassenach!" he said in disgust.

    The other Lowlander grabbed his arm. "I'll not stand for it," he said. "Let's go for them. Better to be dead than witness to such shame."

    Bruton leaned down toward the girls. "What of your sweethearts? Surely ladies as pretty as you have admirers."

    "Those feckless gowks wouldna hae the wit to run when they had a chance." The first girl tossed her head.

    "Why think on them? They're best gone." The second girl threw a frantic glance toward the two prisoners. Then she smiled up at the cavalrymen. "Will ye come in for a bite?"

    The horsemen dismounted. Bruton gave the reins of his steed to a young guard. "Keep the horses here whilst we go in. We'll not be long." They followed the girls into the cottage, and the door closed. For the moment no other soldiers were in sight on the winding road.

    The two Lowlanders were staring in fury at the cottage. While the guard's back was turned, Duncan urged softly, "Run, ye fools, whilst ye hae the chance. Ken ye not that the lasses hae done this for ye?"

    One opened his mouth in amazement. "The caves!" he whispered.

    The other stepped forward in sudden awareness. Then they both bent low, skimmed across the road, and ran behind the barn.

    For one wild moment Ross thought of following. Then the guard turned, and the opportunity was lost.

    A few seconds later another guard galloped up and kicked at the door of the cottage, bellowing in anger. The troopers boiled out, mounted in haste, and started the Scots in motion, not noticing that there were two fewer prisoners in line.

    Before they rode off, Ross heard Bruton say, "Oatcakes and milk, sour at that. Pretty poor fare."

    Ross tightened his belt. What he wouldn't give for just one sip of milk, sour or fresh. And as for an oatcake-he couldn't imagine anything finer. The mere thought of it made him ravenous. More from habit than expectation he felt in his sporran. The leather bag was empty, but his exploring fingers found a few oats in the seam. He put them in his mouth and rolled them around with his tongue. They were too scanty to chew.

    At the ford near Pease Glen he scooped up some of the water from the burn. Although muddy from scores of feet, it was cool to his parched mouth.

❧

The

Cliff

The wavering column crawled along. The Scots moved forward a few steps, then halted, inched on, then stopped again. Ross thought they might have gone a mile or so beyond Cove Harbour when they again came to a standstill. Soon they were ordered into an open field edged by a steep cliff overlooking the sea, and the guards took up positions on the landward side. Ross ventured to the brink of the precipice and peered over. Far below at the base of almost perpendicular rocks, the sea broke in foaming waves.

    "The devil himself couldna pick a worse place for us to spend the nicht," groaned a man near Ross. "There's nae a mite of shelter frae the wind."

    "'Tis easy to see why they put us here," another commented. "They need watch only the landward side."

    "I'll risk a climb down those cliffs come nightfall," ventured a third.

    "More fool ye if ye do," said a fourth man. "I grew up no' far from here, and I'd no' chance such a trip at noonday."

    Ross hardly heard them. Escaping over the cliffs was out of the question for him. He was so giddy he could barely set one foot in front of the other. And Duncan's situation was no better, with one arm useless.

    Numb with fatigue, Ross sank down on the heather. Overhead a large flock of gulls-more than he had ever seen together at one time-dipped and soared. Could it be true, as he had heard in childhood, that sea gulls were the spirits of men killed in battle, ever wary, ever on guard, the bright red spots on their beaks the symbol of their wounds? Might one of these birds be the spirit of Black Donald?

    Gradually he became aware of the sky in sunset, a glory of gold and scarlet, tinting the steep shoreline and its scalloped bays, giving an unearthly beauty to the cliffs and purple hills. In the distance he could see Bass Rock and the conical shape of North Berwick Law. Far beyond were the Highlands. Would he ever see them again?

    The brilliant colors were fading when Ross heard a dog barking. The throaty cry pierced through the fog of his despair. No, he told himself, it cannot be Tam.

    The barking grew louder and rose to a frenzied yelping. Ross peered against the sunset. Then he saw a brown-and-black collie threading its way between the captives. Clinging to a frayed rope that encircled the dog's neck ran a slender youth, his short fair hair blowing back from his thin face.

    In a moment the dog reached Ross and jumped up on him, licking his cheek and whining in ecstasy. With a deep sigh the boy sank down on the ground and looked at Ross, great dark eyes brimming. Where had he seen those eyes before?

    Suddenly he knew. "Kettie!" he blurted in disbelief. "What might ye be doin' here?"

    "I had to find ye," she said, "so I followed Tam. I found him wanderin' about the streets of Dunbar."

    When he sent Tam away, the dog must have gone to the town and recognized Kettie when he met her again. Her cropped hair and boy's attire could not deceive Tam's keen nostrils. Kettie must have guessed that he had been taken prisoner, and had let Tam lead her here.

    She pressed a cloth bag into his hand. "'Tis not much, but 'tis all I could find."

    There were oats in the bag. "You shouldna-" he began, then he was silent. This was no time to be proud. "Thank ye," he muttered, noting how sharply her bones showed through her clothes.

    "And here be yer bagpipes," she said, holding the instrument out to him.

    His pipes! "Where did ye get these?" Ross demanded.

    "The fighting was scarce o'er when I came across Tam, as fearful a dog as e'er I've seen," said Kettie. "Later in the day the English soldiers told the Dunbar folk they might carry off those too sorely wounded to walk. When I went to the battlefield Tam came with me."

    "You went there?" How could a delicate, sensitive girl bear the horror of a battlefield?

    "I was looking for ye," Kettie said simply.

    Ross turned his eyes away from hers. He was not worthy of such devotion.

    "Tam found your bagpipes, and then he led me alang the road until he found ye," she finished.

    "It was good of ye to bring me the pipes," he said, "but ye maun haste back to Dunbar. "Tis not safe for ye to be abroad."

    The next minute his fears for Kettie were realized. There was a jangle of harness and sudden hoofbeats. Ross looked over his shoulder and saw a horseman riding swiftly toward them. It was Bruton.

    "Get away, boy, lest ye want to be locked in an English prison with the rest of these," the guard called out harshly.

    Kettie jumped up and darted away, running toward the cliff. Tam raced after her, barking wildly. Behind them galloped Bruton on his horse. As the steed gained ground, Tam turned and lunged at the horse. Bruton drew his sword, raising it to strike.

    Ross, stumbling behind, felt as if he were living a nightmare. In one fleet instant he saw Kettie throw herself between Tam and the sword. The next, he saw a flash of metal and a jumble of hoofs. Then Kettie tumbled over the brink of the precipice and disappeared from sight with a piercing scream.

    Ross ran to the spot from which she had fallen. There, on the rocks below, was her body, just at the water's edge.

    One minute she lay limp and lifeless as a rag doll. The next, a giant comber foamed over the rocks, completely covering her body. When the wave at length receded, the ledge where she had lain shone wet and glistening like the rest of the deserted shoreline—and as empty.

    Ross lay prone at the cliff's edge, straining to catch sight of a white hand in the water, or a strand of pale hair. He knew full well that Kettie must be dead. She could not possibly have survived the fall to the bottom of the cliff. No one could.

    Why not throw himself over the edge after Kettie? There was nothing ahead for him but imprisonment in some English stronghold. He'd rather die quickly and cleanly as Kettie had than rot away inch by inch.

    A rough tongue rasped his cheek. Blind fury rose in Ross. If Tam had not snapped at the horse, Kettie might still be alive. He struck at the dog with his fist, and said fiercely, "Begone!"

    He hardly saw the animal's startled hurt, but let his head fall forward onto his arms.

    Minutes later he heard returning hoofbeats and Bruton's truculent tones. "How could I know the boy would try to save the dog? If ever I see that cur again—" There was no mistaking his lethal intent.

    Even after the hoofbeats receded into the distance, Ross lay unmoving. Twilight had thickened when a strong hand shook him by the shoulder.

    "Ye'll do nae good here. Come." Duncan Muir's voice was the one stable force in a world gone wrong.

    Ross let himself be led back to the center of the field and accepted a handful of oats, all that the ravenous men around him had left of the sackful Kettie had brought. Ross put the oats in his mouth but scarcely tasted them. As in a dream he watched Lachlan stuff the bagpipes into the empty sack.

