beside him.

"Poor wretch, poor wretch!" said he.

We took the stoup and our minister up to the summit, and had got him
but safely set there when he let out what gave me the route again from
Dunchuach, and led to divers circumstances that had otherwise never come
into this story if story there was, which I doubt there had never been.
Often I've thought me since how pregnant was that Christian act of
Gordon in giving water to a foe. Had I gone, or had John gone, for the
stoup of water, none of us, in all likelihood, had stirred a foot to
relieve yon enemy's drouth; but he found a godly man, though an austere
one too on occasion, and paid for the cup of water with a hint in broken
English that was worth all the gold in the world to me. Gordon told us
the man's dying confidence whenever he had come to himself a little more
in the warmth of the fort fire.

"There's a woman and child," said he, "in the wood of Strongara."

CHAPTER XIII.--WHERE TREADS THE DEER.

When the English minister, in his odd lalland Scots, had told us this
tale of the dying MacDonald, I found for the first time my feeling to
the daughter of the Provost of Inneraora, Before this the thought of her
was but a pleasant engagement for the mind at leisure moments; now it
flashed on my heart with a stound that yon black eyes were to me the
dearest jewels in the world, that lacking her presence these glens and
mountains were very cold and empty. I think I gave a gasp that let John
Splendid into my secret there and then; but at least I left him no doubt
about what I would be at.

"What's the nearer way to Strongara?" I asked; "alongside the river, or
through Tombreck?"

He but peered at me oddly a second under his brows--a trifle wistfully,
though I might naturally think his mood would be quizzical, then he
sobered in a moment That's what I loved about the man; a fool would have
laughed at the bravado of my notion, a man of thinner sentiment would
have marred the moment by pointing out difficulties.

"So that's the airt the wind's in!" he said, and then he added, "I think
I could show you, not the shortest, but the safest road."

"I need no guidance," I cried in a hurry, "only----"

"Only a friend who knows every wood in the country-side, and has your
interest at heart, Colin," he said, softly, putting a hand on my elbow
and gripping it in a homely way. It was the first time he gave me my
Christian name since I made his acquaintance.

His co