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What had one time looked a night of winter, and the dark clouds surly, took a change about the threshold of the morning, and the moon came out and stared. The mountains seemed to lift, the glens to deepen; everywhere were shadows dark as ink, inhabited by creatures drowsy and alert - the creeping ones, the squeaking ones, the swooping ones, and in the grassy nooks the big red stags at stamping, roaring on their queens. Glen Coe was loud with running waters falling down the gashes of the bens, the curlew whistling and the echoes of MacTala, son of earth, who taunts. From out its lower end among the clachans and the trees there came a company of men behind a fellow on a horse, all belted, bearing weapons, walking one behind another.
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