, with Kate to bear her
company. She was not used to the life on the hills, and so for that time
could flee no further. It was just grey day when we took the short way
down the face of the gairy, that lifts its brow over the desolate moor
of Macaterick. Being unencumbered with women folk, Wat and I now came
down the nearest way, that which leads by the strange rocky hollow,
steep on every side, which is named the Maiden's Bed. So, fleet of foot,
we fled westwards.

As we looked, the sun began to rise over the Range of Kells and the tide
of light flowed in upon us, gladdening our hearts. Wat was not so brisk
as I, for he had left Kate behind; and though young men in times of
danger have perforce to think of their skins first and of their maids
after, yet it makes not the foot move so light when it must step out
away from the beloved.

But all the same, it was a bright morning when we clambered down the
steep side of the hill that looks toward Macaterick. The feathery face
of the rock above the levels of Macaterick, and the burn that flows from
it by links and shallows into Loch Doon, glanced bright with the morning
sun upon them. And there at last was the cave-mouth hidden under the
boskage of the leaves.

I ran on before Wat, outstripping him, albeit that for ordinary he was
more supple than I--so great was my desire to see Maisie Lennox, and
assure myself that all had gone well with her father. I had not a
thought but that she would be sitting safely within, with the cave
garnished with fresh leaves like a bower, and her father watching her at
her knitting through his bushy eyebrows.

Smiling, I lifted the curtain of birch leaves. Great God of Heaven! The
cave was wholly empty, as I slid down into it. Maisie and her father had
vanished!

I stood as one desperately amazed. There was no life or thought or soul
left in me. I stood as one stands at the threshold of his home, before
whom a gulf suddenly yawns fathomless.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE FIGHT AT THE CALDONS.

Now that which follows is the telling of Toskrie Tam, who is now a
gardener at Afton, but who, in the old days, being bitten by the worldly
delight of soldiering, had ridden with Clavers and Lag in the tumultuous
times. Tam is a long loose-jointed loon, for ever crying about
rheumatism, but a truthteller (as indeed John Graham taught him to be),
and one that his wife has in subjection. There is the root of the old
man in Tam yet. For though he is