, ye see the way o't is this----'

"'Make a short story of it, if ye dinna want a bit o' lead through ye.'

"'A blaw of tobacco wad fit Gash Gibbie better--grand man in the reid
coatie!' said the natural, with a show of cunning. 'I cam' to the
Bongill i' the gloamin', an' faith the mistress would hae gien me a bed,
but there was a horse in it already!'

"So being able to make nothing of him, Douglas let him go back to his
dry peat coom.

"The next morning was bright and bonny as the others had been, for the
autumn of this year was most favourable to our purpose--by the blessing
o' the deil as Lag used to say in his cups, so that the track along the
side of Curleywee to Loch Dee was dry as a bone. When we came to the
ford of the Cooran, we saw a party coming down to meet us with prisoners
riding in the midst. There was an old man with his feet tied together
under the horse's belly. He swayed from side to side so that two
troopers had to help him, one either side, to keep his seat. This they
did, roughly enough. The other prisoner was a young lass with a still,
sweet face, but with something commanding about it also--saving your
presence, sir. She was indeed a picture and my heart was wae for her
when some one cried out:

"'Mardrochat has done it to richts this time. He has gotten the auld tod
o' the Duchrae, Anton Lennox, and his bonny dochter at the same catch.
That will be no less than a hundred reward, sterling money!'

"Whereat Douglas cursed and said that a hundred was too much for any
renegade dog such as Cannon of Mardrochat to handle, and that he could
assuredly dock him of the half of it.

"So that day we marched to New Galloway, and the next to Minnyhive on
the road by the Enterkin to Edinburgh."

This is the end of the Toskrie Tam's story as he told it to me in the
garden house of Afton.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE GALLOWAY FLAIL.

When Wat and I found the cave empty, immediately we began to search the
hill for traces of the lost ones. For some time we searched in vain. But
a little to the right of the entrance of the cave the whole was made
plain to us. Here we found the bent and heather trampled, and abundant
stains of recent blood, as though one had been slain there and the body
carried away. Also I found a silken snood and the colour of it was blue.
It was not the hue, for that is worn by most of the maids of Scotland;
but when I took it to me, I knew as certainly as though I had seen it
the