ss something from the 'Back o'
Beyont' the morrow's morn, that a score of casks of Isle of Man brandy
will not make up for."

So saying, he took his way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the
runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath,
brushing through the "gall"[8] bushes, splashing through the shallow
pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel,
not six inches from where the young man lay, a gun was discharged,
evidently by the sudden jerk upon the earth, and the air was rent above
him by a perfect tornado of vigorous Gaelic--a good language, as has
been said, for preaching or swearing.

[Footnote 8: The bog-myrtle is locally called "gall" bushes. It is the
most characteristic and delightful of Galloway scents.]

"That's Roy himsel'!" said the young man. "It's a strange chance when a
Kennedy comes near to getting his brains knocked out on his own land by
the heel of an outlaw Highlander."

Once on the hillside again, he kept an even way over the boulders and
stones which cumbered it, with less care than hitherto, as though to
protest against the previous indignity of his position. But, Kennedy
though he might be, it had been fitter if he had remembered that he was
on the No Man's Land of the Dungeon of Buchan, for here, about this
time, was a perfect Adullam cave of all the broken and outlaw men south
of the Highland border. A challenge came from the hill-side--"Wha's
there?" Kennedy dropped like a stone, and a shot rang out, followed
immediately by the "scat" of a bullet against the rock behind which he
lay concealed.

A tramp of heavy Galloway brogans was heard, and a half-hearted kicking
about among the heather bushes, and at last a voice saying
discontentedly--

"Gin Roy disna keep Kennedy's liftit beasts in the hollow whaur they
should be, he needna blame me gin some o' them gets a shot intil their
hurdies."

"My beasts!" said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, "mine for a
groat!" He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of
the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more
caution to that northern gateway he had called the Seggy Goats.

There he turned to the right up a little burnside which led into a lirk
in the hill, such as would on the border have been called a "hope." As
he came well within the dusky-walled basin of the hill-side, some one
tall and white glided out to meet him; but at this mom