    On every side the captive Scots muttered invectives against the English. On the roadway the guards paced between campfires. The fragrance of roasting mutton wafted cruelly through the night air.

    Ross was as unaware of sights and sounds and odors as if he were a thousand leagues distant. In his mind's eye swirled Kettie's white face as it was when she had stood on the ramparts at Tantallon. Her low voice sounded in his ears. "I know what my death will be. I saw myself in a dream, falling down a steep cliff onto rocks, and the sea carried awa' my body. The cliff was like that at the seaward side o' the castle."

    The precipice here was so similar to Tantallon's steep cliffs as to have been hewn from the same pattern. Ross was completely unnerved and could not help telling Duncan and Lachlan about Kettie's premonition of her death.

    Duncan sighed gently, saying, "Puir wee lass."

    But Lachlan shook his head and intoned, "'Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers.'"

    Ross turned away in disgust, sorry that he had spoken. Did Lachlan always have to spout Scripture? Utter exhaustion finally brought sleep. As he sank into oblivion, Ross remembered Kettie's other dreams. She had surely been right when she had envisioned him in the midst of battle. Might her foreknowledge of other things be true? It was very unlikely that so strong a fortress as Tantallon Castle would be breached. It was also highly improbable that he, Ross McCrae, bound for imprisonment in England, would ever sail away across the ocean.

❧

The

Moor

In the early morning a thick mist hung over land and sea. The wide vista of the night before was obscured by a wet, gray curtain. When Ross first awoke he thought for a moment that he had been hunting and had spent the night in a Kindonal glen, wrapped in his plaid. Then sick realization flooded over him.

    He got stiffly to his feet, fighting the dizziness that swept over him with each movement. The bagpipes lay on the ground in Kettie's sack. It took all his will power to bend down and pick them up and tuck them into the back of his plaid. Kettie had lost her life bringing the pipes to him. The least he could do was keep them safe.

    Around him men were rising, shivering with cold and damp, shaking out their sodden plaids. Droplets covered their hair and beards.

    Duncan stood awkwardly nearby, cradling his wounded arm. Ross looked at the rough bandage, stiff with hardened blood, and his stomach turned over. Then he realized that no fresh blood was seeping through the grimy folds. That much was good.

    The order came to march, and the Scots slogged into line and dragged slowly along the Great Road. Duncan tried to strike up a conversation with the two men just behind.

    "What part of Scotland might ye be from?" he asked.

    "Just ahead of here, close to the Border," said one. He was thin and wiry, and had a heavy dark beard and beetling brows. "MacKie's my name."

    His companion made no reply. He kept his eyes on the road and his lips pressed together.

    "Know ye the country well?" asked Duncan of MacKie.

    "Well enough." The eyes under the heavy brows bored into Duncan's. "A pedlar gets to know all the tracks and paths."

    "A brave lot, pedlars," said Duncan admiringly. "Courage it takes to roam the country as they do."

    Ross gave Duncan a sidewise glance. What was he up to? Only last week Duncan had cursed roundly at a pedlar who had sold him a buckle that bent at the first pressure.

By mid-morning the sky had lightened. At the noontime halt a guard tossed filled sacks to the prisoners. Ross ripped one open and plunged a fist inside. A second later he drew out a handful and spat in disgust.

    "Horse fodder!" he cried.

    "I'm not above eating anything my stomach will take," said Duncan. He picked through the chaff and found a few grains, put them in his mouth, and chewed. Ross did the same, noting that Duncan's usually ruddy cheeks seemed redder than ever, and that his eyes were very bright. The wound in his arm must have brought on a fever.

    That night they stopped near the moors. The English formed a ring around the prisoners and set up their tents at intervals. They must have divided the total body of captives into two or more groups, thought Ross. There were certainly not ten thousand men here.

    With no shelter and no rations, the Scots bedded down in the rough grass between the Great Road and the sea. As empty of hope as of food, Ross wrapped himself in his plaid and sank down. The worn lengths were poor protection against the piercing wind and night damp. He twisted and turned in an effort to ease his aching body. The days were bad enough, with the agony of having to keep moving. The nights were far worse. Into his tormented brain flashed scenes from the days just past-the shock of the stampeding cavalry's rush, his father's distorted corpse, and over and over again, Kettie's frail form hurtling downward to the sea. When he slept it was no better. He awakened time and again in a drenching sweat of terror. If only Tam were here, he thought. But it was better that the dog be safe and out of reach of Bruton's wrath.

    Ross had dozed off sometime during the night when he heard Duncan's voice in his ear.

    "Up, lad," came the whisper.

    Instantly Ross was wide-awake. By straining his eyes he could make out Duncan's shadowy bulk, Lachlan's stocky figure, and the silhouette of the bearded pedlar.

    "The guard's asleep," said Duncan in a barely audible tone. "Can we but steal past him, MacKie can lead us across the moor and into the Lammermuir Hills."

    Silently the four crept through the field, past slumbering captives, toward the guard by the roadside. He sat with his hand resting on his musket. Was he indeed asleep? Hardly daring to breathe, they had started to creep past him when his head jerked up.

    The Scots froze. Ross's every nerve tautened. Surely the guard could see them and at any moment would cry out the alarm!

    Suddenly a tremendous sneeze exploded from the soldier's tipped-back head. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and leaned forward once more to rest his forchead against the musket.

    With infinite caution the four prisoners tiptoed onto the road. A few steps more, and they pushed through the low hedge on the other side. Then they stood on the edge of the moor, breathless and still stiff with fear and caution.

    When they had gone several rods into the murky darkness, the Scots dared to stand upright and walk. But even then they could not hurry. Traversing a moor was difficult enough in daylight, when one could see the tufted hummocks of grass that provided safe footing. Trying to cross the boggy ground by night was a feat only the desperate would attempt.

    Slipping and sliding, Ross followed the dark shape ahead. MacKie was wiry and light of foot, and covered the ground so rapidly that Ross was hard pressed to keep up. Behind him Duncan gave an occasional grunt as he missed his footing. Lachlan brought up the rear.

    The pain in Ross's head seemed a part of him, it had been there so long. And now there was a ringing in his ears. But wait. Was it really in his ears? He stopped and listened intently. There it was again, an eerie, plaintive wail coming thinly through the darkness. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. The moors were supposed to be haunted by the spirits of those who had died on their desolate stretches.

    The high notes were louder now. Lachlan must have noticed them, too, for he halted and asked, "Do ye hear anything?"

    Again came the sound, and now it was unmistakably a song.

He's ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair,

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

And wi' them strung his harp sae fair

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    For an instant Ross fancied that he was sitting in the warm sunlight on the way from Tantallon to the Broxburn, listening to Kettie's high sweet voice. He could almost taste the strawberries on his lips.

The first tune he did play and sing,

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

Was "Farewell to my father the king"

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    In a trance Ross listened. Had Kettie come back to haunt him? In life she had been anything but fearsome. And she had denied being a witch.

The nexten tune that he played syne,

Binnorie, O Binnorie,

Was "Farewell to my mother the queen"

By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

    The wind lifted the notes. Surely there was more than one singer-two or even three. Witches were known to go in threes. Ross's stomach was a hard knot, and his legs shook with more than fatigue.

    Suddenly Duncan gave a shout. "Ho! Who's there?"

    The singing ceased. There was only the wind's bleak soughing. Then a girl's voice called timorously, "Can ye help us? Our ponies are fast mired. We've been singin' to keep them awake lest they lie down in the mud and go under."

    Ross let his breath out in a rush, almost laughing in relief. At the same moment, loss stabbed him. Kettie, even as ghost or witch, had stirred his heart.

    "Keep on wi' yer song," called Duncan. "We canna see ye, but we'll find ye by yer voices."

    MacKie muttered, "Why should we lose time and risk getting caught by helping feckless maids?"

    "We canna leave them here," said Duncan shortly.

    In a few minutes they had reached the girls. There were three, each one holding fast to the bridle of her mount. One pony had sunk belly-deep in the mud.

    Feeling for the hummocks, which offered shaky footing, Ross came up beside one of the animals. It gave a snort of fear. He laid a gentling hand on its flank, waiting for Lachlan to find a place to stand. The weaver was searching for a bit of solid ground.

