S R Crockett

Red Cap Tales S R Crockett

NOT long after Callum Beg had been left behind, and indeed almost as soon as the innkeeper and Edward were fairly on their way, the former suddenly announced that his horse had fallen lame and that they must turn aside to a neighbouring smithy to have the matter attended to. "And as it is the Fast Day, and the smith a religious man, it may cost your Honour as muckle as sixpence a shoe!" suggested the wily innkeeper, watching Edward's face as he spoke. For this announcement Edward cared nothing. He would gladly have paid a shilling a nail to be allowed to push forward on his journey with all speed. Accordingly to the smithy of Cairnvreckan they went. The village was in an uproar. The smith, a fierce-looking man, was busy hammering "dogs' heads" for musket-locks, while among the surrounding crowd the names of great Highland chiefs-Clanronald, Glengarry, Lochiel, and that of Vich Ian Vohr himself, were being bandied from mouth to mouth. Edward soon found himself surrounded by an excited mob, in the midst of which the smith's wife, a wild witchlike woman, was dancing, every now and then casting her child up in the air as high as her arms would reach, singing all the while, and trying to anger the crowd, and especially to infuriate her husband, by the Jacobite songs which she chanted.