" Macdonald was
accordingly dragged to the door, but he was an active man and, when
the soldiers presented their firelocks to shoot him, he cast his
plaid over their eyes and, taking advantage of their confusion and
the darkness, he escaped up the glen. Some old persons were also
killed, one of them eighty years of age; and others, with women and
children who had escaped from the carnage half clad, were starved and
frozen to death on the snow-clad hills whither they had fled.
The winter wind that whistled shrill,
The snows that night that cloaked the hill,
Though wild and pitiless, had still
Far more than Southern clemency.
It was thrilling to read the account of the fight between the two Clans,
Mackenzie and MacDonnell, which the Mackenzies won. When the MacDonnells
were retreating they had to cross a river, and those who missed the ford
were either drowned or killed. A young and powerful chief of the
MacDonnells in his flight made towards a spot where the burn rushed
through a yawning chasm, very wide and deep, and was closely followed by
one of the victorious Mackenzies; but MacDonnell, forgetting the danger
of the attempt in the hurry of his flight and the agitation of the
moment, and being of an athletic frame and half naked, made a desperate
leap, and succeeded in clearing the rushing waters below.
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