d the squeak of the saddle
leather. We were crouched in a wee burn winding among the bushes; for
they grew strongly on either side, and left a little tunnel which one
could creep through without much hindrance, and as the riders drove
their unwilling beasts among the whins we crawled upwards like cats.
While the men on foot beat for us, and the horsemen kept wary eyes for
a movement to betray us, we crept from the whins and crawled like
adders belly flat up the little stream, over which dry bracken still
hung and straggling whin bushes, like soldiers marching away from the
main body. We had crawled maybe fifty yards, when McKinnon turned his
face to me, and the blood was drying on his cheeks and brow where the
whins had marked him.

"Stop," his lips only moved; and I stopped and turned to Dan, for he
still had the rear-guard.

The burn had worn out a round hole under our bank, and we crawled in
and lay there, and never, never will I forget the cold of that pool and
the streak of light above us, for we lay in a brook that a sheep could
walk over, and indeed its very narrowness was our safety, for it surely
had been watched else. And while we lay in the frozen cold of the
pool, the water tinkled and gurgled and laughed, and went plout-plout
at my knees, as though it was a hot summer day and we were stooping to
drink.

"We must just lie here like rats," whispered the smuggler, and I held
my chin to stop the chattering of my teeth, "for this burn gets
narrower than a sheep drain. We must just steep in the water and think
of the whisky."

We could hear the swishing among the whins, and the shouts of the
rabble behind us, and the clatter of horses' hoofs on the shingle of
the burn, and the splashing.

"They're in there like rabbits in a patch of corn in the harvest,"
cried one man.

"By God, if I could only get that Ronny McKinnon under my bonny blue
hanger," said Gilchrist, the ganger that had the soft side for Mirren
Stuart.

"One good prog wid pay for this night's daftness," growled his leader,
and again came Gilchrist's voice--

"Was I tae ken McKinnon was ootside Finlay Stuart's and a dozen o' ye
in the kitchen."

"Umph," sniffed Ronny, "it's the great company that gathers at
Finlays," and indeed Mirren Stuart saved many's the house at that time,
for the gangers and excisemen went after her sisters, while old Finlay
smiled grimly, and Mirren got hold of the secrets.

"If a man runnin' like that Gilchri