art with
skill, letting us both fall behind the general company a little, so that
the Mac Donalds might not witness the indignity of it.

Glen Nevis, as I saw it that night in the light of the moon, is what
comes to me now in my dreams. I smell the odour of the sweat-drenched,
uncleanly deeding of those savage clans about us; I see the hills lift
on either hand with splintered peaks that prick among the stars--gorge
and ravine and the wide ascending passes filled ever with the sound of
the river, and the coarse, narrow drove-road leads into despair. That
night the moon rode at the full about a vacant sky. There was not even a
vapour on the hills; the wind had failed in the afternoon.

At the foot of the hill Cam Dearg (or the Red Mount), that is one of
three gallant mountains that keep company for Nevis Ben the biggest of
all, the path we followed made a twist to the left into a gully from
which a blast of the morning's wind had cleaned out the snow as by a
giant's spade.

So much the worse for us, for now the path lay strewn with boulders
that the dragoons took long to thread through, and the bare feet of the
private soldiers bled redly anew. Some lean high fir-trees threw this
part into a shadow, and so it happened that as I felt my way wearily on,
I fell over a stone. The fall lost me the last of my senses: I but heard
some of the Stewarts curse me for an encumbrance as they stumbled over
me and passed on, heedless of my fate, and saw, as in a dwam, one of
them who had abraded his knees by his stumble over my body, turn round
with a drawn knife that glinted in a shred of moonlight.

I came to, with M'Iver bent over me, and none of our captors at hand.

"I had rather this than a thousand rix-dollars," said he, as I sat up
and leaned on my arm.

"Have they left us?" I asked, with no particular interest in the answer.
It could work little difference whatever it might be. "I thought I saw
one of them turn on me with a knife."

"You did," said M'Iver. "He broke his part of the parole, and is
lying on the other side of you, I think with a hole in his breast.
An ugly and a treacherous scamp! It's lucky for us that Montrose or
MacColkitto never saw the transaction between this clay and John M'Iver,
or their clemency had hardly been so great 'You can bide and see to
your friend,' was James Grahame's last words, and that's the reason I'm
here."

M'Iver lifted me to my feet, and we stood a little to think what we
shou