d I shirked any admission, but it was in
our bearing towards each other, that whisper of the heart's throne
which calls and is answered.

This feeling was my settled comfort now that a cloud of events, as I
assessed them, was hurrying the Black Colonel into a new necessity
towards his personal aims and so towards Marget and myself. The
"rough, raging, roaring, roystering, robustious rascal" side of him,
and the description is not mine but taken from an extant document, had
long been filling up. Presently it would overflow in happenings urgent
enough to sweep our pilgrimage along like a high wind on the high hills
of Corgarff.

They began with a fall out between the Black Colonel and his Red Murdo,
some little time after the duel at Lonach. To get his injured but
recovered sword-arm in trim again the Colonel had taken to practising
on his man, also a sufficient swordsman, though always liable to make a
foul stroke. This time he had to defend himself from a sudden,
half-angry, half-playful, wholly energetic assault on the part of his
master, and that without a sword in hand.

What do you think he did, this Red Murdo, when the Colonel's provoking
blade had positively pinked him in the leg, above the garter and drawn
blood? He picked up Jock Farquharson's pet dog, a wise and lively
Scots terrier, and flung it, a protection against further pinking, on
the sword-point, with the remark, "A good soldier never lacks a weapon."

The Black Colonel was fondly attached to his dog, and its death, for it
died from the wound, upset him into other troubles. It is often the
way, when one thing goes wrong that many things go wrong, time getting
out of joint generally. Naturally, too, if we remember that life is a
delicate machine which a small first unbalancing will throw into
disorder, as take the Black Colonel in witness.

It became necessary for him to "raise the wind," as he spoke of the
process, and to that end he sent Red Murdo on a foraging expedition.
This worthy, wishful to do the business with as little trouble as
possible, went after the first batch of cattle he could find. He
planned to get them away in the dark of night, have them at a safe
distance by morning, and then, at his leisure, drive them to a southern
market and bring back to the Black Colonel what he got for them, less
his own expenditure on victuals and drink, and the due entertaining of
other gentlemen of the same kidney, met on the road, because its