my heels, with Jock's sark in my hand, and a lav'rock was singing, and
whiles I listened the pool grew still. And first it was blue glass
under blue sky, and I sat caught. And then it was curled cloud or
milk, and then it was nae color at all. And then I _saw_, and 'twas as
though what I saw was around me. There was a town nane like
Glenfernie, and a country of mountains, and a water no' like this one.
There pressed a thrang of folk, and they were Hieland men and Lowland
men, but mair Hieland than Lowland, and there were chiefs and
chieftains and Lowland lords, and there were pipers. I heard naught,
but it was as though bright shadows were around me. There was a height
like a Good People's mount, and a braw fine-clad lord speaking and
reading frae a paper, and by him a surpliced man to gie a prayer, and
there was a banner pole, and it went up high, and it had a gowd ball
atop. The braw lord stopped speaking, and all the Hielandmen and
Lowlandmen drew and held up and brandished their claymores and swords.
The flash ran around like the levin. I kenned that they shouted, all
thae gay shadows! I saw the pipers' cheeks fill with wind, and the
bags of the pipes fill. Then ane drew on a fine silken rope, and up
the pole there went a braw silken banner, and it sailed out in the
wind. And there was mair shouting and brandishing. But what think ye
might next befall? That gowden ball, gowden like the sun before it
drops, that topped the pole, it fell! I marked it fall, and the heads
dodge, and it rolled upon the ground.... And then all went out like a
candle that you blaw upon. I was kneeling by the water, and Jock's
sark in my hand, and the lav'rock singing, and that was all."

"I have heard tell of that," said Strickland. "It was near Braemar."

"And that's mony a lang league frae here! Sax days, and we had news of
the rising, with the gathering at Braemar. And said he wha told us,