    "'Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink,'" he said in the special voice he used for Scripture. "'Let me be delivered from them that hate me.'"

    "Are ye ready?" asked Ross, aware of a certain grudging admiration for Lachlan's ability to find a Biblical quotation for any situation.

    The two heaved and pulled at the pony's body, straining and slipping. At last the beast struggled free and followed its mistress to firmer ground. Then Ross and Lachlan helped the others. After a few minutes' work all three ponies were safely out of the morass and headed up a slope to drier ground.

    "What are three lasses doing on the moor in the nicht?" Ross asked. "Hae ye no fear?"

    "'Twas fear of the English soldiers made us venture onto the moor," said one, her voice shaking.

    "We were coming up from Berwick, where we'd been working in the bakery," said another. "The owner got a message yesterday that bread and bakers were needed in Dunbar, and told us to go there. We set off at sundown with all that day's loaves—"

    "Loaves of bread?" demanded Ross. He had felt no burdens on the ponies' backs.

    "We left the sacks back where the ponies were mired. The bread was muddy and not fit to eat."

    What was a little mud? Ross scrabbled back to the bog, MacKie beside him. They located two sacks and bore them triumphantly to the others. For a few minutes there was no talk, only the sound of loaves being torn and chewed with ravenous haste.

    "Dinna eat o'er much," warned Duncan. "Gie yer stomachs a chance to get used to being aught but empty."

    A few minutes later Ross asked the girls, "How will ye get from here to Dunbar?"

    "The Great Road loops around the eastern border o' the moor in a half circle. We had thocht to cut directly across the moor and come out on the road farther north, where we'd no' meet the soldiers."

    "There'll be soldiers aplenty in Dunbar," said Duncan. "Are ye no' afeard o' them?"

    "No' in the town. The crier said there was a paper signed by Cromwell himself, promising his men wouldna harm folk so long as they stayed peaceful."

    "We've tarried here o'er long," MacKie said impatiently. "Now we maun be on our way."

    "How ye can tell where ye're goin' is beyond me," said one of the girls. "We mean to stay here till it be light. We dare not chance our ponies gettin' mired again."

    "I ken the way," MacKie said brusquely. "We need but go west frae the road to reach the hills." He started off with apparent confidence.

    "We canna thank ye enough, and we pray that ye get awa' safe," another girl said.

    No fool she, mused Ross. She had not needed to ask why four Scots were tramping across the moor at night.

    For what seemed a long time they stumbled through the darkness. A full stomach made a world of difference. Ross's legs seemed stronger and his head less painful.

    MacKie halted. "The road should be over there." He pointed to the right. "If we go straight ahead, we shall come out in the hills where we'll be safe."

    "Are ye sure, man?" Duncan asked. "I would hae said we should go farther west still."

    MacKie snorted angrily. "I was raised just t'ither side o' this moor," he said.

    Long ago Ross had lost all sense of direction. Now he noted that the wind had dropped, the sky was lightening, and a thick mist hung about them, obscuring all but the nearest objects. He followed MacKie over the rough ground.

    They had gone about half a mile farther when a sudden breeze abruptly lifted the mist that covered them. Stark and unprotected they stood in the middle of a bare field which contained not a bush or shrub to hide under.

    The wind bore away further curtains of mist. In the next agonizing moment Ross saw a body of milling prisoners directly ahead beside the highway. He and Duncan and Lachlan and MacKie had escaped from one captive group only to blunder directly upon another, farther north on the Great Road.

    Without warning a body of horsemen suddenly appeared. Two of them rode apart from the group and urged their mounts outside the hedgerows that lined the road, ready to strike down any captives that might have hidden there. In a minute they would draw near.

    MacKie turned. "Run for it!" he shouted, and set out back across the empty moor.

    For a second Duncan stood still. Then in a taut voice he said to Ross and Lachlan, "Our only chance is to join the ither captives. Haste ye, ere the guards look this way."

    Bending low, he scuttled toward the milling men. Sick at heart, Ross followed, Lachlan close at his heels. The mass of prisoners opened to receive them. They had made their way well into the ranks when they heard a shout from a guard, and turned to look back.

    On the barren hillside they could clearly see the stumbling MacKie. Behind him raced a horseman. In a few seconds he had caught up with the fugitive. A swift blow of the saber, and MacKie tumbled to the ground. The guard returned, wiping his blade. "One less to watch over," he said with satisfaction.

❧

Across

The Border

"What's that in yer sack?" a rough voice queried.

    Ross jolted to attention. "Bread," he said to the prisoner beside him. "Will ye hae some?"

    Almost before he spoke, the bag was torn from his hand. As its contents were dumped on the ground the Scots fell upon them with wolfish cries. Ross managed to snatch one grimy loaf and hide it in his shirt. It should keep him and Duncan and Lachlan going for a few more miles.

    A short time later another man asked, "How came ye here?"

    Duncan was explaining when Ross felt a thump on his shoulder. He turned, and gave a glad cry. "Hugh MacPherson and Dougal MacFarlane!"

    "Aye, and John Davison, too." The slight schoolmaster stepped forward.

    For a few minutes they related their experiences, Hugh and Dougal had found each other the day before in the throng of prisoners. They had encountered John Davison the previous night.

    "Hae they fed ye well?" asked Duncan grimly.

    "A bit o' horse feed yesternoon," said Hugh bitterly.

    "Aye, we had the same," said Ross. Cautiously he felt for the loaf. Under the cover of his plaid he drew it out, broke it into three parts, and gave them to Hugh, Dougal, and John Davison. They asked no questions, but stuffed the muddy dough into their mouths, chewing like starved beasts. Ross tightened his belt a notch. He and Duncan and Lachlan would have to do without.

    The guards came riding up, ordering the prisoners into line. Hugh and Ross stood side by side. Ahead of them were Duncan and John Davison, Dougal and Lachlan. Just behind walked a stout trader and a sturdy smith from Dunbar.

    As they dragged along the road, Ross felt more dead than alive. Most of his strength had been drained by the effort of the night flight. Its futile ending had sapped his spirits.

    Hugh must have read his thoughts. "A bitter blow, to come out o' the moor where ye did."

    "Aye." Ross could say no more.

    "Think ye there'll be another chance to flee?" Hugh's tone was desperate, and his narrow face shone with the determination of a fanatic. "I canna face life wi'out Jeannie and the bairn. I maun get back to them."

    "Ye saw what happened back there." Ross jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward MacKie's body.

    "Aye. But I maun try." Hugh's cyes had a steely glint.

    An hour later the prisoners drew near a stone dovecot with circular walls that rose to a conical roof. A thick hedge grew between it and the road. Through its many small openings a few random pigeons flew.

    Ross had been looking off into the distance toward the sea. When he turned to say a word to Hugh, he saw that his friend had vanished. A step or two behind him the branches of the hedge quivered.

    Two guards were standing beside their mounts a few rods to the rear inspecting the animals' hoofs. One man drew something out from his horse's shoe and both remounted. Hugh must have taken advantage of their inattention to slip through the bushes.

    As the guards approached Ross, a cloud of pigeons, their wings beating and whirring, shot out of the dovecot.

    "What might cause that?" asked one soldier.

    "Likely a weasel hae got into the doocot," said Duncan in a loud voice.

    "More likely a two-legged weasel!" cried the other guard. Dismounting, he drew his sword, pushed through the hedge, and disappeared around the dovecot. A few minutes later Hugh emerged, his hands above his head. The guard gave him a blow with the flat of his sword.

    "Back in line, there," he said gruffly.

    Ross let out a breath of relief. Thank heaven that Bruton had not been there to discover Hugh. Bruton would doubtless have used the sharp edge of his blade.

    At mid-morning the dreary column reached the Bounds of Berwick at Lamberton Toll, where a company of Ironsides and gunners at the alert showed Ross only too clearly that he was now at the Border march and so passing out of Scotland. Three miles on, the prisoners reached the walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed and wearily tramped through the Scots Gate, where down the years many bloody skirmishes had been fought to gain possession of the coveted bastion of a burgh. As they passed through the narrow streets not a soul was to be seen. Every lane and byway was empty; no face showed in any window.

