inted with the inflammable grease. So I should suffer a
gradual torture, for it would be long ere the flames reached a vital
part. I think they erred, for they assumed that I had the body of an
Indian, which does not perish till a blow is struck at its heart;
whereas I am confident that any white man would be dead of the anguish
long ere the fire had passed beyond his knees.

I think that was the most awful moment of my life. Indeed I could not
have endured it had not my mind been drugged and my body stupid with
fatigue. Men have often asked me what were my thoughts in that hour,
while the faggots were laid about my feet. I cannot tell, for I have no
very clear memory. The Power which does not break the bruised reed
tempered the storm to my frailty. I could not envisage the future, and
so was mercifully enabled to look only to the moment. I knew that pain
was coming; but I was already in pain, and the sick man does not
trouble himself about degrees of suffering. Death, too, was coming; but
for that I had been long ready. The hardest thing that man can do is to
endure, but this was to me no passive endurance; it was an active
struggle to show a fortitude worthy of the gallant dead.

So I must suppose that I hung there in my bonds with a motionless face
and a mouth which gave out no cry. They brought the faggots, and poured
on water, and I did not look their way. Some score of braves began a
war dance, circling round me, waving their tomahawks, and singing their
wild chants. For me they did not break the moonlit silence, I was
hearing other sounds and seeing far other sights. An old sad song of
Ringan's was in my ears, something about an exile who cried out in
France for the red heather and the salt winds of the Isles.

"_Nevermore the deep fern_," it ran, "_or the bell of the dun deer, far
my castle is wind-blown sands, and my homelands are a stranger's."_

And the air brought back in a flash my own little house on the grey
hill-sides of Douglasdale, the cluck of hens about the doors on a hot
summer morn, the crying of plovers in the windy Aprils, the smell of
peatsmoke when the snow drifted over Cairntable. Home-sickness has
never been my failing, but all at once I had a vision of my own land,
the cradle of my race, well-beloved and unforgotten over the leagues of
sea. Somehow the thought strengthened me. I had now something besides
the thought of Ringan to keep my heart firm. If all hell laid hold on
me, I must stan