I mounted the steps, as I often did when he left them, that I came
upon the manuscript which related the old story of Dark Malcolm and his
child. It had been pushed behind some volumes, and I took it out because
it looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once at the page where the
tale began.

At first I stood reading, and then I sat down on the broad top of the
ladder and forgot everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud waged between two clans for
three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
they wrought on each other's houses. The one human passion of Dark
Malcolm's life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown
eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown
Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the
Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well
of Malcolm's worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him
through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one
night after a raid in which he had lost followers and weapons and
strength, found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried away, and
unspeakable taunts and threats left behind by Ian and his men. With
unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark Malcolm and the
remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen rushed forth into the night.

"Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back," screamed Dark
Malcolm, raving mad, "but we may die fighting to get near enough to her
to drive dirk into her little breast and save her from worse."

They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian's castle