Highland Laddie Gone by Sharyn McCrumb

see me about?”
    “Oh, the fraud business? Perhaps we ought to wait until the committee assembles in the morning. I’ll have the materials with me then. It’ll save time.”
    “Look,” said Heather, “do you want a drink?”
    “What are you having?” asked Colin Campbell. “Babycham?”
    He was still laughing as he walked away.

CHAPTER SEVEN
       G LENCOE MOUNTAIN loomed dark against the sky. In the light of a quarter-moon, the stalls and clan tents stood as empty as a stage set of
Brigadoon;
but farther along the field path, in the herding meadow, the festival folk were preparing for the Hill-Sing. An hour after sunset, members of the clans began to line up for the ceremony, while the spectators spread their tartan blankets down on the meadow and hillside in preparation for the evening’s festivities.
    “This is a lovely ceremony,” Elizabeth whispered to Cameron. “Watch.”
    One by one, a kilted representative from each clan ran across the field, holding aloft a burning torch. When all of the clansmen stood on the field, the torches formed a Cross of St. Andrew that they held in flickering silence for a few moments, followed by wild cheering from the spectators in the darkness.
    “Yes, that was quite nice,” said Cameron. “What happens next?”
    Elizabeth pointed to a dark shape in the center of the field. As the cheering died away, each torchbearer laid his firebrand on the stack of logs, igniting it into a roaring blaze. From the shadows a tenor voice sang the first line of “Annie Laurie,” and oneby one other voices joined in from all sections of the field.
    “Do you know this one?” whispered Elizabeth.
    “What do you mean do I know this one?” Cameron hissed back. “It’s a Scottish song! We bloody wrote it! Of course I—Well, I’m a bit hazy on the verses, though.”
    Elizabeth joined in for the chorus. By the time they had sung it twice, she had noticed that “Cameron Dawson” had almost the same number of syllables as “Annie Laurie” and while she was careful to sing the words correctly, there was unusual fervor in her rendering of “lay me doon and dee.”
    Cameron began to feel relaxed for the first time all day. The soothing sounds of a familiar song, mingled with the darkness and the beauty of the mountain setting, made him feel that the trip hadn’t been such a waste after all. He smiled at Elizabeth, and reached down to pet the sleeping bobcat. Somehow it was all beginning to make sense.
    Jimmy McGowan stared into the flames of the bonfire, thankful that his parents were not around to foist marshmallows off on him. Beside him, Lachlan Forsyth was leaning forward and swinging on his cane in time to the music.
    “That’s the only good song they’ll sing tonight, lad,” he roared as the crowd struggled with the high note with varying degrees of success. “From here on out, they won’t half come out with some rubbish.”
    A voice across the meadow began to bellow:
“You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road!”
    “I’ve heard this one,” said Jimmy.
    “Sung just like that, I’ll wager,” growled Lachlan. “Folk should nae sing a tune if they haven’t any idea what it means. Listen to them belting it out like they were singing about a bloody hiking competition!”
    “And I’ll be in Scotland before ya!”
roared the crowd.
“But me and my true love will never meet again …”
    “What does it mean?” asked Jimmy.
    “It’s a Jacobite song from the ’45,” Lachlan said. “When Charles Edward Stuart—”
    Jimmy recognized the name. “Bonnie Prince Charlie?”
    The old man grunted. “He was nae bonny, and nae much of a prince, but he was a right bloody Charlie. Anyway, he and his Highland army invaded England, and this song is about a Scottish soldier dying. He says for his mates to take the high road-the highway—back to Scotland, and he’ll take the low road, which is the way the fairy folk travel—in a twinkling of an eye.”
    Jimmy