o draw
us off the fort; bide where ye are," and then he leaped over the wall,
armed with a claymore picked from the haunch of a halberdier beside him.
I was over at his heels, and the pair of us scoured down the brae.

There was some hazard in the enterprise; I'm ashamed to this day to tell
I thought that, at every foot of the way as we ran on. Never before
nor since have I felt a wood so sinister, so ghastly, so inspired by
dreadful airs, and when it was full on our flank, I kept my head half
turned to give an eye to where I was going and an eye to what might come
out on my rear. People tell you fear takes wings at a stern climax, that
a hot passion fills the brain with blood and the danger blurs to the
eye. It's a theory that works but poorly on a forlorn-hope, with a
certainty that the enemy are outnumbering you on the rear. With man and
ghost, I have always felt the same: give me my back to the wall, and
I could pluck up valour enough for the occasion, but there's a spot
between the shoulders that would be coward flesh in Hector himself.
That, I'm thinking, is what keeps some armies from turning tail to heavy
odds.

Perhaps the terror behind (John swore anon he never thought on't till
he learned I had, and then he said he felt it worse than I) gave our
approach all the more impetuousness, for we were down in the gut before
the MacDonald loiterers (as they proved) were aware of our coming. We
must have looked unco numerous and stalwart in the driving snow, for the
scamps dashed off into the wood as might children caught in a mischief.
We let them go, and bent over our friend, lying with a very gashly look
by the body of the MacDonald, a man well up in years, now in the last
throes, a bullet-wound in his neck and the blood frothing at his mouth.

"Art hurt, sir?" asked John, bending on a knee, but the minister gave no
answer.

We turned him round and found no wound but a bruise on the head, that
showed he had been attacked with a cudgel by some camp-followers of the
enemy, who had neither swords, nor reverence for a priest who was giving
a brotherly sup to one of their own tartan. In that driving snow we
rubbed him into life again, cruelly pallid, but with no broken bit about
him.

"Where's my stoup?" were his first words; "my poor lads upbye must be
wearying for water." He looked pleased to see the same beside him where
he had set it down, with its water untouched, and then he cast a wae
glance on the dead man