The truth is, according to tradition, that as Glenure rode on the
fatal day from Fort William to his home in Appin, the way was lined
with marksmen of the Camerons of Lochaber, lurking with their guns
among the brushwood and behind the rocks. But their hearts failed
them, no trigger was drawn, and when Glenure landed on the Appin side
of the Ballachulish Ferry, he said, 'I am safe now that I am out of my
mother's country,' his mother having been of clan Cameron. But he had
to reckon with the man with the gun, who was lurking in the wood of
Letter More ('the great hanging coppice'), about three-quarters of a
mile on the Appin side of Ballachulish Ferry. The gun was not one of
the two dilapidated pieces shown at the trial of James of the Glens,
nor, I am told, was it the Fasnacloich gun. The real homicidal gun was
found some years ago in a hollow tree. People remember these things
well in Appin and Glencoe, though the affair is a hundred and fifty
years old, and though there are daily steamers bringing the
newspapers. There is even a railway, not remarkable for speed, while
tourists, English, French, and American, are for ever passing to view
Glencoe, and to write their names in the hotel book after luncheon,
then flying to other scenes. There has even been a strike of long
duration at the Ballachulish Quarries, and Labour leaders have
perorated to the Celts; but Gaelic is still spoken, second sight is
nearly as common as short sight, you may really hear the fairy music
if you bend your ear, on a still day, to the grass of the fairy knowe.
Only two generations back a fairy boy lived in a now ruinous house,
noted in the story of the Massacre of Glencoe, beside the brawling
river: and a woman, stolen by the fairies, returned for an hour to her
husband, who became very unpopular, as he neglected the means for her
rescue; I think he failed to throw a dirk over her shoulder. Every now
and then mysterious lights may be seen, even by the Sassenach,