olk; but though we plumped into the
first from round a corner, Alan was as ready as a loaded musket.

"Hae ye seen my horse?" he gasped.

"Na, man, I haena seen nae horse the day," replied the countryman.

And Alan spared the time to explain to him that we were travelling "ride
and tie"; that our charger had escaped, and it was feared he had gone
home to Linton. Not only that, but he expended some breath (of which he
had not very much left) to curse his own misfortune and my stupidity,
which was said to be its cause.

"Them that canna tell the truth," he observed to myself as we went on
again, "should be aye mindfu' to leave an honest, handy lee behind them.
If folk dinna ken what ye're doing, Davie, they're terrible taken up
with it; but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it than what
I do for pease porridge."

As we had first made inland, so our road came in the end to lie very
near due north; the old Kirk of Aberlady for a landmark on the left; on
the right, the top of the Berwick Law; and it was thus we struck the
shore again, not far from Dirleton. From North Berwick west to Gillane
Ness there runs a string of four small islets, Craigleith, the Lamb,
Fidra, and Eyebrough, notable by their diversity of size and shape.
Fidra is the most particular, being a strange grey islet of two humps,
made the more conspicuous by a piece of ruin; and I mind that (as we
drew closer to it) by some door or window of these ruins the sea peeped
through like a man's eye. Under the lee of Fidra there is a good
anchorage in westerly winds, and there, from a far way off, we could see
the _Thistle_ riding.

The shore in face of these islets is altogether waste. Here is no
dwelling of man, and scarce any passage, or at most of vagabond children
running at their play. Gillane is a small place on the far side of the
Ness, the folk of Dirleton go to their business in the inland fields,
and those of North Berwick straight to the sea-fishing from their haven;
so that few parts of the coast are lonelier. But I mind, as we crawled
upon our bellies into that multiplicity of heights and hollows, keeping
a bright eye upon all sides, and our hearts hammering at our ribs, there
was such a shining of the sun and the sea, such a stir of the wind in
the bent-grass, and such a bustle of down-popping rabbits and up-flying
gulls, that the desert seemed to me like a place alive. No doubt it was
in all ways well chosen for a secret embarkatio