talian
hounds to one knife is a poor bargain. Between us we should get rid of
them before the owners they lag for come up on their tails."

"You should thank God who got you out of a trouble so deep," I said,
astounded at the miracle of his escape so far.

"Oh ay," said he; "and indeed I was pretty clever myself, or it was all
bye with me when one of the black fellows set his fangs in my hose. Here
are his partners; short work with it, on the neck or low at the belly
with an up cut, and ward your throat."

The two dogs ran with ferocious growls at us as we stood by the little
tree, their faces gaping and their quarters streaked with foam. Strong
cruel brutes, they did not swither a moment, but both leaped at M'Iver's
throat. With one swift slash of the knife, my companion almost cut the
head off the body of the first, and I reckoned with the second. They
rolled at our feet, and a silence fell on the country. Up M'Iver put
his shoulders, dighted his blade on a tuft of bog-grass, and whistled a
stave of the tune they call "The Desperate Battle."

"If I had not my lucky penny with me I would wonder at this meeting,"
said he at last, eyeing me with a look of real content that he should
so soon have fallen into my company at a time when a meeting was
so unlikely. "It has failed me once or twice on occasions far less
important; but that was perhaps because of my own fumbling, and I
forgive it all because it brought two brave lads together like barks of
one port on the ocean. 'Up or down?' I tossed when it came to putting
fast heels below me, and 'up' won it, and here's the one man in all
broad Albainn I would be seeking for, drops out of the mist at the very
feet of me. Oh, I'm the most wonderful fellow ever stepped heather, and
I could be making a song on myself there and then if occasion allowed.
Some people have genius, and that, I'm telling you, is well enough so
far as it goes; but I have luck too, and I'm not so sure but luck is a
hantle sight better than genius. I'm guessing you have lost your way in
the mist now?"

He looked quizzingly at me, and I was almost ashamed to admit that I had
been in a maze for the greater part of the morning.

"And no skill for getting out of it?" he asked.

"No more than you had in getting into it," I confessed.

"My good scholar," said he, "I could walk you out into a drove-road in
the time you would be picking the bog from your feet I'm not making
any brag of an art that's so c