noon
Here and there was a tuft of dry grass , a bush of heather , or a few slender-stalked , hoary heads of CANNACH or cotton-grass ; it was a land of devoted desolation , doing nothing for itself , this bountiful store of life and warmth for the winter-sieged houses of the strath . They went heartily to work . They cut turf for their walls and peats for their fires ; they loaded the carts from the driest piles , and made new piles of the fresh wet peats they dug . It was approaching noon , and some of the old women were getting the food out of `` my lady 's '' baskets , when over the nearest ridge beyond rose men to the number of seven , carrying guns . Rob of the Angels was the first to spy them . He pointed them out to his father , and presently they two disappeared together . The rest went on with their work , but the chief could see that , stooping to their labour , they cast upward and sidelong glances at them , reading hostility in their approach .