ground and hung it on his side, and strode away with Wattie, looking
all the while like a great giant in company of a puny dwarf.

As they emerged from the forest Wattie pointed with his finger across
the plain to the village of Langaffer, and then to a hill overhanging
it, crowned by a fortress which showed in the distance its chiselled
outlines against the evening sky. An hour's marching across the country
brought them close to the dismantled castle. The moonbeams depicted
every grey stone overgrown with moss and ivy, and the rank weeds choking
the apertures which once had been windows.

"An abode for the bat and the owl," remarked Wattie, "but, brave sir,
you cannot pass the night here. Pray--pray come to my tiny house in the
village, and rest there till the morning dawns."

"I accept thy hospitality, young man," said the warrior, "but first thou
canst render me a service. Thou art little and light. Canst clamber up
to yonder stone where the raven sits, and tell me what thou beholdest
far away to the west?" Whereupon Wattie, who was agile enough, and
anxious to help the stranger, began to climb up, stone by stone, the
outer wall of the ruined fortress. A larger man might have felt giddy
and insecure; but he, with his tiny figure, sprang from ledge to ledge
so swiftly, holding firmly by the tufts of grass and the trailing ivy,
that ere he had time to think of danger, he had reached the spot where,
a moment before, a grim-looking raven had been keeping solemn custody.
Here the stone moved, and Wattie fancied he heard something rattle as he
set his foot upon it. The raven had now perched herself on a yet higher
eminence, on a piece of the old coping-stone of the castle parapet; and
she flapped her great ugly wings, and cawed and croaked, as if
displeased at this intrusion on her solitude. Wattie followed the
ill-omened bird, and drove her away from her vantage-ground, where he
himself now found a better footing from which to make his observations.

"To the west," he cried, "lights like camp-fires, all in a row far
against the horizon!"

This was all he had to describe; and it seemed enough to satisfy the
armed stranger.

"And now, young man," he said, when Wattie had, after a perilous
descent, gained the castle-yard once more, "I shall be thy guest for the
night."

A thrill of pride and pleasure stole through Wattie's breast as he
thought of the honour of receiving the tall warrior. But the next
instant his hear