    Dropping down toward the river, the Scots soon came within sight of the stone bridge, its fifteen arches proudly spanning the Tweed's flow. Ross had walked but a few paces beyond the soldiers guarding the Bridge Gate when the order came to halt. The prisoners ahead were slow in negotiating the openings in the two palisades placed near the bridge's center to provide additional security. With Hugh on one side and Duncan on the other, he leaned wearily on the parapet and looked down at the rushing water. The swirling currents had a mesmeric effect. It would be an easy matter to leap over and let himself be sucked down into the dark depths.

    As Ross gazed into the water, a sleek wet head broke the surface, and two round brown eyes looked up into his own. Ross stared at them in a daze. Could it be true that seals were human beings under enchantment, as he had been told when a child? He could hear his old nurse's voice telling how the seals came ashore on a summer's night, shed their skins, and danced and frolicked as men and women. There was a tale of a young fisherman who hid the skin of a beautiful seal maiden. When the others returned to their homes beneath the water, she could not find her fur covering and so was forced to stay on land and marry the fisherman. Later one of their children found the skin and brought it to her. With a wild cry she put it on, ran to the shore, and vanished under the waves.

    Hugh must have heard the same story, for he said dreamily, "I wonder now, could that be the seal maiden?"

    The animal kept its unblinking eyes fixed on the Scots, its nose wrinkling, and its long whiskers quivering.

    Duncan gave a snort of derision. "A fine wife she'd make—with that mustache!"

    Hugh chuckled, and Ross found himself laughing. He had thought he would never smile again, but here he was, actually shaking with mirth. Dougal and John Davison, too, and even Lachlan, were grinning broadly. The seal, as if embarrassed, sank out of sight.

    'Tis strange, thought Ross, that such a little thing could make us laugh. Ordinarily Duncan's remark would have brought forth no more than a smile. But the past few days had been so filled with cruelty and death that their wearied spirits had responded to even this slight sally.

    After a short while the line started moving over the bridge toward the southern bank and the village of Tweedmouth. As he crossed over the central span of the bridge, Ross was assailed by a wave of anguish. Here, he felt, he was really leaving Scotland behind. When, if ever, would he return to his native land? With each footstep an inner voice intoned, Farewell to Scotland. Farewell for aye. His companions, too, were silent. Ross could imagine their thoughts. To his astonishment he saw a tear rolling down Duncan's cheek, cutting a narrow track in the dirt and grime.

    At the end of the bridge there was another wait. Then a line of wagons approached, their wheels rattling. Every few feet the vehicles stopped, and guards took sacks from the load and drew near to the captives.

    "Food!" exclaimed Dougal.

    Ross's mouth was watering at the prospect. He was so hungry that the muddy bread of the night before might never have existed. To each prisoner the soldiers gave three hard biscuits and a measure of peas. Ross held open the mouth of his sporran while the guard poured the wrinkled pellets into the leathern bag. He started to gnaw on one of the biscuits immediately. They were the kind that were used on ships, and baked as hard as boards. He managed to bite off a small piece, and after determined chewing, softened it so that it could be swallowed. Next he tried a handful of peas. They were as hard and dry as the hardtack, but in his half-starved state, utterly delicious.

    "Eat easy, men," cautioned Duncan. "Hae pity on yer empty guts. God knows how long before we get more rations."

    "I care only for today," said the Dunbar trader. He swallowed peas in ravenous haste.

    Now the men were plagued by thirst. Up and down the column came cries of "Water! Water!" Soon the prisoners were led in small groups down a slippery bank to the river's edge and allowed to scoop up water in their hands.

    Ross felt so parched that he began to think his turn would never come. When at last he scrambled down the muddy path, he saw a dead cat floating past, its body bloated and legs distended. Revulsion swept over him. Then a guard dealt him a blow upon the shoulder and he tumbled forward, landing with his head and arms in the shallow water. His thirst overcame all squeamishness, and he drank deeply. Surprisingly enough, the cool water cleared his head. When he arose, he felt almost like a human being. But when the guard waved his pikestaff, Ross again knew himself to be a trapped animal.

    While he drank, Duncan soaked the caked bandage on his arm. As they waited for the rest of the captives to go down to the river he asked Ross, "Would ye help me unwind this rag? 'Twill shrink tight if I leave it on."

    Cautiously Ross pulled away the sodden folds, gradually revealing Duncan's arm, the skin strangely white except where the sword blade had slashed. Ross bit his lips, his stomach churning. The wound looked like raw beef. Blood oozed where the bandage had stuck.

    Duncan regarded it jubilantly. "'Tis not festered," he said. "And look, I can use it still." He moved his arm, then groaned in pain. "'Twill take some mending yet," he conceded. "I'll let the sun at it whilst the rag dries."

    During the, afternoon the two bodies of captives were merged into one. Ross saw Bruton ride past on his dun horse, sourly appraising his charges. Murderous hate rose up in him.

    That night the Scots lay in a field beyond Tweedmouth. A thin rain fell. Ross huddled, wet and miserable, in his plaid. The man from Dunbar rolled in pain, doubled over with stomach cramps.

    "'Tis the peas," he gasped. "Damned English windy porridge."

    Had the man not swallowed the peas half-chewed, he might not be so miserable. Ross was thankful for Duncan's warning. He had eaten only sparingly and had still a good supply in his sporran. But even that fact was eclipsed by his despair.

    Now that the Scots were in English territory, would he be able to escape? With every day that they were taken further into England, the chances of getting safely back to Scotland grew less. Tonight the guard had been doubled; there was no hope of flight.

    Ross was just drifting off to sleep when something cold and wet pressed against his hand. The next minute a warm tongue lapped his cheek. Ross lifted his arms and drew Tam close. He could feel the dog's heart beating next to his own, and was thankful for the darkness, for he was weeping uncontrollably. Somehow Tam had managed to follow him. What canine magic he had used Ross could only guess.

    Sometime before dawn Ross woke in panic. He must send Tam away before the guards discovered his presence. Rousing the dog, Ross buried his face in the rough fur for a moment, then put his mouth close to Tam's ear.

    "Ye maun go," he said in an urgent whisper, "but come back i' the night, for I need ye sair." Then he gave the command, "Begone!" and the collie crept noiselessly away.

❧

Alnwick

Castle

One wretched day merged into another. Hours of trudging along the road were followed by interminable waits without shelter, without water, and without food except for what remained to each man of the peas and biscuit doled out at Berwick. That must be guarded too. Starving men were not above stealing from their comrades.

    Each morning a few prisoners failed to rise. If a kick from a soldier's boot failed to rouse them, the thrust of a bayonet made certain that the captives were indeed dead. Those still alive were prodded to their feet and forced to march. Many later fell in the ditches, where the guards completed with cold steel what starvation had begun.

    Ross lost all sense of time. The only thing he looked forward to was Tam's stealthy arrival through the darkness each night. Even that pleasure was tinged with fear lest Bruton discover the dog's presence. Tam's body grew leaner and his coat was tangled with burrs, but he was faithful in searching out Ross wherever he lay.

    A few days after leaving Berwick, the Scots reached the top of a rise and looked down upon a valley through which ran a quiet stream. On the hillside opposite stood an imposing castle, its walls and battlements gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.

    "Yon's the Aln River and Alnwick Castle, the seat of the Percy's," said Duncan. "I came this way with Leven's forces in '44. We Scots had the upper hand then, and occupied Alnwick."

    Ross looked down across the lush meadows and calm river to peaceful fields rising toward the castle's broad expanse. So this was one of the fortresses of the Duke of Northumberland. Any other time he would have found it a handsome edifice. Now he could see it only as an enemy stronghold.

    Phrases of the old ballad, "The Battle of Otterbourne," ran through his mind.

To the New Castle when they camе,

The Scots they cried on hight,

Sir Harry Percy, an' thou beest within,

Come to the field and fight.

    Almost without thinking he whistled a few bars of the tune. Hugh caught up the melody, and began singing the words. He had not much of a voice, but he had a good memory, and his tone was clear. Soon others joined in.

Sir Harry Percy came to the walls,

The Scottish host for to see,

And thou hast burnt Northumberland,

Full sore it rueth me.

