-house, carpeted with fir
boughs, for the needles tickled my face.

Bit by bit my senses came back to me, and I caught hold of my vagrant
courage.

A big negro in seaman's clothes with a scarlet sash round his middle
was squatted on the floor watching me by the light of a ship's lantern.
He had a friendly, foolish face, and I remember yet how he rolled his
eyeballs.

"I won't run away," I said, "so you might slacken these ropes and let
me breathe easy."

Apparently he was an accommodating gaoler, for he did as I wished.

"And give me a drink," I said, "for my tongue's like a stick."

He mixed me a pannikin of rum and water. Perhaps he hocussed it, or
maybe 'twas only the effect of spirits on a weary body; but three
minutes after I had drunk I was in a heavy sleep.

CHAPTER IX.

VARIOUS DOINGS IN THE SAVANNAH.

I awoke in broad daylight, and when my wits came back to me, I saw I
was in a tent of skins, with my limbs unbound, and a pitcher of water
beside me placed by some provident hand. Through the tent door I looked
over a wide space of green savannah. How I had got there I knew not;
but, as my memory repeated the events of the night, I knew I had
travelled far, for the sea showed miles away at a great distance
beneath me. On the water I saw a ship in full sail, diminished to a toy
size, careering northward with the wind.

Outside a man was seated whistling a cheerful tune. I got to my feet
and staggered out to clear my head in the air, and found the smiling
face of Ringan.

"Good-morning, Andrew," he cried, as I sat down beside him. "Have you
slept well?"

I rubbed my eyes and took long draughts of the morning breeze.

"Are you a warlock, Mr. Campbell, that you can spirit folk about the
country at your pleasure? I have slept sound, but my dreams have been
bad."

"Yes," he said; "what sort of dreams, maybe?"

"I dreamed I was in a wild place among wild men, and that I saw murder
done. The look of the man who did it was not unlike your own."

"You have dreamed true," he said gravely; "but you have the wrong word
for it. Others would call it justice."

"What sort of justice?" said I, "when you had no court or law but just
what you made yourself."

"Is it not a stiff Whiggamore?" he said, looking skywards. "Why, man,
all justice is what men make themselves. What hinders the Free
Companions from making as honest laws as any cackling Council in the
towns? Did you see the man Cosh? Have you hea