Her desertion, particularly at a crisis, made Rosemary McClean cry, and set her father to quoting Shakespeare's "King Lear." "Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude!" All Scotsmen seem to have a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself.

The Book of Lamentations--Shakespeare's sadder lines--roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation--as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of the songs of Robbie Burns.
The poor old king of the poet's imagining, declaiming up above the cliffs of Dover, could have put no more pathos into those immortal lines than did Duncan McClean as he paced up and down between the hot wars of the darkened room.

The dry air parched his throat, and his ambition seemed to shrivel in him as he saw the brave little woman who was all he had sobbing with her head between her hands.
He turned to the Bible, but he could find no precedent in any of its pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or adversity.

He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening his throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the improvised jar filter; but when the oven blast that makes the Indian summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, he had found nothing but admonishment to stand firm.

There had been women, too, whose deeds were worthy of record in that book, and he found no argument for deserting his post on his daughter's account either.