“Campaigning with Mackay was never like this,” I pleaded, wearily; “give me the open road and an enemy before me, and I would tramp gaily to the world’s end. Here’s but a choked ravine the very deer abhor in such weather, and before us but a battle we must not share in.” He said never a word for a few moments, but trudged on. My low-heeled shoon were less fitted for the excursion than his close-thonged brogues that clung to the feet like a dry glove, and I walked lamely. Ever and anon he would look askance at me, and I was annoyed that he should think me a poorer mountaineer than those unwearied knaves who hurried us. I must have shown my feeling in my face, for in a little he let-on to fall lame too, and made the most grievous complaint of ache and weariness. His pretence deceived me but for a little. He was only at his old quirk of keeping me in good repaie with myself, but he played the part 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.”