"To a warmer place than even the warmest West Indian Isle," was the significant reply of the other, with a withering glance of malevolence and irony; "but it was not to talk with you I sought the Forest of Qaich to-night. My man is here!" With these strange words, the tall dark man strode to the foot of a tree. There, muffled in his cloak and fast asleep, or to all appearance so, Captain MacPherson was lying with his head pillowed on the root of a gigantic larch, and when shaken roughly by the shoulder, he started up with one of his terrible oaths, but grew pale on beholding the person who aroused him. On recovering himself partially, "What errand brings you here to-night?" he asked, in a low and stifled voice. "To see you," was the brief reply. "But why now, fiend?" "Where so fitting a place as the Forest of Gaich?" "True--true! fool--madman that I was! What lured me to halt here?" "What lured you?" "Yes." "Shall I tell you?" grinned the other. "Yes." "Fatality," "Alas! alas!" "Come," said the visitor, fiercely, "for time presses." "Hurry no man's cattle," grumbled MacPherson; "so begone, fiend, for I go not with you to-night." "You will not?" "No!" The dark stranger laughed till the very hills seemed to echo; and that weird sound made the marrow freeze in the bones of the old sergeant, who was listening. "Come," continued the visitor, "lest I drag you hence." "Drag!" reiterated the captain, with a furious malediction. "Yes, drag; for you are powerless as a suckling, and your will is mine." For a moment their swarthy eyes glared like live coals upon each other. At last those of the Captain Dhu lowered, and he said, in a broken voice, "Go to the place of tryst, and I shall be with you." "When?" "In the snapping of a flint," he groaned, while the perspiration rolled over his pallid brow. "Ha! ha! Nay, I go not without you." "Then the curse of God--the bitter, blighting curse that marked the front and withered up the soul of Cain--be on you!" exclaimed the captain, maddened with fear and rage. "Hound of hell, lead on--I follow you! Stand by your arms, men. Sergeant, at your peril, see that no man follows us!" The swarthy man grinned again on hearing this outburst and these orders; and while the startled soldiers gazed in each other's faces with blank astonishment at the progress and issue of a conversation so strange, and at the aspect of one before whom this terrible officer, the Captain Dhu--he so stern and stormy, so fierce and unyielding--seemed to quail and bow, he and his weird-like visitor went from amidst them, and together sought a lonelier and more sequestered part of the forest.