et, he stamped upon it. "And she'd kill any mon
who tried to rob ta bonnie young Chief Kenneth of her rights!"

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.

It was in a dull, half-stunned way that Max walked straight out through
the castle gate, and away down the rocky slope toward the shores of the
little bay.

"Is it all true?" he asked himself. "Is it all true?" And then
drearily he kept on muttering, "I can't stay here now--I can't stay here
now."

He had walked on for about a mile, when he turned to look back for a
farewell glance at the castle, when he found Scoodrach close at his
heels, glaring at him in a peculiar way, which slightly startled Max,
but he returned the gaze boldly, and then, with a confused idea of
walking on till he could reach some inn, when there was nothing of the
kind for forty or fifty miles, he asked the young gillie if that was the
way for Glasgow.

Scoodrach's face lit up with satisfaction as he said it was; and, when
Max went right on, the Highland lad stopped back watching him for a
time, and then, laughing silently to himself, returned to stand in the
shadow and glare at the bailiff and his men; while Max trudged on, with
the sense of being mentally stunned increasing, but not so rapidly as
the growing feeling of misery and shame within his breast.

Rocky path, moist sheep-track, steep climb, sharp descent into boggy
hollow; then up over a hill, with a glance at the sunny sea; and then on
and on, in and out among the everlasting hills, which lapped fold upon
fold, all grey crag and heather, and one valley so like another, and the
ins and outs and turns so many, that, but for the light in the west, it
would have been hard to tell the direction in which he tramped on and
on, as near as he could divine straight away for Glasgow and the south.

"I must get home," he muttered dreamily, as he tramped on. "Oh, the
shame of it!" he burst out. "Father! father! how could you do such a
thing as this?"

There was a wild cry close at hand, and a curlew rose, and then a flock
of lapwings, to flit round and round, uttering their peevish calls; but
Max saw nothing but the scene at the castle, heard nothing but The
Mackhai's bitter words, and he tramped onward and onward into the
wilderness of mountain and moss, onward into the night.

There are people who would laugh at the idea of an active lad being lost
in the mountains. To them it seems, as they travel comfortably along by