ent of oaths that buzzed around me I remembered hearing
of the whin planting. In these days keep for beasts was scarce, and
the crofters would be cutting green whins, and pounding them between
flat stones and feeding cattle and horse with them. Indeed, to this
day you'll see the flat stone yet at many a byre-end, although it is
never used now except maybe to set a boyne on on washing days; but the
poor cow beasts were terribly fond of the whins, and they'll tell you
yet, the old folks, that when they were herding in their young days,
when the beasts got scattered, they would take a whin bush and light it
to windward, and let the whin smoke drift down the wind, and the beasts
would come running, for they liked the charred whins with the sap still
in the jags. Here and there they planted whins, for at one time they
had to go all the way to the castle for them, and on one side the
common was a great dense bank of them, thick as corn, and well grown.

"They'll be round us like collies round a marrow bane," said Ronny, and
as he spoke there was a shout from the highroad, and Dan laughed.

"This is where the kirn starts," and looking over my shoulder as I ran
I saw the horsemen spread out like a fan (on either side the belting)
where we crossed the road, and the men on foot were on our heels.

They knew of the bank of whins we must struggle through, and relied on
their horses' speed to take them round the planting and catch us coming
out while the men on foot harried our rear. It was 'twixt devil and
deep sea, and the smuggler cursed himself for leading us into the clove
hitch.

Between us and the whins was a burn with steep earthy banks, and too
wide and deep to risk horses over. So the horsemen on our left made
for a slap[2] where a rough peat-track crossed the burn, but those on
our right kept straight on, like the road to Imachar. At the lower end
of the whins the burn was shallower and the banks low.

We flung across the stream, carrying down an avalanche of loose earth
and stones after us, and breenged into the maze of prickly bushes,
winding through those that the snow had been blown off. But mostly the
bushes were dry and bare of snow, and this indeed proved our safety.
We were nearly through the clumps when the horsemen on our right
crossed the burn with a great floundering and splashing, and those on
our left came galloping over the peat-track, and the first horseman
galloped past us, so close that I hear