Splendid kept a dour-set jaw, said never a word, and the seven of
us proceeded on our way.

It was well on in the morning, the land sounding with a new key of
troubled and loosening waters. Mists clogged the mountain-tops, and
Glencoe far off to its westward streamed with a dun vapour pricked with
the tip of fir and ash. A moist feel was in the air; it relapsed anon to
a smirr of rain.

"This is a shade better than clear airs and frost and level snow for
quarries on a hunting," said I.

"I'm glad it suits you," said M'Iver. "I've seen the like before, and
I'm not so sure about the advantage of it."

CHAPTER XXIV.--A NIGHT'S SHELTER.

The rain that was a smirr or drizzle on the north side of Glencoe grew
to a steady shower in the valley itself, and when we had traversed a bit
in the airt of Tynree it had become a pouring torrent--slanting in our
faces with the lash of whips, streaming from the hair and crinkling
the hands, and leaving the bonnet on the head as heavy as any French
soldier's salade. I am no great unlover of a storm in the right
circumstances. There is a long strath between Nordlingen and Donauworth
of Bavaria, where once we amazed our foreign allies by setting out, bare
to the kilt and sark, in threshing hail, running for miles in the pelt
of it out of the sheer content of encounter--and perhaps a flagon or two
of wine. It was a bravado, perhaps, but a ploy to brace the spirit; we
gathered from it some of the virtues of our simple but ample elders, who
were strong men when they lay asleep with a cheek to the naked earth and
held their faces frankly up to sun or rain. But if we rejoiced in the
rains of Bavaria, there was no cause for glee in those torrents of
Glencoe, for they made our passage through the country more difficult
and more dangerous than it was before. The snow on the ground was for
hours a slushy compost, that the foot slipped on at every step, or that
filled the brogue with a paste that nipped like brine. And when the
melting snow ran to lower levels, the soil itself, relaxing the rigour
of its frost, became as soft as butter and as unstable to the foot The
bums filled to the lip and brawled over, new waters sprung up among
the rocks and ran across our path, so that we were for ever wading and
slipping and splashing and stumbling on a route that seemed never to
come to any end or betterment.

Seven more pitiful men never trod Highlands. The first smirr soaked our
clothing; by th