The swift darkness of a Highland night smoothed out the ragged line of mountain, obliterating with its travelling shadows the outlines of the desolate glen, the clumps of trees about the low-lying country and in a flash the man upon the hill. He had become in a breath of time inseparably of the night itself. Long after a clear whistle sounded from the pathway below. It was followed by a softer longer whistle. With a sigh the man upon the hill gained his feet, being very stiff and cold with waiting, and passing over the sodden heather stood looking about him into the mist. Presently two figures loomed into sight. The first of them, wrapped like the man himself in the folds of a heavy plaid, addressed him in a familiar voice. It was Miss Macpherson. "Come, Castleleathers," she said, "here is the man Macpherson, he is letting a rope over the wall, and he has arranged all. The Duke expects a visitor from the west this very night or maybe to-morrow and he will be alone. Things are no so strict as they were, and there is a rumour that he goes south soon. He thinks the Highlands are crushed...." "The German loon," snapped Castleleathers with much contempt, "he cannot tell the difference between a Hessian and a Macdonald." "Come," said Miss Macpherson, "and say ye do not think hardly of me if anything goes wrong." He took her hand and gave it a crunch. "Tuts!" he said. "I'm no easy to move, but I like a ploy at a time. I feel younger to-night than I've felt this ten years. He's only a wee bit German after all." Without another word they reached the Fort, and Macpherson, who seemed a capable man though silent as a dyke, passed through the gateway and disappeared. They skirted the outer rampart noiselessly and taking up their stand some hundred yards beyond the entrance gates, awaited the rope. A few minutes later and down it came, and steadying Miss Macpherson for fear she grew giddy and fell, they began to mount together, and reached the top. There all was very dark and quiet, and the mist obscured everything outside the reach of a man's arm. The garrison had long since grown careless now that the Highland forces had been utterly dispersed and crushed. Even the Duke was growing lukewarm in persecution and anxious to bid farewell to the land of snow and mist and hear what London had to say to him for his brave doings. At that very moment he sat toasting his toes before a grand peat fire with a log or two to give it flame, a glass of mulled wine at his elbow. The room in which he sat was very small and compact, the shutters drawn, and the seat in which he dozed one he had procured from the wreckage of a chief's house--a massive cushioned chair--with a back so high that it took a big man to see who entered the room. He had dined as well as Highland rations would permit, and, like all Germans, he loved his food. He also relished the hour following his dinner. He had a kind of reverence for that sacred time.