Fiction > Book editions > London, 1893 - Catriona

viii EARLIER ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR
Hoseason and Lis crew, learuiug that Alan liad gold about him,
conspired to rob and murder him ; but David, being made privy
to the plot, put Alan on his guard and promised to stand by him.
Favoured by the shelter of the round-house, and by Alan's
courage and skill of fence, the two got the better of their assail-
j^ants in the attack which followed, killiug or maiming more than
half of them ; whereby Captain Hoseason was disabled from pro-
secuting his voyage, and came to terms with Alan, agreeing to
land him on a part of the coast whence he miglit best make his
way to his own country of Apx)in. But in attempting this the
Covenant took ground and sank off the coast of Mull. Thoso
on board saved themselves as they best could, David separately ;
being first cast on the Isle of Earraid, and thence making hia
way across Mull. Alan had passed before by the same road, and
left word that David should follow and rejoin him in his own
country at the house of his kinsman, James Stewart of the Glens,
On his way to keep this tryst, David found himself in Appin on
the same day when the King's Factor, Colin Roy Campbell of
Glenure, came with a force of red-coats to drive out the tenants
from the forfeited estates of Ardshiel, and was present when
Glenure was slain upon the roadside by a shot out of a neigh-
bouring wood. Suspected of complicity at the moment when
he was in the act of giving chase to the unknown murderer,
David betook himself to flight, and was quickly joined by Alan
Brack, who, though he had not fired the shot, was lurking not
far off. The two now lived the life of hunted men upon tho
moors, the outcry on account of the murder being very great, and
its guilt being declared to rest on James Stewart of the Glens,
the already outlawed Alan Breck, and a lad unknown, being no
other than DaA^d Balfour ; for whose apprehension blood-money
was offered and the country scoured by soldiery. In the course
of their wanderings, David and Alan visited James Stewart
at Aucharn, were concealed in Cluny Macpherson's cage, and