“’We are lost,’ she wailed, pressing me wildly against her bosom, while I could feel her heart beating fast and hard against my own.
“’What, is it, mother?’ I asked; but I knew without any words from her.
“We were standing in a corridor, but the smoke soon became so dense that we could no longer endure it. Hardly knowing what she did, I think, she dragged me along to a window in the room where I had slept, and opening it, looked out. The yard of the castle was alive with men holding blazing sticks of fir, and flames shot up from the burning door of the central tower in which we stood. I also looked out, and noticed dark, silent forms lying prone upon the ground.
“’Fire or sword? What matters it?’ I heard her whisper to herself. ’Lost, lost, lost! Oh, Ruari, my son, my son!’ And she kissed me--the last kisses she ever gave.”
I broke down weeping. The little hand of the maid caressed and soothed me.
“We had been spied from the yard,” I went on, after I had had my fill of crying, and a great hoarse voice rose above the din.
“’Fetch me the woman and the child alive!’ was what it said.
“’It is Red Angus Maclean,’ said my mother, hopelessly.
“Then four clansmen plunged through the smoke and flame, and burst in upon us. Seizing us roughly, they took us half dead to Red Angus.
“’Do what you will with me,’ said my mother, falling on her knees before him, ’but shed not the blood of the lad,’ she implored and prayed of him. ’He has never done you any harm.’
“He scowled at us, and played with the handle of his dirk.
“’Why should I not slay ye both?’ said he. ’When did ever a Macdonald spare a Maclean, tell me that?’ He paused, as if in thought. ’But listen,’ he began again. ’Choose you,’ said he, speaking to my mother, ’for such is my humour, choose you, your life or the boy’s.’
“’Thank ye,’ said my mother. ’Never did I think I should live to thank a Maclean. Swear you will not shed his innocent blood, and I shall die gladly.’
“’Will ye swear not to put him to the sword?’
“’Yes,’ said my mother; and with her eyes fixed on me, she fell beneath the stabs of his dirk; but even as she fell I sprang from the arms of the men who held me, and leapt like a wild cat of Mull straight for his throat, but he caught and crushed me in his grip.