    Suddenly Ross noticed that the captives' gait had changed from an uneven stumble to a measured pace. Heads that had hung low were lifted. Shoulders that had been hunched were thrown back as the men sang verse after verse of the old ballad.

    The clip-clop of hoofs rang on the road, and Bruton rode alongside. "Enough of that bawling!" he ordered. "You're to go peaceable and quict. Do you hear?"

    The singing ceased, and the men fell back into their former uncertain shamble. Ross clenched his fists in fury. Could the Scots have not even the pleasure of a simple song?

    They crossed the Aln and neared Alnwick Castle. Its walls loomed dark and massive. Above the main gateway, flanked by two square towers, was a stone carving of shield with a lion rampant and a motto: Esperance ma Comforte. Ross noted it wryly. It could serve us Scots, too, he thought. Hope is our only comfort now, and some of us have given up even that.

    Under the great arch of the barbican the Scots passed, and over the drawbridge. Overhead the iron teeth of the portcullis hung in jagged threat. Guards shot hostile glances at the Scots. Now and again one spat toward the ragged captives.

    From between huge wooden doors studded with iron bolts, the prisoners emerged into a broad courtyard. Ross looked up at the high curtain walls connecting the corner towers. Could anyone ever escape from this fortress? Around the perimeter of the outer bailey were stables, with horses tethered in long rows just outside the doors. The paving stones were slippery with refuse and offal.

    Ahead rose a vast bulk of stone, the inner fastness of the castle. The prisoners were marched to a gateway built into stretch of masonry on the right. Ross noticed the barred windows of the building just to the left of the entrance.

    Hugh must have taken note of them too. "I canna bear it be we put in a dungeon," he said. Something in his strained tone caused Ross to peer at him sharply. Hugh's eyes had taken on a strange gleam. Ross had seen that same frenzied look on a fox penned in a cage outside an Edinburgh tavern.

    The next minute they passed through the gateway into a second courtyard, the middle bailey. At the sight ahead Ross felt a new wave of despair. The courtyard was half filled with row upon row of prisoners. Some wore the hodden gray and shepherd's checks of Lowlanders, some the regimental uniform of the regular army, and some the reds, blues, and greens of Highland tartans. A few leaned against the walls, others sat hunched in misery, but the majority lay like limp bundles of rags on the wet stones.

    Could these sorry creatures be the gallant soldiers of the Scottish army, those who had marched out from Edinburgh with such confidence in victory?

    As the newcomers merged with the earlier arrivals, Ross realized with a shock that he and Hugh, Duncan and John Davison, even Dougal and Lachlan, were one with these scarecrows. A stranger could not have told them apart. All wore filthy, stained garments, all were unwashed and unshaven, and all drooped with fatigue and near starvation.

    Ross found a place near the wall and sank down. Dougal sat near, his knees drawn up and his arms folded around his legs. His once red face was pasty, his formerly round cheeks sunken.

    "When do ye think they'll gie us food?" he asked. "I'm that empty me belly's fair forgot what it is to be filled."

    Ross swallowed. The night before he had eaten the last of his peas. A few leaves of sorrel stripped from a roadside plant had been his only meal today. "It maun be soon are we to survive," he said.

    Far beyond the pain of stomach cramps, he was experiencing other effects of deprivation. His head swam, his eyes ached, and he had difficulty focusing on objects. There was a constant ringing in his ears, and he found it hard to breathe. Moreover, his entire body felt as if it were one vast ache.

    Hugh stretched out at Ross's side, his face turned up to the sky. Ross saw how tautly the transparent skin was stretched across his cheekbones.

    "I wonder is the sun shinin' in Kindonal this day? Perhaps Jeannie has ta'en the bairn's cradle outside the door whilst she spins. She loves the sun, does Jeannie."

    The trader from Dunbar sniffed. "Small good it'll do ye to talk about yer wife. She'll be a widow soon and smilin' at anither."

    Hugh scrambled to his feet and drove his fist into the man's face. "Can ye no' let a man dream a bit?"

    The Dunbar man made no resistance. He buckled and fell in an awkward heap. "I said but the truth," he mumbled.

    "Aye, and that's what hurts," Hugh said, "tho' my Jeannie would ne'er hae eyes for anither."

    Ross could almost see Jeannie with her shy smile, her light hair in ringlets about her face, and her eyes as blue as the loch. She had loved Hugh since she was a wee lass, and would never cease caring for him. Of that Ross was certain.

    If only he had someone to dream of during these endless tortured days and nights. But there was no girl in Kindonal whom he could love. To those of gentle birth he had dared show no more than courtesy. They and their guardians knew him for no purposeful suitor since for all his closeness to the Laird he held no proper title to any lands. The village lasses interested him not one whit. Their talk was all of weaving and lambings, and their laughter too shrill. Poor Kettie's was the only face that swam before his eyes. But deep within himself he knew his feeling for her had been more of pity than love.

    Thoughts of Kettie reminded him of Tam. Where was the collie now? Had he given up hope of finding his master and sought the trail back to Kindonal? Or had he taken up watch outside Alnwick gates, patiently waiting?

    They had all been silent for a spell when Hugh said in low voice, "Think ye there might be a chance to get away?"

    Duncan gave a wheeze that might have been intended as a laugh. "Out o' this fortress? Only as a corpse, I'm thinkin'. I know these walls. Naught but a bird could get out."

    "Then we must wait until we be moved," said Hugh.

    "If we be," said Dougal dourly. He grimaced in pain, and asked, "Think ye we may be fed soon?"

    But there was no food given out that day. Ross began to wonder how long he could endure without nourishment. One hour merged into another. The men roused and talked, then lapsed into silence. The sun set and darkness engulfed them.

    In the morning a score of men were dead. Scots still having some strength were ordered to pick up the bodies and carry them to the gate. Ross was one of the bearers, and was appalled at how heavy even an emaciated corpse could be.

    When he returned from helping to load the bodies on a cart, the trader growled, "Three men from Dunbar there be in that lot, good men that did their work well and sat in the kirk on a Sabbath What odds to them now the cause of King and Covenant?"

    "Hush yer blitherin', man," said Duncan. "No mother's son o' us could sit by and let the English cut off King Charles's head!"

    The words swirled around Ross's ears. How far away seemed the day when he had first heard Duncan speak so, just after a messenger had rushed into Kindonal Castle bearing the traditional burnt cross of wood that was the signal for the clan to rise in arms.

    When a few men had demurred at leaving their families and flocks, Duncan had shouted his statement about King Charles. No atrocity that the English had committed had so stirred Scotland as the execution of the king. To set his son on the throne and so avenge the father's death, the levies had gone off with less reluctance than they might have otherwise, in age-old fealty to chief and monarch.

    The Dunbar man said in a low voice, as if to himself, "Had I to do it again, I'd flee to the hills."

    Ross could almost agree with him. The cause of King and Covenant might be just and worthy, but was not the cost too great? He thought of the Laird, rich with the wisdom of his years, but dying of the ague in a tent on the field. Had he remained in Kindonal he might still live. He recalled his father, robust, hearty, and blustering-the finest piper in all Kindonal. Now his notes were forever stilled. He remembered others of his clan now dead on the battlefield, and all the army of Scotland's most able men. Only a few had survived, and many of those sorely wounded. Hе sickened at the memory.

❧

Alnwick's

Well

The second day dragged by. No food was given out. More men died.

    Ross could feel himself losing touch with reality. To keep some semblance of sanity he began studying the castle's structure. In a corner of the middle bailey, where the Scots were confined, rose two lofty octagonal towers, guarding the entrance to the inmost courtyard. Atop each tower stood life-size stone figures of men, armed with weapons. Through the gateway between the towers flowed constant traffic to and from the inner ward, the very heart of the fortress. A row of castle guards stood between the prisoners and the gate, leaving a passageway for castle residents and workers. Ross could see serving men and women hurrying in and out, some bearing baskets on their arms, others carrying fagots or crates of coal on their shoulders.

    Hugh kept his eyes on the puffy clouds that scudded overhead. "At least we're no' shut in a dungeon," he said. "We've air enow and the sky above."

    A short time later rain fell in a drenching shower. "The open sky's but scant blessing now," commented Dougal as drops coursed down his matted hair onto his shoulders.

    The third day passed. Again no food was distributed. Scores of men died.

