o long space, by making
a wide circuit, I came to look down upon the little clump of trees,
where I had seen the figures moving, as I guddled the trout for our
dinner in the reaches of the Eglin Lane.

Now, however, there seemed to be a great quietness all about the place,
and the scanty trees did not so much as wave a branch in the still air
of the afternoon.

Yet I saw, as it had been the waft of a jaypiet's wing among them, when
I came over the steep rocks of the Hooden's Slock, and went to ford the
Gala Lane--which like the other water was, by the action of the long dry
year, sunken to no more than a chain of pools. But as I circled about
and came behind the trees, there was, as I say, a great quiet. My heart
went up and down like a man's hand at the flail in a barn. Yet for my
unquiet, there was no great apparent reason. It might be, indeed, that
the enemies had laid a snare for me, and that I was already as good as
setting out for the Grassmarket, with the ladder and the rope before me,
and the lad with the piebald coat at my tail. And this was a sore
thought to me, for we Gordons are not of a race that take hanging
lightly. We never had more religion than we could carry for comfort. Yet
we always got our paiks for what little we had, on which side soever we
might be. It is a strange thing that we should always have managed to
come out undermost whichever party was on top, and of this I cannot tell
the reason. On the other hand, the Kennedies trimmed their sails to the
breeze as it blew, and were ever on the wave's crest. But then they were
Ayrshiremen. And Ayr, it is well kenned, aye beats Galloway--that is,
till it comes to the deadly bellyful of fighting.

Thus I communed with myself, ever drawing nearer to the clump of trees
on the side of the Meaull, and murmuring good Protestant prayers, as if
they had been no better than Mary's beads all the time.

As I came to the little gairy above the trees, I looked down, and from
the verge of it I saw the strangest contrivance. It was a hut beside a
tiny runlet of water--a kind of bower with the sides made of bog-oak
stobs taken from the edges of the strands. The roof was daintily theeked
with green rushes and withes, bound about with heather. Heather also was
mingled with the thatching rushes, so that from a little distance the
structure seemed to be part of the heath. I lay and watched to see what
curious birds had made such a bower on the Star in the dark days. F