'Whoever the rider is,' said poor James, 'he is not
riding his own horse.' The galloper shouted, 'Glenure has been shot!'
'Well,' said James to his companion, 'whoever did it, I am the man
that will hang for it.'
Hanged he was. The pit in which his gibbet stood is on the crest of a
circular 'knowe,' or hummock, on the east side of the Ballachulish
Hotel, overlooking the ferry across the narrows, where the tide runs
like a great swift river.
I have had the secret from two sources; the secret which I may not
tell. One informant received it from his brother, who, when he came
to man's estate, was taken apart by his uncle. 'You are old enough to
know now,' said that kinsman, 'and I tell you that it may not be
forgotten.' The gist of the secret is merely what one might gather
from the report of the trial, that though Allan Breck was concerned in
the murder of Campbell of Glenure, he was not alone in it.
The truth is, according to tradition, that as Glenure rode on the
fatal day from Fort William to his home in Appin, the way was lined
with marksmen of the Camerons of Lochaber, lurking with their guns
among the brushwood and behind the rocks.
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