"Now," said I to Nicol, "dismount and lay on to these fellows with the flat of your sword. Give me your pistol, and if either makes resistance he will know how a bullet tastes. Lay on, and do not spare them." So Nicol, to whom the matter was a great jest, got down and laid on lustily. They shouted most piteously for mercy, but none they got till the stout arm of my servant was weary. "And now, gentlemen, you may remount your horses. Nay, without your clothes; you will ride more freely as you are. And give my best respects to your honourable friends, and tell them I wish a speedy meeting." But as I looked in the face of one, him who had been so terror-stricken at the outset, I saw that which I thought I recognised. "You, fellow," I cried, "where have I seen you before?" And as I looked again, I remembered a night the year before on the Alphen road, when I had stood over this very man and questioned him on his name and doings. So he had come to Scotland as one of the foreign troops. "I know you, Jan Hamman," said I. "The great doctor Johannes Burnetus of Lugdunum has not forgotten you. You were scarcely in an honest trade before, but you are in a vast deal less honest now. I vowed if ever I met you again to make you smart for your sins, and I think I have kept my word, though I had the discourtesy to forget your face at first sight. Good morning, Jan, I hope to see you again ere long. Good morning, gentlemen both." So the luckless pair rode off homeward, and what reception they met with from their captain and their comrades who shall say? Meanwhile, when they were gone for some little time, Nicol and I rode back by a round-about path. When I began to reflect, I saw the full rashness of my action. I had burned my boats behind me with a vengeance. There was no choice of courses before me now. The chase would be ten times hotter against me than before, and besides I had given them some clue to my whereabouts. You may well ask if the danger to my love were not equally great, for that by this action they would know at least the airt by which she had fled. I would answer that these men were of Gilbert’s own company, and one, at least, of them, when he heard my name, must have had a shrewd guess as to who the lady was. My cousin’s love affairs were no secret. If the man had revealed the tale in its entirety, his own action must necessarily have been exposed, and God help him who had insulted one whom Gilbert cared for. He would have flayed the skin from him at the very mention. To my sober reason to-day the action seems foolhardy in the extreme, and more like a boyish frolic than the work of a man. But all I knew at the time, as I rode back, was that my pride was for the moment soothed, and my heart mightily comforted. CHAPTER VIII OF OUR WANDERINGS AMONG THE MOORS OF CLYDE