nd a disdain of his pygmy being. Once he looked
up to them with a gesture of his head. "Are we so far apart and so
different?" he asked of Orion.

He was several miles upon his way to Penrith. Before him appeared a
crossroad, noted by him in the afternoon. A great salient of a hill
overhung it, and on the near side a fir wood crept close. He looked
about him, and as he rode kept his hand upon his pistol. He did not
think to meet an enemy in strength, but there might be lurkers, men of
the countryside ready to fall upon stragglers from the army that had
passed that way. He had left behind the crossroad when from in front,
around the jut of the hill, came four horsemen. He turned his head.
Others had started from the wood. He made to ride on as though he were
of their kindred and cause, but hands were laid upon his bridle.

"Courier, no doubt--"

All turned into the narrow road. Half an hour's riding brought in
sight a substantial farm-house and about it the dimly flaring lights
of a considerable camp, both cavalry and infantry. Rullock supposed it
to be a detachment of Wade's, though it was possible that the Duke of
Cumberland might have thrust advance troops thus far. He wished quite
heartily that something might occur to warn Lord George Murray, the
Macdonalds and the Prince's guns, asleep at Shap. For himself, he
might, if he chose, pick out among the glittering constellations a
shape like a scaffold.

When he dismounted he was brought past a bivouac fire and a coming and
going of men afoot and on horseback, into the farm-house, where two or
three officers sat at table. Questioned, threatened, and
re-questioned, he had of course nothing to divulge. The less pressure
was brought in that these troops were in possession of the facts which
the moment desired. His name and rank he gave, it being idle to
withhold them. In the end he was shut alone into a small room of the
farm-house, behind a guarded door. He saw that there was planned an
attack upon the detachment that with dawn would move from Shap. But
this force of Wade's or of the Duke's was itself a detachment and
apparently of no great mass. He could only hope that Lord George and
the Macdonalds would move warily and when the shock came be found
equal. All that was beyond his control. In the chill darkness he
turned to the consideration of his own affair, which seemed desperate
enough. He found, by groping, a bench against the wall. Wrapping
himself in his cloak