"Young blood," grunted Castleleathers, "he only needs managing." "You're all the same," murmured Miss Macpherson slyly. CHAPTER XXIII THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR MEN Of the travelling of Rob to the south there is little enough to tell until he reached Rannoch, the country of Robertsons and Stewarts, and other clans more like to pick a pocket than to cry God-speed. On the evening following the departure of Muckle John, Rob had bartered with a pedlar upon the road for a suit of old clothes, and too fearful of the future to refuse the exorbitant price demanded, he gave him some silver and buried his kilt in a mountain pool. And so, with more confidence, he stepped out towards the south, and reached Loch Linnhe without misadventure. It was his intention to avoid all the district about Fort William by taking boat to the other side. In this manner he passed through Glencoe and travelling by day, reached the head of Loch Rannoch in a dusk of drizzling rain. Now the country that includes Rannoch, Lochaber and Breadalbane had no rival for insubordination in those days. It swarmed with broken men--cattle thieves and desperadoes of all kinds owning fealty to none but their own good pleasure, and only Jacobite so far as it was politic to be, and with an unsleeping eye to the plunder of the Lowlands. It was with anxious steps, therefore, that Rob approached a solitary huddle of buildings lying in a snug hollow of the hills, thatched to the colour of the brown trees, with here and there a patch of young heather over the top of it. It was strangely hidden and quiet, with all the look of an old inn fallen on evil days. For long Rob stared at it with dubious eyes; there was so little life about it, and so much that was mysteriously ominous. Though drenched with the thin hill rain, craving for food and shelter, he was in a half mind to continue his way, when the face of a man looked through the small hole in the side that served for a window--a green-white face it was, with staring unwavering eyes. But where there was a living soul there would be food and shelter and Rob stepped forward, forgetting his secret fear. Inside the place, however, there was no sound, but only the monotonous dripping of water upon the muddy floor. In the centre of the room there hung a great pot upon a chain from the roof, and the place was so full of peat reek that it took him a few minutes to see where the man had gone. Against the wall were layers of rushes, and a narrow stairway led up to a kind of loft about six feet above the floor. Under the loft were the cows. He could hear them coughing fitfully through the wooden partition. It was a poor enough place and leaking from a score of holes, but it was warm, and so tired was he that he sat down before the peats and warmed his hands.