Ah! but there is weeping and wailing in Glen Cairn!" Archie was for a while speechless with indignation.

He knew well that this wholesale vengeance had not been taken by the Kerrs because the sons of the cottagers of Glen Cairn had gone to join the army of Wallace, but because he deemed them to be still attached to their old lord; and it was to their fidelity to the Forbeses rather than to Scotland that they owed the ruin which had befallen them.
"My poor Jock!" he said, "I am grieved, indeed, at this misfortune.
I cannot restore your father's life, but I can from the spoils of Ayr send a sufficient sum to Glen Cairn to rebuild the cottages which the Kerrs have destroyed.

But this will not be enough--we will have vengeance for the foul deed.

Order the band to assemble at dusk this evening, and tell Orr and Macpherson to come here to me at once." Archie had a long consultation with his two young lieutenants, whose fathers' cottages had with the others been destroyed.
"What we have to do," Archie said, "we must do alone.

Sir William has ample employment for his men, and I cannot ask him to weaken his force to aid me in a private broil; nor, indeed, would any aid short of his whole band be of use, seeing that the Kerrs can put three hundred retainers in the field.