So saying, he whistled very softly, and was answered in a tone equally low from the top of a pass, up which they had for some time been ascending.  Mending their pace, they reached the top, where the moon, which had now risen bright and clear, showed to Dalgetty a party of ten or twelve Highlanders, and about as many women and children, by whom Ranald MacEagh was received with such transports of joy, as made his companion easily sensible that those by whom he was surrounded, must of course be Children of the Mist.  The place which they occupied well suited their name and habits.  It was a beetling crag, round which winded a very narrow and broken footpath, commanded in various places by the position which they held.

Ranald spoke anxiously and hastily to the children of his tribe, and the men came one by one to shake hands with Dalgetty, while the women, clamorous in their gratitude, pressed round to kiss even the hem of his garment.  “They plight their faith to you,” said Ranald MacEagh, “for requital of the good deed you have done to the tribe this day.”

“Enough said, Ranald,” answered the soldier, “enough said—­tell them I love not this shaking of hands—­it confuses ranks and degrees in military service; and as to kissing of gauntlets, puldrons, and the like, I remember that the immortal Gustavus, as he rode through the streets of Nuremberg, being thus worshipped by the poulace (being doubtless far more worthy of it than a poor though honourable cavalier like myself), did say unto them, in the way of rebuke, ’If you idolize me thus like a god, who shall assure you that the vengeance of Heaven will not soon prove me to be a mortal?’—­And so here, I suppose you intend to make a stand against your followers, Ranald—­Voto A DIOS, as the Spaniard says?—­a very pretty position—­as pretty a position for a small peloton of men as I have seen in my service—­no enemy can come towards it by the road without being at the mercy of cannon and musket.—­But then, Ranald, my trusty comrade, you have no cannon, I dare to aver, and I do not see that any of these fellows have muskets either.  So with what artillery you propose making good the pass, before you come to hand blows, truly, Ranald, it passeth my apprehension.”

“With the weapons and with the courage of our fathers,” said MacEagh; and made the Captain observe, that the men of his party were armed with bows and arrows.

“Bows and arrows!” exclaimed Dalgetty; “ha! ha! ha! have we Robin Hood and Little John back again?  Bows and arrows! why, the sight has not been seen in civilized war for a hundred years.  Bows and arrows! and why not weavers’ beams, as in the days of Goliah?  Ah! that Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket, should live to see men fight with bows and arrows!—­The immortal Gustavus would never have believed it—­nor Wallenstein—­nor Butler—­nor old Tilly,—­Well, Ranald, a cat can have but its claws—­since bows and arrows are the word, e’en let us make the