een
starved out of the country, and Galloway would have added one more to
its long tale of the triumphs of passive resistance.

But the six Loch Swilly men had served in the Peninsula, and they were
under a Chatham sergeant, who was a perfect Gallio, in that he cared
nothing about all the things which were distracting the westernmost end
of Galloway which gives on the Atlantic. He looked at the Wild of
Blairmore from several sides. He swore that such a set of asses he had
never seen, and then he settled himself, with his five soldiers and a
couple of score of impressed men, to make a cutting through the
sand-dunes on the seaward side. This ditch or drain, now smooth and
greyish-green with bent and self-sown saplings, is still known as the
Sapper's Cut.

On the morning of the second day after Sergeant Robinson had started his
digging team, Stair looked out of the door of the Bothy and, instead of
the black spread of water he had left there over-night, the Wild of
Blairmore was dry. From the zigzag causeway on either side, stretched
away an array of empty moss-hags still glistening with moisture. Only in
the very deepest cuts a little water still lurked.

Stair Garland's lips tightened as he turned to the interior of the
Bothy.

"It is all up, Mr. Julian," he said, "I am sorry I have led you into
this--I knew the thing could be done, but they had been so long in
thinking of it that I had come to believe they would never hit on it at
all!"

"I am sorry, McClure!" he said to the spy, "you will have to give up the
money and jewels, but that I always meant you to do in any case. For the
rest--"

He paused a minute, not daring to trust himself to speak more words.
Then he continued--

"I have led you into all this. I thought there would have been a
rescue-party long before now. There would have been if Patsy Ferris had
been here. Now there is nothing for it but to give ourselves up. What is
the use of making things worse by shooting two or three poor enlisted
men who never did us any harm?"

And so it came to pass that Stair Garland and Eben the Spy were marched
under strong escort to the gaol of Stranryan, while Julian Wemyss was
shut up in his own house with a guard quartered on him. Thus had it been
ordered from London, for there the Princess Elsa had been busy, and the
local commanders knew that even when the Government is that of a Regent
George, it cannot treat an ex-ambassador like a common felon.