great start in the heavens. I looked at the
sprig of heath, and at that I could have cried aloud: for I saw I had
betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at
what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like
dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come
down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east,
spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in
the deep parts of the heather.

When I waked Alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark
and the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick
look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.

"What are we to do now?" I asked.

"We'll have to play at being hares," said he. "Do ye see yon mountain?"
pointing to one on the north-eastern sky.

"Ay," said I.

"Well, then," says he, "let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder.
it is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can
win to it before the morn, we may do yet."

"But, Alan," cried I, "that will take us across the very coming of the
soldiers!"

"I ken that fine," said he; "but if we are driven back on Appin, we are
two dead men. So now, David man, be brisk!"

With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an
incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All
the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the
moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned
or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were
close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. The
water was long out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees
brings an overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache
and the wrists faint under your weight.

Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile,
and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons.
They had not spied us, for they held straight on; a half-troop, I think,
covering about two miles of ground, and beating it mighty thoroughly as
they went. I had awakened just in time; a little later, and we must have
fled in front of them, instead of escaping on one side. Even as it was,
the least misfortune might betray us; and now and again, when a grouse
rose out of the heather with a clap of wings, we lay as still as the
dead and were afr