CHAPTER XXIV.

THE RAID OF MACALLUM MHOR.

The scarlet mantle and the blue bonnet of the murderer, with his crest thereon, were found in the thicket, and left no doubt as to who was the perpetrator of this terrible deed, which cast a gloom over all the fair north countrie. His carbine was also found; for, though full of deadly hate against his rival, Gordon had not the most remote intention of injuring Lily. The moment he saw the frightful result of his fury, he had thrown down his weapon in dismay, and fled like a madman to his Tower among the morasses. In one hour from that time he had come forth again, sheathed in full armour, and crossed the hills at the head of twenty mounted spearmen, journeying no one knew whither.

Kenneth buried his Lily in the old kirkyard of Logie-colstaine, on the grassy holme where, when the sun was in the west, the cross of St. Woloc's spire might fall upon her grave; for those charming old superstitions which cast a halo round the ancient faith, were yet lingering in the hearts of the Scottish people; and thus, though rigid Calvinists, they laid Lily with her feet to the east, and her fair head towards the setting sun, that, according to the tradition of the early Christians, she might, at the day of doom, see our Saviour when he comes from the east in his glory.

And there by her open grave, Kenneth Logie, with his head bare and his sword drawn, knelt down among the damp mould--that hideous earth, impregnated with the bones of other times; and on his blade and on his Bible made a sad, a stern, but solemn vow of vengeance, which he called on his Lily to hear, and their Maker to register in heaven. He was the last to leave her grave; and, long after all others had departed, the lonely youth--for he was but a youth--was seen to linger there.

Long, long and bitterly, he wept, even as a child weeps, and, embracing the newly laid turf, kissed it many times; and the sun had set before he tore himself away. But the thought of Halbert Gordon, and the reflection that already four days had elapsed, nerved him anew; and, with lingering steps and many a backward glance, he left the place where the Lily of the Forest lay.

It was now generally known that the Protestant lords were in arms against their Catholic fellow-subjects. Kenneth learned that Gordon had ridden towards the north, and knew that, if he was to be found within the kingdom of Scotland, it would be with his clansmen, the Gordons, beneath the banner of Lord Huntly.

On the night after the funeral, a single horseman well mounted, and armed after the fashion of a Lowland gentleman, with a close morion, corslet and arm-pieces, gorget and steel gloves, with petronel, Glasgow axe, and two-handed sword, rode forth alone from the old Place and oak-woods of Culbleine. He crossed the Dee, and, leaving the glen, diverged upon the open moorlands, which were then covered with heath and furze, and watered by deep rivulets and swampy hollows; and, striking at once into the road which led towards the west, never halted until he reached a place where it dipped over a hill, and then he checked his horse and looked back.

Like a broad round silver shield, the summer moon was rising behind the oak-woods he had left, and its beams glinted brightly on the spire of the old ruined church, at the foot of which lay Lily's lonely grave. Its shadow was falling full upon the spot where he knew she was lying.

This was her first night in the tomb--in that old and desolate burying-ground, among the weedy graves, the mossy headstones, and remains of the mouldering dead.

It seemed to Kenneth that she must be very cold and very lonely there. The conviction was a bitter one, that she, so young, so beautiful, so golden-haired--who had yet so much of this world about her--should be lying there abandoned to decay, with no one beside her--among the ghastly dead, and not as usual in her bed, in the little tapestried room which her own dear hands had industriously decorated, and which Kenneth knew so well. The idea had something in it frightful and unnatural.

It seemed as if she must still be living! Kenneth could not realise her death. But there was an appalling recollection of a convulsed face, a mouth flowing with blood, a grave, a coffin, a shovelling of earth, a batting down of sods, a trampling of feet, and a sound of lamentation.

She was in her cold and sequestered grave for the first time, with the midnight dew descending upon the grass that covered her.

The pale trooper shuddered, and, turning his horse, galloped furiously down the opposite side of the hill, on his mission of vengeance.

* * * *

At this time the hereditary commissary of the Isles under James VI., Archibald seventh Earl of Argyle, and nineteenth chief of his race, a youth only twenty years of age, with the royal standard displayed, and half authorised by the king, was levying war against the Catholics of Scotland; but principally against his own enemies, the Earls of Huntly and Errol, who were the heads of the Roman faction. As the old ballad says--

"Macallum Mhor came frae the west, with many a bow and brand, To waste the Rinnes he thought it best, the Earl of Huntly's land."

Suddenly assembling 12,000 men, a force which included the hardy islesmen of Sir Lauchlan M'Lean, the M'Intoshes under their chief, the Grants of Urquhart under Gartenbeg, a lesser baron of the clan; the M'Gregors and M'Neils under Barra, and the whole tribe of Campbell, whose fighting force was never under 5000 claymores, together with all whom a thirst for plunder, or feudal malice against the clan Gordon, could induce to join him, Argyle marched through Badenoch in hostile array, with pipes sounding and banners displayed. Repulsed by the MacPhersons, a brave and military tribe who had thrown themselves into the strong fortress of Ruthven, he poured down between the dark pine-woods of Strathspey, in the territory of the Grants, and encamping at Drimnin, upon the beautiful banks of the Avon--the winding river--summoned the Forbeses, the Frazers, the Dunbars, and the M'Kenzies to his standard; but there one solitary horseman alone joined him--Kenneth Logie of Culbleine.