    Lachlan spent much of his time quoting Scripture. Ross marveled that so much of the Bible was given over to laments.

    "'O Lord, how long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear!'" said Lachlan. "'Even cry out unto Thee of violence, and Thou wilt not save! For the wicked doth compass about the righteous.'"

    Ross put his head close to Duncan's. "'Tis my guess that we be done for," he said.

    Duncan frowned, and cast a reproving glance at Ross. "Did Robert the Bruce e'er gie in to hardship and pain and hunger? Nay, that he did not. No more should we, lad."

    Ross quelled beneath his gaze. His eyes dropped to Duncan's bandaged arm. "Would ye like me to wrap it up fresh?" he asked. "There might be a clean spot left on the rag."

    "'Tis scarce likely," said Duncan in a grim voice. But he held out his arm.

    To Ross's amazement the arm was healing well. A thick scab covered the wound, and on either side were narrow strips of new pink skin.

    On the fourth day Ross and Hugh found that they were so weak they could hardly stand.

    "We maun make an effort," said Hugh, "or we'll no' be able to leave this place."

    Ross laughed shakily. Will we live long enough to leave? he wondered.

    Supporting each other, the two moved among the prisoners toward the octagonal towers. A stout woman was coming out of the inner court carrying a wooden bucket of garbage.

    As she drew abreast of the captives she snarled in an ugly manner, then flung the bucket's contents among the men. "Why should I walk out to the pigpen with it when there are swine aplenty here?"

    The soldiers guffawed. The Scots fell on their knees, rooting like so many hogs for the turnip and apple parings, burnt scrapings from a pot of porridge, and some bones.

    Ross saw an object flying through the air in his direction. Automatically he caught it and held it tight against his belt, bending nearly double to hide it. He could feel the grease on his fingers, but dared not let any of the half-crazed prisoners see what he held. He watched Hugh scoop up a rotten apple and hissed, "Back to our men."

    Near Duncan again, Ross sat down, drew up his knees, and lifted a corner of his plaid over his prize. It was the remains of a leg of mutton, ragged with chunks of fat and gristle. Never had he seen anything so beautiful. Lowering his head, he took a frantic bite of the fat. Chewing, he knew he must have another taste. But he could feel the others pressed close. Summoning all his will, he passed the bone to Duncan.

    There was a ripping sound, then Duncan, his jaws working, passed the trophy to Hugh. Dougal, John Davison, and Lachlan, and even the Dunbar man each had a share. After that Ross had another bite, sucked out the marrow, and ground the small soft bones between his teeth. At the last there was nothing left but a few splinters.

    Later in the day Ross and Hugh tried to go back toward the gate on the chance the woman might fling more garbage. But others had the same thought, and the prisoners were pressed so closely that Ross could not make his way through.

    Night came again.

    By the morning of the fifth day a third of the prisoners had died. The stench of death was everywhere. Most of the men lay so motionless that it was difficult to tell the living from the dead.

    We can't go on much longer, thought Ross. He move his shoulders to ease the constant pain that plagued his body, and felt the bagpipes against his back. As if in a dream he drew out the instrument, fitted the chanter in place, and began filling the bag with air. In his weakness he was hard put to force wind from his lungs into the sheepskin, but at length the bag was hard and taut under his elbow. He struggled to his feet.

    "And what might ye be about?" growled Duncan.

    "Piping—what else?" Ross said. "It was for that I left Kindonal. And pipe I will whilst I've still the breath to blow."

    "Ye're daft, man," Hugh said. But there was a gleam of admiration in his eyes.

    Ross pressed air from the sheepskin as he fingered the chanter. First came a tentative squeal, then a rising burst of notes, and finally a very torrent of song. He would play his father's favorite march, the wild, fierce medley that was the very lifeblood of the clan.

    With the first notes he stepped forward as in parade, marching in time to the music. On either side men moved back to make way for him. Some who had been lying down sat up. Others raised their heads. A little of the dejection went out of their faces.

    Ross had swung into the fierce call to the clan when there was a shout behind him and two guards forced their way through the captives. Hugh threw himself on Ross and snatched the pipes away, struggling to hide them.

    Then the guards came up, grabbed their arms, and led the two young men toward the gate.

    "Dinna take him," said Ross, pointing to Hugh. "He had naught to do with my piping."

    "He's holding the pipes now," said the guard, and cuffed Hugh forward. The bagpipes fell to the ground, and the soldier kicked them aside.

    At the gatehouse Ross and Hugh were shoved into a small room. The guard raised a trap door in the floor. Below yawned blackness; a fetid smell arose. A dungeon! Ross could feel his palms sweating. He glanced at Hugh and saw his friend's eyes rolling in terror. Hugh would never survive being shut in that dark hole.

    Just then a man thrust his head in the door. "Can ye give me two men to draw water?" he asked. "The well boys are both sick."

    The guard let the trap door fall. It slammed into place with a sickening thud. Ross could feel his knees buckling. Suppose they had been on the underside of that door when it came down, shutting out all light and air?

    "You can have these two," the guard said, shoving Hugh and Ross out of the gatehouse into the inner courtyard. At the right a ladder leaned against the wall. It led to a shelf about six feet above the pavement. Set into a recess were three arches, beneath the center one the well. Crossing the space above it and extending to the two outer archways was a wooden shaft to be turned by means of wheels at each end.

    "Get up there," the guard ordered. The two Scots climbed to the shelf. A soldier followed and chained them beside the wheels.

    "Now turn them lively," the guard shouted. "There's a deal of water needed."

    A bucket, attached to a long rope, was lowered into the well. A distant splash signified the end of its descent. Then Ross and Hugh turned the windlass to raise the dripping vessel. A manservant stood ready to empty the water into a hogshead. When after repeated drawing of the bucket the hogshead was filled, he went off for another.

    Ross and Hugh were turning their wheels when a maidservant stepped out of a nearby doorway. She must have come from the kitchen, Ross thought, judging by the fragrant steam that floated out the door. She carried a basket of blackened fragments.

    "See there," Ross said in a loud voice to Hugh, "if it isn't the same woman who tried to hit us with her slops."

    The servant looked up and halted.

    "A mighty poor shot she is," Hugh said. "She couldna hit the panniers on a pack horse."

    The woman picked up one of the charred chunks. "I'll hit you on your saucy mouth," she threatened.

    "Try it and see," Ross called.

    "That I will," she said. "I'll hit you both." She set down her basket and began pelting them.

    Ross let go his grip on the windlass; Hugh did the same. The wheels spun around, the shaft turned, and the rope unwound speedily. But the two young Scots were too busy catching burnt oatcakes to care. The cakes were like charcoal on the outside, and little better within, but they afforded nourishment. Ross had time to put two in his mouth and three inside his shirt before the manservant came back and drove the woman away.

    Hugh, too, had secreted some of the cakes. That night when Ross and Hugh were returned to the middle bailey they gave one each to Dougal, Lachlan, John Davison, and Duncan. The Dunbar man needed none. He lay stiff in death.

    Under cover of the darkness Duncan handed Ross his bagpipes. "Ye might yet hae a chance to play these," he said.

    For two more days the Scots were kept penned inside Alnwick Castle. On the eighth day the gates were opened, and the captives were formed in ranks and counted. Of the five thousand who had entered Alnwick, only half survived. That ragged remnant was issued a biscuit apiece and led southward, deeper into England.

❧

Morpeth

Two days of weary plodding brought the captives to the town of Morpeth. Here were handsome half-timbered houses and a great clock tower in the market square. The townsfolk lined the streets in open hostility. Some jeered, some threw sticks and stones, but none cast anything remotely edible.

    Just beyond the center of town the Scots were forced into a large walled garden that ran down to the River Wansbeck. Ross saw that those ahead hurried into the garden's entrance. A few minutes later he discovered the reason. The ground inside was covered with cabbages.

    Fresh green cabbage! The sight alone was enough to half craze a man. With the others Ross surged forward and tore one of the green heads from the ground, stuffing the tough outside leaves into his mouth. Hastily he chewed and swallowed, then ripped off another mouthful and ate that too.

    "Take heed for yer stomach," Duncan was warning. "'Tis not able to churn up all this green of a sudden."

