Since that time the horses had been permitted to remain in the not too zealous care of the grooms, who fulfilled their duty by sleeping in the town at a distance from their charges. Even the very stable door was unlocked, and as they opened it the horses were heard restlessly moving within. "Any of Keppoch's gay lads might make a haul very easily this nicht," said Scarlett, as they entered. "I saw Keppoch and many another pretty fighter get his bellyful over there by the walls the other day," said Wat, grimly, as he proceeded coolly to make his selection by the sense of touch alone. When he had done this, Scarlett and he saddled the chosen beast and led him out, having previously tied stable rags over his iron-shod feet to keep them from clanking on the pavement. Making a detour, they soon gained the river, which they skirted cautiously till they were a mile from the town. Then Wat mounted without the assistance of his companion. "God help ye, laddie; ye will never win near your lass, I fear me. But ye can try. And that is aye the best o't in this world. That it is for us mortals to do the trying, and for God to finish ilka job to His ain liking." With which sage reflection he gave Wat his sword, his pistols and ammunition, together with some bread for the journey--looking at which last, Wat felt that he could as soon eat his horse's tail. "Hae!" said the master-at-arms, "ye will be the better o' that or ye come to the end o' the Lang Wood. I have plenty more by me." Wat laughed. "You cannot deceive a desperate man," he said, "nor yet lie to him. Well do I know that this is every bite you have in the world." "Listen, Wat," said the free-lance. "I have found me a decent woman that has ta'en a liking to me, and she has ta'en me in. I'm weel provided for. Tak' them, laddie, tak' them. Ye will need them mair nor me." Saying which Scarlett started promptly on the back track to the town, crying as he went: "God speed ye, laddie; I'll never set een on ye mair!" So with a sob in his throat and a feeling as if he were riding on empty air, Wat Gordon turned the head of the officer's charger (by a strange and fitting chance it was his cousin Will's), and set his chest to the current of the river, at the place where the tracks on the shoaling gravel and the chuckling of the shallow river over its pebbles indicated a ford. So our true hero, ill, fevered, desperate, in the stark grip with death, started on his almost impossible quest--without an idea or a plan save that he must ride into the blank midnight to save his love, or die for her. CHAPTER XLVIII THE MASTER COMES HOME