baith. Wae's me! Wae's me!"

The Die-Hard, who was Wee Jaikie, did not delay. His eyes had filled
with tears at her news, which we know to have been his habit. When Mrs.
Morran, after indulging in a moment of barbaric keening, looked back
the road she had come, she saw a small figure trotting up the hill like
a terrier who has been left behind. As he trotted he wept bitterly.
Jaikie was getting dangerous.

CHAPTER XII

HOW MR. McCUNN COMMITTED AN ASSAULT UPON AN ALLY

Dickson always maintained that his senses did not leave him for more
than a second or two, but he admitted that he did not remember very
clearly the events of the next few hours. He was conscious of a bad
pain above his eyes, and something wet trickling down his cheek. There
was a perpetual sound of water in his ears and of men's voices. He
found himself dropped roughly on the ground and forced to walk, and was
aware that his legs were inclined to wobble. Somebody had a grip on
each arm, so that he could not defend his face from the brambles, and
that worried him, for his whole head seemed one aching bruise and he
dreaded anything touching it. But all the time he did not open his
mouth, for silence was the one duty that his muddled wits enforced. He
felt that he was not the master of his mind, and he dreaded what he
might disclose if he began to babble.

Presently there came a blank space of which he had no recollection at
all. The movement had stopped, and he was allowed to sprawl on the
ground. He thought that his head had got another whack from a bough,
and that the pain put him into a stupor. When he awoke he was alone.

He discovered that he was strapped very tightly to a young Scotch fir.
His arms were bent behind him and his wrists tied together with cords
knotted at the back of the tree; his legs were shackled, and further
cords fastened them to the bole. Also there was a halter round the
trunk and just under his chin, so that while he breathed freely enough,
he could not move his head. Before him was a tangle of bracken and
scrub, and beyond that the gloom of dense pines; but as he could see
only directly in front his prospect was strictly circumscribed.

Very slowly he began to take his bearings. The pain in his head was
now dulled and quite bearable, and the flow of blood had stopped, for
he felt the encrustation of it beginning on his cheeks. There was a
tremendous noise all around him, and he traced this to the swayi