288 REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 



homesteads. But as the years went by the township rose 

 again and young men and maidens made merry as they tend- 

 ed the herds or brought the harvest home. Memories of the 

 foray had been softened by time and were relegated to the 

 long winter evenings when the story was told by the blazing 

 pine faggot. Another fate was reserved for Badachroe. The 

 Laird learnt Sasanach ways and waste. The land was poor 

 and the crofters ignorant. The Southerner was waiting with 

 his gold. The big ship was anchored in the Bay. And first 

 the sheep and then the deer broused on the green mounds 

 of Badachroe. 



The Macleods, however, had reckoned without their host. 

 A fisher-boy, gathering bait, had marked their course. The 

 Mackenzies were under arms and had that morning made for 

 the birlinns which put to sea to avoid capture. They were 

 now on the track of the Macleods. As the latter were toiling 

 with their booty through the pass by the side of a mountain 

 tarn the former topped the sky line. At a level spot, where 

 a small burn falls into the lake, the two bands met in rough 

 line formation. After a discharge of arrows they closed at 

 the double. There was no hanging back from actual combat 

 nor shrinking from cold steel. Each man had to prove his 

 worth with the broad sword. Among the heather they surged 

 and swayed, and every now and then a wounded form fell 

 or crept unnoticed, for the present, to the shelter of the burn. 

 Woe to the Siol Torquil. The heather bloom was taking a 

 darker tint from their blood. The remnant was being sur- 

 rounded and overpowered. The hope of Raasay lay stark 

 stiffening. They broke and fled. The pursuit was furious. 

 At a turn in the pass where huge boulders narrow the way, 

 the Macleods, seeing they would be overtaken one by one, and 

 viewing a lagging comrade being butchered in the cleft below, 

 turned like mountain cats and slew the advanced party of 

 the Mackenzies. Thus respited and darkness coming on they 



