“What is cruel now was not cruel then,” he said; “it was a way of fighting:  it was what is called an ambush now—­enticing your enemy, and then taking him at a disadvantage.  And if you did not do that to him, he would do it to you.  And when a man is mad with anger or revenge, what does he care for anything?”

“I thought we were all sheep now,” said she.

“Do you know the story of the man who was flogged by Maclean of Lochbuy—­that is in Mull,” said he, not heeding her remark.  “You do not know that old story?”

They did not; and he proceeded to tell it in a grave and simple fashion which was sufficiently impressive.  For he was talking to these two friends now in the most unembarrassed way; and he had, besides, the chief gift of a born narrator—­an utter forgetfulness of himself.  His eyes rested quite naturally on their eyes as he told his tale.  But first of all, he spoke of the exceeding loyalty of the Highland folk to the head of their clan.  Did they know that other story of how Maclean of Duart tried to capture the young heir of the house of Lochbuy, and how the boy was rescued and carried away by his nurse?  And when, arrived at man’s estate, he returned to revenge himself on those who had betrayed him, among them was the husband of the nurse.  The young chief would have spared the life of this man, for the old woman’s sake. “Let the tail go with the hide,” said she, and he was slain with the rest.  And then the narrator went on to the story of the flogging.  He told them how Maclean of Lochbuy was out after the deer one day; and his wife, with her child, had come out to see the shooting.  They were driving the deer; and at a particular pass a man was stationed so that, should the deer come that way, he should turn them back.  The deer came to this pass; the man failed to turn them; and the chief was mad with rage.  He gave orders that the man’s back should be bared, and that he should be flogged before all the people.

“Very well,” continued Macleod.  “It was done.  But it is not safe to do anything like that to a Highlander; at least it was not safe to do anything like that to a highlander in those days; for, as I told you, Mrs. Ross, we are all like sheep now.  Then they went after the deer again; but at one moment the man that had been flogged seized Maclean’s child from the nurse, and ran with it across the mountain-side, till he reached a place overhanging the sea.  And he held out the child over the sea; and it was no use that Maclean begged on his knees for forgiveness.  Even the passion of loyalty was lost now in the fierceness of his revenge.  This was what the man said—­that unless Maclean had his back bared there and then before all the people, and flogged as he had been flogged, then the child should be dashed into the sea below.  There was nothing to be done but that—­no prayers, no offers, no appeals from the mother, were of any use.  And so it was that Maclean of Lochbuy was flogged there before his own people, and his enemy above looking on.  And then?  When it was over, the man called aloud, ‘Revenged! revenged!’ and sprang into the air with the child along with him; and neither of them was ever seen again after they had sunk into the sea.  It is an old story.”