CHAPTER EIGHT.
A STORY OF THE CIVIL WARS.
Sub-Chapter I.
THE INTERRUPTED FEAST.
The Singletons were a small Lowland clan, or rather faction, for their name does not appear in history as a clan.

For all that, they were as loyal to their king and as devoted to their chief as any clan in Scotland, and when the time for sacrifice and hard blows came, the Singletons, as every one knew, were ever to the front.
And it is only fair to say the Singletons were _always_ in the wars.
When they were not fighting the Roundheads they were fighting the Campbells or the Frasers or the Macintoshes, or others of their hereditary foes; or if none of these were obliging enough, or at liberty to indulge them in their favourite pastime, then they made enemies for themselves among the neighbouring clans, or else crossed over to Holland to keep their hands in there till fortune favoured them once more at home.

The old castle, with its rambling towers, and walls, and buttresses was a sort of rallying-point for all the pugnacious spirits of the time, and its bluff walls showed many a scar and many a dint where hostile guns had played upon them, not, you may be sure, without reply.
The Singletons, in fact (and specially since the old laird had died), thrived on fighting.

At the present day they might, perhaps, have passed as freebooters and outlaws, but during the troubled times of the Commonwealth they were looked upon as a noble band of patriots, whose swords were ever ready in the king's cause, and whose castle was as open and hospitable to a friend as it was unyielding to a foe.
Such was the place within whose weather-beaten and war-beaten walls a festive company was assembled one November afternoon in the year of our Lord 16--.
For once in a way the Singletons were at peace.

The king's cause was for a time under a cloud, and the Campbells and the Frasers and the Macintoshes were far too busy about their own affairs to come out of the way to defy this small bulldog of a clan in the south.