to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel.”
“Aweel,” said Alan, “say nae mair.”
And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey’s end, and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.
The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us his opinion as to our best route. This was to get us up at once into the tops of the mountains: to go round by a circuit, turning the heads of Glen Lyon, Glen Lochay, and Glen Dochart, and come down upon the lowlands by Kippen and the upper waters of the Forth. Alan was little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Campbells. He objected that by turning to the east, we should come almost at once among the Athole Stewarts, a race of his own name and lineage although following a different chief, and come besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we were bound. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Cluny’s scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand) that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the Campbells.
Alan gave way at last, but with only half a heart. “It’s one of the dowiest countries in Scotland,” said he. “There’s naething there that I ken, but heath,