Ross recalled the writhings of the Dunbar man and slackened his jaws' rapid pace. He noticed that John Davison was only nibbling at a leaf.

    "My middle's that sore," he declared, "I scarce dare eat a morsel."

    Davison was one of the very few who partook meagerly. Like a pack of ravening wolves falling upon a slaughtered sheep the other Scots threw themselves upon the cabbages and devoured them. In a short time not one shred of green remained in the garden.

    During the night there was the sound of retching and groaning. In all parts of the garden men vomited, or screamed that their bowels had fair dissolved.

    Ross had a pain in his stomach such as he had never known before. He was curled in a tight ball, his arms folded over the knot in his middle, when a dark form crept up to him. Never had he been so glad to see Tam! He threw his arms about the dog, hugging him fiercely, and as the collie pressed close, the pain in his stomach subsided. Tam remained until dawn, when Ross sent him off. Silent as a shadow, the dog leaped over the wall, and was gone.

    By the morning's light more Scots were found to have died. Ross averted his gaze from their bodies. It had been enough to listen to their cries in the night.

    Some men were so weak that they could hardly stand upright for the daily count. On the road to Newcastle many died by the way.

    "Why did the English not butcher us at Dunbar?" Dougal asked morosely.

    "Then their people would hae missed seein' what a fine victory Cromwell had," Duncan answered. "Doubtless he's marchin' through Scotland now, putting all to fire and sword."

    "Victory! Hah!" John Davison's usually mild voice was bitter. Then in an apparent change of topic he asked, "Did any of ye ever read the writings of a man called Tacitus?"

    "I think the Laird had a book by him. Would it be in Latin?" Ross asked.

    "Aye, that's the one. He had no great love for Rome's way of conquering peoples. All he could see was the death and destruction. "They make a desert and they call it peace, were his words. And that will be the fate of Scotland."

    At that moment a man just ahead tumbled into the ditch, gave a fearful gasp, and lay still. A guard came up and rolled the body over with his foot. The eyes were open in an unseeing gaze; the mouth was slack. Silently the guard observed the body, then walked away.

    "Ye'd think they'd gie a man a decent burial," Hugh observed in a shaking voice.

    "No need," Dougal said. "The ravens will take care o' him."

    He was right. Ravens had been following the Scots since they left Dunbar. Ross dared not look back. He had seen too often the hooked beaks ripping into still-warm flesh. Tacitus's words rang in his mind. "They make a desert and they call it peace." Not only was Scotland being ravaged; there were deserts being created in men's souls that would never flower again.

    That afternoon the Scots reached Newcastle, passing through high gates built upon part of the old Roman wall. They were locked up in a great stone church. With the others Ross found a small space on the south aisle where Hugh could look out through a medallion window to the distant stars.

    That night food was distributed, three biscuits to a man. Ross chewed on his thankfully, but some of the men were too ill to lift bread to their mouths. In the morning one hundred and forty were too sick to march, and remained in the church.

    The sky was overcast when the prisoners stepped out into the day. Despite the threat of rain the street was lined with people who shouted, jeered, and pelted the Scots with rotted vegetable marrows and other filth.

    "They hae not yet forgot how we trapped them within the city's walls in '44," Duncan said. "Six weeks we kept them penned up here. "Twas told they ate e'en the rats."

    "A rat sounds no' too bad," said Dougal, "be he fat and meaty."

    Ross felt his gorge rising.

    At the bridge across the Tyne the crowds thinned to a few sullen onlookers. Outside of Newcastle the road was clear save for an occasional farm wagon piled high with produce, or a string of pack horses, their panniers laden with mackerel and sprats from the coast.

    Just beyond the thick hawthorne hedge at the roadside flashed a bit of brown fur. A badger or marten, thought Ross. A mile later he caught the quick flirt of a plumed tail. Could Tam still be following? In the afternoon Ross saw a collie racing across a distant hillside. There was no mistaking that familiar silhouette. He began to long for the night and Tam's return.

    While twilight thickened the prisoners staggered on. Despite the tortoise-like pace and the occasional fall of a dying man, they had covered the distance from Newcastle to Chester-le-Street in half a day. Soon they must approach Durham. The last roadside sign had said it was three miles distant.

    Just as darkness fell, the train of captives crossed over the River Wear into the town of Durham. The line moved through a narrow street to an open market place lit by guttering torches, then turned right and climbed steeply. At the top of the ascent was a large open space, and beyond it the black outlines of a vast Norman church. Ross's eyes moved up the mighty exterior, its lower windows dimly winking with lights. Up and up he gazed to the central tower. By the time he had followed its outlines to the top, his head was bent far back. Never had he seen a tower so lofty.

    The Scots were led to the northwest porch. As he approached the massive doors, Ross noted an intricately worked iron knocker in the form of a human face. Hе would have laughed aloud could he have summoned the strength. A sanctuary knocker! He had heard of such. In times gone by a fugitive could find refuge and safety here by lifting this piece of metal. Had ever fugitives been in more need than he and his fellows? Passing by, Ross reached out and lifted the knocker. It fell with a sharp clang. The appeal was not unanswered. A second later Bruton hit Ross's knuckles with the stock of his musket.

    Within, all was dim and cavernous. A few cressets gave but feeble light. Ross had an impression of great circular stone columns rising far up into murky blackness. Carved stone figures on massive tombs lined the aisles.

    In one corner lay a heap of straw with which the Scots were ordered to make pallets. This was the first time that bedding of any sort had been provided. Did this mean that their imprisonment here would last longer than a night or two? Ross was too weary to ponder the possibility. He gathered an armful of the dried grass, spread it on the cold stone floor, and was soon asleep. His last thought was of Tam. Was he lurking outside the cathedral? And how long would even his rare fidelity keep him waiting there?

❧

Durham

Cathedral

When daylight filtered down through the cathedral's loft windows, Ross could examine its cold and drafty interiom The stone walls were fortress-like; each door was barred and guarded. Escape seemed impossible.

    A double row of circular columns ran the length of the nave, and were covered with deeply incised carvings, the cuts broad and deep enough to accommodate a man's hand. The design on each was different, spiraling or zigzagging upward in its own special pattern. In vaulted grandeur the nave stretched to the distant apse and altar. Where the transept crossed, the central tower rose to such a height that Ross could see only shadows far above.

    At the end of the south transept the wall was nearly covered by a large, elaborately carved wooden clock. Its four brightly painted and gilded dials told not only the minutes and hours but also the months, the days, and the phases of the moon. Despite the fact that it was of English make, Ross could not stifle his admiration. Never had he seen a more beautiful piece of workmanship.

    With the other Kindonal men he made his way past the magnificent carved-stone altar screen, the lofty bishop's throne, and the high altar. Behind it was a slab marking the grave of Saint Cuthbert, whose bones had been brought to Durham in 995, over three centuries after his death.

    Now and then Ross passed 'a man retching and gasping in pain. The chill damp seemed to penetrate one's bones, and Ross was shivering as he stopped to look at the elaborate tombs and marble effigies on either side of the main aisle.

    "Here lies Ralph Lord Neville, and Lady Alice his wife," John Davison read. He peered at the date. "Was he not the same Neville who led the men of Northumbria to defeat the Scots under King David the Bruce?"

    "Aye, he maun be the same," said Duncan. "'Twas called the battle of Neville's Cross. See, here is anither Neville tomb, that o' Lord John and Lady Matilda. Would ye look at the wee figures carved all around the base?"

    "When did the battle take place?" asked Hugh.

    "A bit more than three hundred years ago," Davison said.

    How many Scots died that day at Neville's Cross? Ross wondered. Or were taken prisoner? Had those Scots of long ago suffered the same agony as the captives of Dunbar?

    They had started to move on when three men came up behind them. One kicked at the tomb. Another spat on the marble figures.

    "Three hundred years or no, I say may the Nevilles be damned!" he said.

    "Aye, a curse on the Sassenachs!" cried his companion.

    Ross could feel an answering hatred rising within him.

    Later in the day guards brought in great hampers of biscuits and hogsheads of water. One by one the Scots were lined up and given their allowance of bread and a drink of water. As they passed by, a guard counted their number.

    Ross heard him say, "There be thirty less than yestreen."

