, and a supply of cartouches and some little
food in our pockets, Ringan and I were enfolded in the silence of the
woods.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HORN OF DIARMAID SOUNDS.

We reached the gap, and made slantwise across the farther hill. I did
not dare to go clown Clearwater Glen, and, besides, I was aiming for a
point farther south than the Rappahannock. In my wanderings with Shalah
I had got a pretty good idea of the lie of the mountains on their
eastern side, and I had remarked a long ridge which flung itself like a
cape far into the lowlands. If we could leave the hills by this, I
thought we might strike the stream called the North Fork, which would
bring us in time to the neighbourhood of Frew's dwelling. The ridges
were our only safe path, for they were thickly overgrown with woods,
and the Indian bands were less likely to choose them for a route. The
danger was in the glens, where the trees were sparser and the broad
stretches of meadow made better going for horses.

The movement of my legs made me pluck up heart. I was embarked at any
rate in a venture, and had got rid of my desperate indecision. The two
of us held close together, and chose the duskiest thickets, crawling
belly-wise over the little clear patches and avoiding the crown of the
ridge like the plague. The weather helped us, for the skies hung grey
and low, with wisps of vapour curling among the trees. The glens were
pits of mist, and my only guide was my recollection of what I had seen,
and the easterly course of the streams.

By midday we had mounted to the crest of a long scarp which fell away
in a narrow and broken promontory towards the plains. So far we had
seen nothing to give us pause, and the only risk lay in some Indian
finding and following our trail. We lay close in a scrubby wood, and
rested for a little, while we ate some food. Everything around us
dripped with moisture, and I could have wrung pints from my coat and
breeches.

"Oh for the Dry Tortugas!" Ringan sighed. "What I would give for a hot
sun and the kindly winds o' the sea! I thought I pined for the hills,
Andrew, but I would not give a clean beach and a warm sou'-wester for
all the mountains on earth."

Then again: "Yon's a fine lass," he would say.

I did not reply, for I had no heart to speak of what I had left behind.

"Cheer up, young one," he cried. "There was more lost at Flodden. A
gentleman-adventurer must live by the hour, and it's surprising how
Fortune