allad of which only two lines come to me as I write:

"There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye
In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."

Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy by
Jock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble to
instruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by a
tributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by
direct evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact,
the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a
fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many an
honest Highland rebel.

I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distance
from Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit. Naturally
the Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even a
personal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on the
losing side. My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in the
same spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves to
the desolated inmates of the Dower House.

But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that we
should know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and her
mother from perils incidental to an unsettled country. Therefore, I
had a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that he
was to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever be
necessary.

This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that
might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old
Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to
catch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set
alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let
grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.

Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a
tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small
window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the
disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and
peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was
the prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.

A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back,
though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes place
in the dark, rather than seen at all