He scarcely seemed to know what he was saying in this wild way; there was a strange look in his eyes, though apparently he was very merry.  And this was the first word he had uttered about Gertrude White to any living being at Dare ever since his last return from the South.

Now what was Hamish’s answer to this gay invitation?  The Gaelic tongue is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears, he usually swears in English.  But the Gaelic curse is a much more solemn and deliberate affair.

“May her soul dwell in the lowermost hall of perdition!”—­that was the answer that Hamish made; and there was a blaze of anger in the keen eyes and in the proud and handsome face.

“Oh, yes,” continued the old man, in his native tongue, and he spoke rapidly and passionately, “I am only a serving-man, and perhaps a serving-man ought not to speak; but perhaps sometimes he will speak.  And have I not seen it all, Sir Keith?—­and no more of the pink letters coming; and you going about a changed man, as if there was nothing more in life for you?  And now you ask me if I will go to the wedding?  And what do I say to you, Sir Keith?  I say this to you—­that the woman is not now living who will put that shame on Macleod of Dare!”

Macleod regarded the old man’s angry vehemence almost indifferently; he had grown to pay little heed to anything around him.—­

“Oh yes, it is a fine thing for the English lady,” said Hamish, with the same proud fierceness, “to come here and amuse herself.  But she does not know the Mull men yet.  Do you think, Sir Keith, that any one of your forefathers would have had this shame put upon him?  I think not.  I think he would have said, ’Come, lads, here is a proud madam that does not know that a man’s will is stronger than a woman’s will; and we will teach her a lesson.  And before she has learned that lesson, she will discover that it is not safe to trifle with a Macleod of Dare.’  And you ask me if I will go to the wedding!  I have known you since you were a child, Sir Keith; and I put the first gun in your hand; and I saw you catch your first salmon:  it is not right to laugh at an old man.”

“Laughing at you Hamish?  I gave you an invitation to a wedding!”

“And if I was going to that wedding,” said Hamish, with a return of that fierce light to the gray eyes, “do you know how I would go to the wedding?  I would take two or three of the young lads with me.  We would make a fine party for the wedding.  Oh yes, a fine party!  And if the English church is a fine church, can we not take off our caps as well as any one?  But when the pretty madam came in, I would say to myself, ’Oh yes, my fine madam, you forgot it was a Macleod you had to deal with, and not a child, and you did not think you would have a visit from two or three of the Mull lads!’”

“And what then?” Macleod said, with a smile, though this picture of his sweetheart coming into the church as the bride of another man had paled his cheek.