"Hoch!"--roared out John Smith, his patience being now quite exhausted, by the thought that his chance of escaping with life was thus to be rendered doubly precarious, by the provoking delay of this idiot.--"Hoch!" roared he again, in a yet more tremendous voice, whilst at the same time he thrust his head--and nothing but his turf-covered head--with his bloody countenance, partially streaked with the tiny streams of the inky liquid that had oozed from the peat, and run down here and there over his face;--this horrible head, I say, John thrust forth from the foliage, and glared fearfully at the appalled songster, who stopped dead in the midst of his stave. "Ah--a-ach--ha--a-ah--ha!" cried the poor idiot, in a prolonged scream of terror that echoed through the wood, and off he flew, and was out of sight in a moment. John Smith lost not another instant of time. Dropping down from the tree, he hastily picked up a small fragment of the cheese which the idiot had let fall in his terror and confusion, and this he devoured with inconceivable rapacity. But although this refreshed him a little, it stirred up his hunger to a most agonizing degree, so that if he had had no other cause for running, he would have run from the very internal torment he was enduring. Dashing down through the thickest of the brakes of the wood, so as to avoid observation as much as possible, he at last traversed the whole extent of it in a north-easterly direction, and gained the low open country beyond it, whence he urged on his way, until he fell into that very line of road, in the parish of Petty, which he had so lately marched over in an opposite direction, and under circumstances so different, with Captain M'Taggart and his company, on the afternoon of the 14th, just two days before. Remembering the whole particulars of that march, and the cheers and the benedictions with which they had been every where greeted, John Smith flattered himself that he had now got into a country of friends, and that he had only to show himself at any of their doors, wounded, weary, an' hungered and athirst, as he was, to ensure the most charitable, compassionate, and hospitable reception. But, in so calculating, John was ignorant of the versatility and worthlessness of popular applause. He forgot that when he was passing to Culloden, with the bold Captain M'Taggart and his company, they had been looked upon as heroes marching to conquest; whilst he was now to be viewed as a wretched runaway from a lost field. But he still more forgot, that the same bloody, haggard countenance, and horrible head-gear, which had been already so great a protection to him by terrifying his enemies, could not have much chance of favourably recommending him to his friends.