[Illustration: Cattle Lifting--000]


He and his son climbed the hill therefore, found a deep valley, where
there grazed, as Rob had predicted, a large herd of cattle. They
cautiously selected those which their master had lost, and took measures
to drive them over the hill. As soon as they began to remove them, they
were surprised by hearing cries and screams; and looking around in fear
and trembling they saw a woman seeming to have started out of the earth,
who _flyted_ at them, that is, scolded them, in Gaelic. When they
contrived, however, in the best Gaelic they could muster, to deliver the
message Rob Roy told them, she became silent, and disappeared without
offering them any further annoyance. The chief heard their story on their
return, and spoke with great complacency of the art which he possessed of
putting such things to rights without any unpleasant bustle. The party
were now on their road home, and the danger, though not the fatigue, of
the expedition was at an end.

They drove on the cattle with little repose until it was nearly dark,
when Rob proposed to halt for the night upon a wide moor, across which a
cold north-east wind, with frost on its wing, was whistling to the tune
of the Pipers of Strath-Dearn.*

* The winds which sweep a wild glen in Badenoch are so called.

The Highlanders, sheltered by their plaids, lay down on the heath
comfortably enough, but the Lowlanders had no protection whatever. Rob
Roy observing this, directed one of his followers to afford the old man a
portion of his plaid; "for the callant (boy), he may," said the