while we waited in that dark, lonesome
place. Even Ringan was sober now.

Elspeth asked in a low voice what was wrong, and I told her that the
Indian was uncertain of the best road.

"Best road!" she laughed. "Then pray show me what you call the worst."

Ringan grinned at me ruefully. "Where do you wish yourself at this
moment, Andrew?"

"On the top of this damned mountain," I grunted.

"Not for me," he said. "Give me the Dry Tortugas, on a moonlight night
when the breaming fires burn along the shore, and the lads are singing
'Spanish Ladies.' Or, better still, the little isle of St. John the
Baptist, with the fine yellow sands for careening, and Mother Daria
brewing bobadillo and the trades blowing fresh in the tops of the
palms. This land is a gloomy sort of business. Give me the bright,
changeful sea."

"And I," said Elspeth, "would be threading rowan berries for a necklace
in the heather of Medwyn Glen. It must be about four o'clock of a
midsummer afternoon and a cloudless sky, except for white streamers
over Tinto. Ah, my own kind countryside!"

Ringan's face changed.

"You are right, my lady. No Tortugas or Spanish isles for Ninian
Campbell. Give him the steeps of Glenorchy on an October morn when the
deer have begun to bell. My sorrow, but we are far enough from our
desires--all but Andrew, who is a prosaic soul. And here comes Shalah
with ugly news!"

The Indian spoke rapidly to me. "The woods are full of men. I do not
think we are discovered, but we cannot stay here. Our one hope is to
gain the cover of the mist. There is an open space beyond this thicket,
and we must ride our swiftest. Quick, brother."

"The men?" I gasped. "Cherokees?"

"Nay," he said, "not Cherokees. I think they are those you seek from
beyond the mountains."

The next half-hour is a mad recollection, wild and confused, and
distraught with anxiety. The thought of Elspeth among savages maddened
me, the more so as she had just spoken of Medwyn Glen, and had sent my
memory back to fragrant hours of youth. We scrambled out of the thicket
and put our weary beasts to a gallop. Happily it was harder ground,
albeit much studded with clumps of fern, and though we all slipped and
stumbled often, the horses kept their feet. I was growing so dizzy in
the head that I feared every moment I would fall off. The mist had now
come low down the hill, and lay before us, a line, of grey vapour drawn
from edge to edge of the vale. It seemed an in