    A second soldier commented, "How so? They be fed the same as any prisoners."

    "'Tis not from lack of food they die now. 'Tis a sickness. Have you never heard of the bloody flux?"

    The other drew back. His ruddy face had turned white. "Think you it might afflict us?"

    "God forbid. Have you heard their moans? As if hot irons were burning out their vitals?"

    Ross was shoved along out of earshot and heard no more. He gave a wide berth to the recumbent bodies on the thin straw pallets. The guards were not the only ones who feared this sickness.

    The next day twice thirty men died, and the day after, twice that number again. The illness increased among the survivors, and the groans and retching were fearful to hear. The stench of sickness hung heavily upon the cold, damp air.

    The following morning a group of English officers entered the cathedral, escorted by armed guards. Many held handkerchiefs to their faces; they remained only a short while. Soon those Scots most sorely afflicted were carried away.

    "To the Bishop's Castle," a guard ordered. Ross remembered an imposing edifice at the farther end of the open green.

    At noontime one of the great doors was opened. Eight men entered bearing baskets of coal. Soon fires burned at various spots. Those captives well enough to stand crowded about the flames.

    The same eight servants next brought in large iron pots filled with thick, bubbling stew. Hot food! Ross could scarcely believe his senses. After the starvation rations of the past weeks, the smell of meat and vegetables was intoxicating.

    The next moment he was being shoved and pushed toward the caldrons in a mob of half-crazed men. Only the bared swords of guards stopped the frantic onrush. Then came an almost unbearable delay while the men were made to form the usual line. And at last the stew was ladled out. When all had been distributed, the servants and guards departed. The Scots were left to their own devices.

    A wooden bucketful for each six men was the rule. Ross could feel the saliva welling as he and Dougal carried the bucket to a corner. They set it on the floor, and the others gathered around. Even John Davison's eyes gleamed greedily. For a few moments no word was said. Each man thrust his begrimed hand into the mixture, scooped up a portion, and shoved it into his mouth.

    Ross hardly stopped to chew. He swallowed rapidly so that he could stuff more into his mouth-and more. There was beef in the stew, and cabbage, and the whole was thickened with oats. Never had food tasted more wonderful. Even the rich smell of it was heartening. He was about to dip his hand in again when he saw Duncan's brawny arm raised threateningly.

    "Be ye men or beasts?" he asked. "Ne'er hae I seen a more sluttish band. Do ye keep on in this wise ye'll be pukin' up every bit."

    Ross gulped. Was he imagining it, or was his stomach heaving dangerously?

    "Perhaps we should bide a bit and let our bellies get used to the shock," John Davison ventured.

    "Nay," Dougal cried. "I say we maun eat now whilst the food is hot. Do we wait, they may take it awa'!" He plunged his hand into the bucket, and brought up a dripping fistful.

    "Duncan is richt," said Hugh. "We maun bide a wee time an' then 'twill set better."

    "Aye, 'twere best no' to be in haste," Lachlan offered, and added piously, "'The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink.'"

    Reluctantly Dougal accepted the decision. He sat staring at the remaining stew with voracious eyes. Duncan held the bucket firmly on his knees. His wounded arm had healed so well that he was once more a person to be reckoned with.

    "An hour by yon clock," he announced. "Then we can eat what's left."

    As one man the group fixed their eyes on the dial. Ross thought he had never seen hands move so sluggishly. It took an age for them to cover five minutes. Finally the longer hand reached the half hour mark. Then it crept slowly toward the hour.

    A short distance down the aisle a man cried out in pain.

    "Water," he said. "Water." Then he doubled up.

    None of the men near him paid any heed. When he called out again, Duncan shoved the bucket into Hugh's hands. "Take this till I can get a swallow for the puir devil."

    A few minutes later he waved his arm and called out, "Ho, McCrae, can ye gie me a hand?"

    Ross made his way to the sick man. The sight and stench nearly made him turn back. The sufferer lay in a pool of filth. Duncan was bent over him, attempting to give him a drink.

    "Will ye fetch some fresh bedding?" Duncan requested.

    Thankful to get away, Ross crossed the cathedral and gathered up an armful of straw. After he spread it out, he and Duncan lifted the wasted form onto the pallet.

    Duncan looked at the clock. "'Tis time for the rest of our meal," he said, and led the way back to the Kindonal men.

    As they drew nearer, they could see thrashing arms and legs, and in an instant the empty bucket rolled across the floor, a trail of stew running onto the befouled stones. A man nearby snatched up the container and thrust his head inside, lapping the broth that clung to the sides and bottom. Others attempted to gather up what had fallen on the floor.

    Ross could make out Hugh and Lachlan on top of Dougal, hitting him again and again with their fists. John Davison crouched at one side, his usually serene countenance contorted in fury.

    "Dougal was that greedy he snatched the pottage from Hugh and began to cat before the hour was quite up. Lachlan tried to get the bucket away from him, but ye can see what befell. And now the food is spent."

    Duncan laid a strong hand on the struggling trio. "Cease yer battlin'," he said. "The evil's done, and there's naught to gain but a lesson. If Dougal likes not our ways, let him fend for himself. There be ithers he can join."

    Lachlan sat up and pointed an accusing finger at Dougal. "'They are greedy dogs which can never have enough,'" he intoned.

    Dougal lurched to his feet. "I was that starved," he began in a trembling voice. One eye was bruised and swelling. Blood ran from his lip.

    Hungry, was he? Wasn't every man of them half out of his mind with near starvation? Ross clenched his fist. For a minute he had all he could do not to bring it down on Dougal's head.

    Was a man's own hunger any excuse for making five others do without half their first decent meal in weeks? In another second he'd be throwing Dougal to the ground. Trembling with rage, he walked down the north aisle, past the choir, and in front of the vast altar.

    Back along the south aisle he stumbled, hardly knowing where he walked. He passed the sick man on the fresh pallet of rushes but scarcely saw his feeble glance of gratitude. He passed under the great clock, barely noting the hands pointing to October on the dial of months, and to the 31st on the dial of days. As from another world he heard a voice remark, "'Twill soon be All Hallows Eve. Think ye the spirits will walk here tonight?"

    Just ahead beyond the transept a knot of men had gathered around the Neville tombs. Two were carrying a heavy stone bench. The others drew back to let them into the circle. The pair swung the bench; there was a dull thud as stone met stone.

    "Ding it again!" chorused the group.

    The two swung the heavy bench once more. This time a sharp crack accompanied the thud.

    "Och, the head came off, neat as King Charles's!" Brawny hands lifted the marble likeness of Lord John Neville and held it aloft. A second later they dashed it furiously onto the floor.

    "Would it were Cromwell's!" cried a voice thick with hatred.

    The crowd moved in. One man used the severed head to hammer at the hands and arms of the effigies. Others repeatedly slammed the bench against the figures. A stone foot broke off, and another head.

    Suddenly Ross was filled with consuming rage and the need to avenge the injuries inflicted upon the Scots by the English. Picking up a chunk of stone from the floor, he began to batter at the marble sculptures. A red haze obscured his vision. He had never before known such insensate hatred. Again and again he struck at the effigies, each blow with fierce intent.

    One of Neville's countrymen had killed Black Donald. Thus Ross would strike him who had caused his father's death!

    An English soldier had brought about Kettie's fatal fall. How Ross would like to rain blows such as these on Bruton!

    English guards had starved and killed his fellows. What he wouldn't give to deal them the same treatment!

    At length his weakened muscles would no longer obey his will. He reeled back, hands stinging and arms aching from the stone's impact. Another man took his place. Splinters of marble flew through the air. Soon the Neville tombs were battered beyond any possible resemblance to the titled nobles in whose likenesses they had been sculpted. Even the small figures carved on the base received their share of punishment. Each was beheaded with vengeful fury.

❧

All

Hallows Eve

In a daze Ross tottered toward the south transept, and leaned in a corner near the great clock. Something was

pressing against his back. He turned and saw that it was the handle of a small door he had not noticed before. Of course it must be locked. The English would have made certain that every exit was closed securely.

    Nevertheless he tried the handle and pushed against the panels. To his amazement the door turned on its hinges. Swiftly he slid through the opening and closed the door behind him, his heart pounding at the prospect of escape.