ortable in our forest sanctuary; we were
well warmed by the perfumed roots of the candle-fir; John Splendid's
foraging was richer than we had on many a campaign, and a pack of cartes
lent some solace to the heaviest of our hours. To our imprisonment
we brought even a touch of scholarship. Sir Donald was a student of
Edinburgh College--a Master of Arts--learned in the moral philosophies,
and he and I discoursed most gravely of many things that had small
harmony with our situation in that savage foe-haunted countryside.

To these, our learned discourses, John Splendid would listen with
an impatient tolerance, finding in the most shrewd saying of the old
scholars we dealt with but a paraphrase of some Gaelic proverb or the
roundabout expression of his own views on life and mankind.

"Tuts! tuts!" he would cry, "I think the dissensions of you two are but
one more proof of the folly of book-learning. Your minds are not your
own, but the patches of other people's bookish duds. A keen eye, a
custom of puzzling everything to its cause, a trick of balancing the
different motives of the human heart, get John M'Iver as close on the
bone when it comes to the bit. Every one of the scholars you are talking
of had but my own chance (maybe less, for who sees more than a Cavalier
of fortune?) of witnessing the real true facts of life. Did they live
to-day poor and hardy, biting short at an oaten bannock to make it go
the farther, to-morrow gorging on fat venison and red rich wine? Did
they parley with cunning lawyers, cajole the boor, act the valorous on
a misgiving heart, guess at the thought of man or woman oftener than
we do? Did ever you find two of them agree on the finer points of their
science? Never the bit!"

We forgave him his heresies for the sake of their wit, that I but poorly
chronicle, and he sang us wonderful Gaelic songs that had all of that
same wisdom he bragged of--no worse, I'll allow, than the wisdom of
print; not all love-songs, laments, or such naughty ballads as you will
hear to-day, but the poetry of the more cunning bards. Our cavern, in
its inner recesses, filled with the low rich chiming of his voice; his
face, and hands, and whole body took part in the music. In those hours
his character borrowed just that touch of sincerity it was in want of
at ordinary times, for he was one of those who need trial and trouble to
bring out their better parts.

We might have been happy, we might have been content, living