5
IT was evident that the factor had made the history of Toray Castle his especial subject. Seated at the long table where they were gathered about an imposing spread of hot scones, and oat-cake, and shortbread, and bannocks, between Mrs. Dean and Stephen, he held forth in his dry, rather grating voice. Romantic names rolled sonorously from his tongue—Ranald Dhu, or Dark Ronald, the doughty warrior who had built the keep, the original castle, even the very hall in which they sat; Red Calum, who had added the tower; and that later Calum, head of the clan McReay, massacred at Culloden with the greater part of the hundred followers he had put into the field in support of the ill-fated Charles Stuart.
The little man had the air of licking his lips over the record of rapine and bloodshed of w
