the little
burnside, across the loch. A plan occurred to me; I tore a leaf from my
sketch-book, put the paper with pencil in his hand, and said, "Where do
you live? Don't speak. Write."

He wrote in a faint scrawl, "Help me to that burnside. Then I can guide
you."

I hardly know how I got him there, for, light as he was, I am no
Hercules. However, with many a rest, we reached the little dell; and
then I carried him up its green side, and laid him on the heather of the
moor.

He wrote again:

"Go to that clump of rushes--the third from the little hillock. Then
look, but be careful. Then lift the big grass tussock."

The spot which Allen indicated was on the side of a rather steep grassy
slope. I approached it, dragged at the tussock of grass, which came away
easily enough, and revealed the entrance to no more romantic hiding-place
than an old secret whiskey "still." Private stills, not uncommon in
Sutherland and some other northern shires, are extinct in Galloway. Allen
had probably found this one by accident in his wanderings, and in his
half-insane bitterness against mankind had made it, for some time at
least, his home. The smoke-blackened walls, the recesses where the worm-
tub and the still now stood, all plainly enough betrayed the original
user of the hiding-place. There was a low bedstead, a shelf or two,
whereon lay a few books--a Shakespeare, a Homer, a Walton, Plutarch's
"Lives"; very little else out of a library once so rich. There was a tub
of oatmeal, a heap of dry peat, two or three eggs in a plate, some
bottles, a keg of whiskey, some sardine-tins, a box with clothes--that
was nearly all the "plenishing" of this hermitage. It was never likely
to be discovered, except by the smoke, when the inmate lit a fire. The
local shepherd knew it, of course, but Allen had bought his silence, not
that there were many neighbours for the shepherd to tattle with.

Allen had recovered strength enough by this time to reach his den with
little assistance. He made me beat up the white of one of the eggs with
a little turpentine, which was probably, under the circumstances, the
best styptic for his malady within his reach. I lit his fire of peats,
undressed him, put him to bed, and made him as comfortable as might be in
the den which he had chosen. Then I went back to the shepherd's, sent a
messenger to the nearest doctor, and procured a kind of sledge, generally
used for dragging peat home, wherein,