“I will be giving you three minutes, Kilree,” said Macaulay, “to get the length of the boulder yonder on your way back. If I see so much as your heel after that I will shoot at it, and you will not escape with your life a second time.”
“That is very fine, and I’ll not deny it is picturesque,” said the Captain, “but it’s a little out of date and a cursed folly. More than that, it’s robbery, to say nothing about the—the accident with the knife, and nowadays there’s admitted to be no grace about a robbery even committed in a kilt. It might be all very well for your grandfather and my own to fight like this over these walls, but—”
“How did Kincreggan come into the hands of your family?” interrupted the lawyer.
“You have me there,” admitted the Captain, with a little awkward laugh. “You have me there, and I’m not a lawyer to obscure the facts. Our folk fought yours for it, and having got it—”
“Well, the fighting was not finished,” said the outlaw; “I have begun it again, and Kincreggan is Macaulay’s. Go back, Kilree, go back; and if you come again, bring a coffin under your arm.”
The Captain went, and it was the last he was to see of his factor till that stormy Lammas day when the outlaw came home.
Macaulay roved the moors and forest while his clerk kept ward in their fortress. Stags fell to his gun, the best linns gave him fish. At the market in Marinish, over the ford on the other island, where the Captain’s clan was unpopular, Macaulay one day appeared at a cattle tryst and sold beasts the buyers did not inquire too closely about, and he replaced them in his fold with others lifted boldly from Kilree’s home farm on his way back from the market. Night and day he was watched for, but night or day either he or Macdonald was awake and waiting; and more than once he was at the other end of the parish on some exploit while Kilree’s men kept an eye on the pass.
He became the glory of his own island, and a toast at fairs in all the Islands. “Alasdair Dhu” was the name on every lip; his wife shared his popularity, and people sent her gifts of sheep and fowl from as far as the mainland. And all she would say was, “What a silly thing! An island of men against one man in a dream! If I had just had him here!”