George Earl of Huntly, and Francis Earl of Errol, great constable of Scotland, and hereditary leader of the feudal cavalry, the two nobles on whom this warlike torrent had burst from the northern and western hills, were in no way dismayed; for though steady and unflinching Catholics (and as such suspected of having corresponded with the Spaniards, when their Armada was fitted out against our old hereditary enemies), they knew that James VI., far from being inimical to the Romish cause, was only constrained by popular clamour, and the Reformed clergy, to levy war against them. They knew well that in secret he was friendly to the faith for which his mother--the poor victim of accumulated treasons--perished; and that though he had sent Argyle, an impetuous and inexperienced youth, against them, he would by no means take the field in person. They also knew that the Grants of Gartenbeg, the Campbells of Lochnell, and other Catholic families, who followed the banner of Argyle, with whom they _reckoned blood_, could not feel warmly in his cause; and thus, never doubting that God would give the victory to the cross which they carried on their ensigns, those brave Lords of Huntly and of Errol took the field with confidence.

At the head of a hundred horsemen, sheathed in complete armour, and magnificently mounted, the very flower of his numerous vassalage, the chief of the Hays left his house of Errol, and attended by the heir of Bonnitoun, Crichton of Invernytie, and Innes of that Ilk, with all his clan, who bore with them the skull of their patron St. Marnan, marched to the castle of Strathbogie, the muster-place of the Gordons, in their pastoral district, the Garioch.

On the way he was joined by Halbert Gordon of the moated Tower, with his twenty horsemen.

To Strathbogie also came Allan M'Ildhui, chief of the clan Cameron, and, after this junction, Huntly, whose forces amounted to only 1500 men, marched towards the Calvinists, after each soldier had made his confession, received communion, and sworn a solemn oath on _the Holy Iron_, to conquer or to die.

Full of enthusiasm for battle, this little troop marched down by the Bogie, and, as they defiled past the castle of Huntly, it is related that his countess--the fair Henrietta of Lennox--held up her youngest son to see the martial array. Pleased with the flash of steel, the note of the trumpet, and patter of the kettledrum, he clapped his little hands and cried--

"Lord Daddy shall conquer and beat the Campbells!"

This was considered an omen of victory.

Crossing the dun mountains of the Garioch, they halted at Auchindoune, on the same day that the overwhelming force of Argyle encamped at Drimnin.

Passionate indeed was the eagerness, and fierce the joy, with which young Kenneth Logie heard that the troops of Lord Huntly were in the neighbourhood of the camp, and would soon be in view.

Young, brave, and enthusiastic, the valiant Argyle, the boy warrior--unlike the traitors who succeeded him, and in after years betrayed their country, and their king--sent forward a few horsemen under the Earl of Athole, and with these went Kenneth Logie; for, being a gentleman volunteer, without vassalage or attendants, his post was among the cavalry, and wherever there was most danger.

The evening of Wednesday, the 2nd October, had closed on the vast purple mountains and woods of sombre pine and silver birch that look down on the glens of the Livat and Fiddich, when these reconnoitring troopers, with their armour glittering in the starlight of the dying gloaming, rode softly and silently in extended order, with swords drawn and matches lighted, towards that part of the hills where they expected to see the forces of Huntly appear.

A line of red fires, dotting the dark brow of a distant hill, marked the bivouac of the Catholics. The smallness of its extent indicated their numerical inferiority, and the hearts of the Calvinists swelled with joy. At that moment a shot was heard; a horseman fell, and before Lord Athole's trumpeter could sound a rally, Captain--afterwards Sir Thomas--Kerr, with a troop of Huntly's cuirassiers, were upon them, shouting the _Cathghairm_ of their leader--

"A Gordon! a Gordon! down with the heretics!--God and St. Mary for Scotland!"

A confused discharge of carbines and pistolettes took place; a few horsemen fell on each side; then a short but furious encounter ensued with the sword, till, overborne by the number of Captain Kerr's men, those of Athole gave way, and retired towards the camp of Argyle.

Kenneth Logie was a man of one thought: that thought was vengeance! In this were merged and lost his Protestant sympathies and every other sentiment; but it was not without a sensation of shame that he found himself retiring before the victorious Catholics. Again and again he brandished his sword, and called on his comrades to "stand, and face about for Scotland and her Kirk!" but on they spurred in headlong panic, while shot after shot followed them, and many fell to rise no more from among the thick broom, and brushwood, or the deep moss-haggs, over which they were galloping in the dark.

"A Gordon! a Gordon!" cried a voice behind Kenneth. He turned, for that voice smote his ear like the shot of a pistol, and in another moment he found himself engaged hand to hand with Halbert of the Tower--the destroyer of Lily, fair Lily of Culbleine. A savage ardour filled his heart; he felt a blindness coming over him in his passionate longing to avenge her.

"Do Thou nerve my hand!" he exclaimed, looking upward to heaven; "do Thou nerve it, and temper my sword, that the blood of the slayer may be shed!"

By this time his retreating comrades had left him far behind.

"Hold all your weapons, gentlemen," exclaimed Kenneth, as the foemen closed around him; "hold back, I charge you on your honours--it is a single combat;" and he pressed on Gordon, who, being a first-rate swordsman, parried every cut and thrust admirably, for Jock of the Cleugh had spared no pains on his military education. The traitor, however, cared not to encounter Kenneth alone if he could avoid him, and exclaimed--

"A Hay! a Gordon!--Slay, slay!--A thousand merks for his head; 'tis the great Macallum Mhor himself!--Slay--slay!"

On hearing this announcement, a hundred swords were levelled at Kenneth, who was thus compelled to turn his horse and escape, with more than one severe wound, while the shot of many a carbine and pistol followed him, as with a scornful and indignant heart he galloped towards the camp of the King of the West.