Mrs. Ross, with a smile, "if you try to excuse one of the cruelest
things ever heard of."

"I do not excuse it at all," said he, simply. "It was very bad--very
cruel. But perhaps the Macleods were not so much worse than others. It
was not a Macleod at all, it was a Gordon--and she a woman, too--that
killed the chief of the Mackintoshes after she had received him as a
friend. 'Put your head down on the table,' said she to the chief, 'in
token of your submission to the Earl of Huntly.' And no sooner had he
bowed his neck than she whipped out a knife and cut his head off. That
was a Gordon, not a Macleod. And I do not think the Macleods were so
much worse than their neighbors, after all."

"Oh, how can you say that?" exclaimed his persecutor. "Who was ever
guilty of such an act of treachery as setting fire to the barn at
Dunvegan? Macdonald and his men get driven on to Skye by the bad
weather; they beg for shelter from their old enemy; Macleod professes to
be very great friends with them; and Macdonald is to sleep in the
castle, while his men have a barn prepared for them. You know very well,
Sir Keith, that if Macdonald had remained that night in Dunvegan Castle
he would have been murdered; and if the Macleod girl had not given a
word of warning to her sweetheart, the men in the barn would have been
burned to death. I think if I were a Macdonald I should be proud of that
scene--the Macdonalds marching down to their boats with their pipes
playing, while the barn was all in a blaze fired by their treacherous
enemies. Oh, Sir Keith, I hope there are no Macleods of that sort alive
now."

"There are not, Mrs. Ross," said he, gravely. "They were all killed by
the Macdonalds, I suppose."