We had need of gayety after that, and so Bill Cowan sang "Billy of the
Wild Wood," and Terence McCann wailed an Irish jig, stamping the water
out of the spongy ground amidst storms of mirth. As he desisted,
breathless and panting, he flung me up in the firelight before the eyes
of them all, crying:--

"It's Davy can bate me!"

"Ay, Davy, Davy!" they shouted, for they were in the mood for anything.
There stood Colonel Clark in the dimmer light of the background. "We
must keep 'em screwed up, Davy," he had said that very day.

There came to me on the instant a wild song that my father had taught me
when the liquor held him in dominance. Exhilarated, I sprang from
Terence's arms to the sodden, bared space, and methinks I yet hear my
shrill, piping note, and see my legs kicking in the fling of it. There
was an uproar, a deeper voice chimed in, and here was McAndrew flinging
his legs with mine:--

"I've faught on land, I've faught at sea,
At hame I faught my aunty, O;
But I met the deevil and Dundee
On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O.
An' ye had been where I had been,
Ye wad na be sae cantie, O;
An' ye had seen what I ha'e seen
On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O."

In the morning Clark himself would be the first off through the gray