efore the dark fell, I walked out to drink my fill of
the place.

You are to remember that I was a country lad who had never set foot
forth of Scotland. I was very young, and hot on the quest of new sights
and doings. As I walked down the unpaven street and through the narrow
tobacco-grown lanes, the strange smell of it all intoxicated me like
wine.

There was a great red sunset burning over the blue river and kindling
the far forests till they glowed like jewels. The frogs were croaking
among the reeds, and the wild duck squattered in the dusk. I passed an
Indian, the first I had seen, with cock's feathers on his head, and a
curiously tattooed chest, moving as light as a sleep-walker. One or two
townsfolk took the air, smoking their long pipes, and down by the water
a negro girl was singing a wild melody. The whole place was like a mad,
sweet-scented dream to one just come from the unfeatured ocean, and
with a memory only of grim Scots cities and dour Scots hills. I felt as
if I had come into a large and generous land, and I thanked God that I
was but twenty-three.

But as I was mooning along there came a sudden interruption on
my dreams. I was beyond the houses, in a path which ran among
tobacco-sheds and little gardens, with the river lapping a
stone's-throw off. Down a side alley I caught a glimpse of a figure
that seemed familiar.

'Twas that of a tall, hulking man, moving quickly among the tobacco
plants, with something stealthy in his air. The broad, bowed shoulders
and the lean head brought back to me the rainy moorlands about the
Cauldstaneslap and the mad fellow whose prison I had shared. Muckle
John had gone to the Plantations, and 'twas Muckle John or the devil
that was moving there in the half light.

I cried on him, and ran down the side alley.

But it seemed that he did not want company, for he broke into a run.

Now in those days I rejoiced in the strength of my legs, and I was
determined not to be thus balked. So I doubled after him into a maze of
tobacco and melon beds.

But it seemed he knew how to run. I caught a glimpse of his hairy legs
round the corner of a shed, and then lost him in a patch of cane. Then
I came out on a sort of causeway floored with boards which covered a
marshy sluice, and there I made great strides on him. He was clear
against the sky now, and I could see that he was clad only in shirt and
cotton breeches, while at his waist flapped an ugly sheath-knife.

Rounding t