with my head among the rushes. I saw many good and safe
places indeed, but I remembered that my sheltie would be an
advertisement to the pursuers, so I held on my way. Besides, Donald had
been a good friend to me, and was the only one of our company that had
ever been on the bonny holms of Earlstoun. So that I was kindly
affectioned to the beast, and kept him to his work though the country
was very moorish and the sun hot on my head.

Once I was very nearly taken. For as I went, not knowing the way, I came
to a morass where in the midst there was a secure place, as it seemed to
me. I put Donald at it, and when I reached the knoll--lo, it was only
some nine or ten yards square--the bottomless swelter of shaking bogs
girding it in on the further side. Donald went to the girth at the first
stride on the other side, so that there was nothing for it but to
dismount and pull him out.

Then up came the dragoons, riding heavily and cursing the sun and me.
They rode round skirting the moss; for, seeing the evil case I was in,
they dared not come nearer for fear of the same or worse. They kept,
therefore, wide about me, crying, "Come out, dog, and be shot!"

Which, being but poor encouragement, I was in no wise eager to obey
their summons.

But by holding on to the heather of the moss--by the kind providence of
God, it was very long and tough--I managed to get Donald out of his
peril. He was a biddable enough beast, and, being a little deaf, he knew
not fear. For reesting and terror among horses are mostly but
over-sharpness in hearing, and an imagination that they were better
without. But Donald had no good hearing and no bad forebodings. So when
I pulled him among the long heather, and put his head down, he lay like
a scent-dog, cowered along by the side of the moss-hags. Then the pair
by the edge of the morass began to shoot at me, for the distance was
within reach of a pistol-ball. The first bullet that came clipped so
close to my left ear that it took away a lock of my hair, which,
contrary to my custom, had now grown longish.

All this time they ceased not for a moment to cry, "Come out, dog, and
be shot!" They were ill-mannered rampaging lowns with little sense, and
I desired no comings and goings with them. So in no long time I tired of
this, and also of lying still to be shot at. I bethought me that I might
show them a better of it, and afford some sport. So very carefully I
charged both my pistols, and the next tim