f the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when the
tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to the
sea; and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of a
town. No eye of ours could spy what was passing behind there in the
bents, no hurry of ours could mend the speed of the boat's coming: time
stood still with us through that uncanny period of waiting.

"There is one thing I would like to ken," says Alan. "I would like fine
to ken these gentry's orders. We're worth four hunner pound the pair of
us: how if they took the guns to us, Davie? They would get a bonny shot
from the top of that lang sandy bauk."

"Morally impossible," said I. "The point is that they can have no guns.
This thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but
never guns."

"I believe ye'll be in the right," says Alan. "For all which I am
wearying a good deal for yon boat."

And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.

It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard
on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes.
There was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were
able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could
manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the
gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.

"This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in," says Alan
suddenly; "and, man, I wish that I had your courage!"

"Alan!" I cried, "what kind of talk is this of it? You're just made of
courage; it's the character of the man, as I could prove myself if there
was nobody else."

"And you would be the more mistaken," said he. "What makes the differ
with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs. But for
auld, cauld, dour, deidly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to
yourself. Look at us two here upon the sands. Here am I, fair hotching
to be off; here's you (for all that I ken) in two minds of it whether
you'll no' stop. Do you think that I could do that, or would? No' me!
Firstly, because I havena got the courage and wouldna daur; and
secondly, because I am a man of so much penetration and would see ye
damned first."

"It's there ye're coming, is it?" I cried. "Ah, man Alan, you can wile
your old wives, but you never can wile me."

Remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron.

"I have a trys