and found words to
remark:

"The mair haste, Nort, the waur speed."

With that he hit out squarely with his wiry, muscular arm--just
once--and Nort went down in the bracken and lay quite still.

Fergus stood looking down at him: the silent face upturned, very white,
very boyish, very beautiful, the soft hair tumbling about his temples,
the lax arms spread out among the leaves. And all around the still
woods, and quiet fields, and the robins singing, and the sun coming up
over the hill.

As Fergus looked down his breast began to heave and the tears came into
his eyes.

"The bonnie, bonnie lad," he said; "he wadna run awa'."

Presently Nort stirred uneasily.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Come, now," said Fergus tenderly, "we'll get down ta the brook."

With one arm around him, Fergus helped him through the woods, and knelt
beside him while he dashed the cold water over his face and head.

"I hit ye hard," said Fergus, "and it's likely yer eye'll be blackened."

Nort sat down with his back to a tree trunk. He was sick and dizzy. It
seemed to him that the thing he wanted most in all the world was to be
left alone.

"I'm going away, Fergus. Leave me here. I shall not go back to
Hempfield."

Fergus offered no excuses, suggested no change in plan. It was working
out exactly as he intended: he was sorry for Nort, but this was his
duty. He made Nort as comfortable as he could, and then set off toward
town. As he proceeded, he stepped faster and faster. He began to feel a
curious exaltation of spirit. It was the greatest moment of his whole
life. If you had seen him at that moment, with his head lifted high, you
would scarcely have known him. As the town came into view, with the
eastern sun upon it, Fergus burst out in a voice as wild and harsh as a
bagpipe:

"Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha will fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!"

For that which followed I make no excuse, nor think I need to, but I
must tell it, for it is a part of the history of Hempfield and of the
life of Fergus MacGregor. Ours is a temperance town, and Fergus
MacGregor a temperate man; but that morning Fergus was seen going over
the hill beyond the town, unsteady in the legs, and still singing. He
did not appear at the office of the _Star_ all that day.

As for Nort, he lay for a long time there at the foot of the beech tree,
miserably sick in body and soul--dozing off from time to time,