When I awoke my first thought was of her: then, as I looked up at the sky, I judged that the day was already some hours past the dawn. Cautiously I separated the fronds of brackens and looked along the moor. What I saw made me draw back in horror: then, with a beating heart, I took courage and peeped carefully through once more. The troopers were upon us, and on my side of the loch there were some twenty who, scattered about, on horseback, were quartering and requartering the whole hill-side. I looked warily across to the other side of the loch. There I could see none. I knew that my safety lay in absolute stillness. A movement of one of the bracken stems beneath which I lay might betray me--even my breathing might be heard, and I knew the uncanny instinct with which a trooper’s horse was sometimes aware of the presence of a fugitive when his rider might be ignorant. As I listened to the voices of the troopers, and heard the hoofs of their horses, I felt a sudden love for all the timorous hunted creatures of the earth. In imagination I saw a hare, with ears laid back, and eyes dilate with fear, lying clapped in her form. In my extremity I thought of Mary, and wondered if she knew of my peril. My lips were dry as sand, my hands were moist, and my heart was beating loudly, so that I thought the sound of it must be heard by my pursuers. Would it be a speedy death there on the moorland, or would I be taken to Wigtown and given a trial? Life had never seemed sweeter than in that morning hour, and now fate was about to dash the cup of happiness from my lips. I dared not stir to look again through the brackens, but I knew from the sound of the voices that some of the troopers were now close to my hiding-place. With ears alert I listened. Surely that was Agnew’s voice. I heard the jangle of bridle chains, and the creak of stirrup leathers: I could hear the heavy breathing of the horses--they were closing in upon me on every side. One minute more and I should be discovered, and then, death! And I, because I had learned to love, had grown afraid to die. Suddenly, clear and shrill, the sound of a flute came from the far side of the loch. What madness was this? Did not the old man know that the troopers were upon us? In the very teeth of danger he was calmly playing a tune that I had heard more than once in the moonlit hours of the night. O fool! What frenzy had seized him?