Calum looked at the folk in front of him, and had mind of other ends to battles. "To die in a house like a rat were no great credit," said he, and he threw his sword on the floor, where the blades of Art and Uileam soon joined it.
With tied arms the father and his sons were taken outside, where the air was full of the scents of birch and gall new-washed. The glen, clearing fast of mist, lay green and sweet for mile and mile, and far at its mouth the fat Blaranbuie woods chuckled in the sun.
"I have you now," said Niall Mor. "Ye ken what we seek. It's the old ploy--the secret of the ale."
Calum laughed in his face, and the two sons said things that cut like knives.
"Man! I'm feared ye'll rue this," said Niall Mor, calm enough. "Ye may laugh, but--what would ye call a gentleman's death?"
"With the sword or the dagger in the hand, and a Diarmaid or two before me," cried Calum.
"Well, there might be worse ways of travelling yont--indeed there could ill be better; but if the secret of the ale is not to be ours for the asking, ye'll die a less well-bred death."
"Name it, man, name it," said Calum. "Might it be tow at the throat and a fir-branch."
"Troth," said Niall Mor, "and that were too gentle a travelling. The Scaurnoch's on our way, and the crows at the foot of it might relish a Glen Shira carcass."
Uileam whitened at the notion of so ugly an end, but Calum only said, "Die we must any way," and Art whistled a bit of a pipe-tune, grinding his heel on the moss.
Niall Mor made to strike the father on the face, but stayed his hand and ordered the three in-by, with a few of his corps to guard them. Up and down Glen Shira went the Diarmaids, seeking the brewing-cave, giving hut and home to the flame, and making black hearths and low lintels for the women away in the sheilings. They buried their dead at Kilblaan, and, with no secret the better, set out for Scaurnoch with Calum and his sons.
The MacKellars were before, like a _spreidh_ of stolen cattle, and the lot of the driven herd was theirs. They were laughed at and spat on, and dirk-hilts and _cromags_ hammered on their shoulders, and through Blaranbuie wood they went to the bosky elbow of Dun Corr-bhile and round to the Dun beyond.