to show a blood-red face
over the hill; a "hare limped trembling through the frozen grass," and
crows cawed hungrily as they flew past on sluggish, blue-black wing,
questing for food. The world was awake now, and M'Fadyen reckoned that
by a couple of hours after noon he should be safe home with his money.
Only--who was that on the road ahead of him? A soldier by his coat,
surely, with his servant riding behind. Well, so much the better; that
would be company for him over the loneliest part of his ride, across the
moor which bore an evil name. So M'Fadyen pressed on, and soon he caught
up the two riders, first the servant, "mounted upon ane dark grey horse"
and armed with a "long gun"; then the master, also riding a dark grey
horse, and dressed in a scarlet coat with gold-thread buttons. A tall
man, the latter--a striking-looking man, quite a personage, with thin
refined face and high Roman nose; instead of a wig he wore his own brown
hair tied in a cue behind, and over one eye he had a notable
peculiarity, "a wrat (wart) as big as ane nut." In his holsters this
gentleman carried a brace of pistols.

Surely here was good fortune for M'Fadyen! A party so well armed could
afford to look with contempt on any highwayman that ever cried "Stand
and deliver" over all broad Scotland. And it was not long before the
honest drover, in the joy of his heart at finding himself in such goodly
company, had expressed to the red-coated stranger the pleasure it would
give him if he might be granted the escort across the moor of a
gentleman so well armed and mounted; "for," said he, "in sic ill times
it was maist mischancey wark to ride far ane's lane." Little objection
had the tall gentleman in red to make to such a proposition, and on they
rode, amicably enough, with just such dryness of manner on the
stranger's part as the humble drover might expect from an army officer,
yet nothing to keep his tongue from wagging. "It was a gey kittle bit
they were comin' to, where the firs stude, and he wad hae liked ill to
be rubbit. Muckle? O--oo, no; just a wee pickle siller, but nae man
likit to lose onything. And folk said they highwayman wad skin the
breeks aff a Hielandman. No that he was a Hielandman, though his name
did begin wi' a "Mac."

And so chattering, they had already won half-way across that lonely
stretch of moor regarding which the drover had had misgivings. And even
as they came abreast of that thick clump of stunted firs, up to M'