rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting
sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the
ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only
those tough sheep over there can climb them."

"Truth," said I quickly, gaining my tongue, "will force you to eat
those words, for I knew nothing of all this. It will be a bitter meal
for you to digest, if I, by good chance, am there to assist you."

"A Highland welcome will be yours," quoth he arrogantly; "a welcome as
warm as if I were to bring my riding whip round your shoulders now."

His words, cracking as if they were a lash, stung me beyond endurance.
I made a step to strike him, and we might have been at it, like common
brawlers, only he saved us from that shame. He had been waiting with
his left foot in the stirrup. When I drove at him he swung on to the
back of Mack, who turned half round, as a spirited horse does in the
process of being mounted. This threw his big body between us, but the
Black Colonel leant down and said in my ear, "To our next meeting, my
kinsman! May it be soon!"

Then he rode for an opening in the undergrowth which braided the lower
slopes of the precipitous Pass, and I was left alone, a man all
a-wonder, for events were growing beyond me, as they do when suddenly
we find our whole personal fortune, even our spiritual destiny, put to
the ordeal of the unexpected.

_III.--Over the Hills of Home_

How shall I tell, with proper restraint and yet efficiency, what
followed the going of the Black Colonel on his black horse?

The Pass, wherein we had met so sharply, lies almost due east and due
west. You would have a good idea of its appearance, if you were to
suppose a hill twice as long from east to west as it is broad from
north to south. Then imagine its length sliced in two, and each half,
by force of dead weight, falling away from the other. Heather and
whins had seeded on the sliced faces, and after them the hardy silver
birch and the hardier green fir had sprung up. Nature makes coverings
for the sores suffered by Mother Earth, as a dog licks a bruise until
the hair grows again.

The strong Highland winds and the heavy Highland rains and snows had
wrinkled the riven hill in a hundred ways. Its twin faces were warted
with rocks, from which most of the soil had been washed away, leaving
them as though suspended in mid-air. Waters, draining from the higher
hills, had run down