“I think I can comprehend,” said he, “all this unwillingness to talk about my lord of Argile’s part in the disaster of to-day. No Gael though I am, I’m loath myself to talk about a bad black business, but that’s because I love my master--for master he is in scholarship, in gifts, in every attribute and intention of the Christian soldier. It is for a different reason, I’m afraid, that our friend Barbreck shuffles.” “Barbreck never shuffles,” said John, stiffly. “If he did in this matter, it would be for as true an affection for his chief as any lalland cleric ever felt for his patron.” “And yet, sir, you shuffle for another reason too. You do not want to give your ridiculous Highland pride the shock of hearing that your chief left in a galley before the battle he lost had well begun.” A curious cry came from M’Iver’s lips. He lifted his face, lined with sudden shadows, to the stars that now were lighting to the east, and I heard his teeth grind. “So that’s the bitter end of it!” said I to myself, stunned by this pitiful conclusion. My mind groped back on the events of the whole waeful winter. I saw Argile again at peace among his own people; I heard anew his clerkly but wavering sentiment on the trade of the sword; I sat by him in the mouth of Glen Noe, and the song and the guess went round the fire. But the picture that came to me first and stayed with me last was Argile standing in his chamber in the castle of Inneraora, the pallor of the study on his face, and his little Archie, with his gold hair and the night-gown, running out and clasping him about the knees. We struggled through the night, weary men, hungry men. Loch Leven-head may be bonny by day, but at night it is far from friendly to the unaccustomed wanderer. Swampy meadows frozen to the hard bone, and uncountable burns, and weary ascents, and alarming dips, lie there at the foot of the great forest of Mamore. And to us, poor fugitives, even these were less cruel than the thickets at the very head where the river brawled into the loch with a sullen surrender of its mountain independence.