"No, no!" he gasped, one gout swollen hand upon his breast. "I canna wait here like an auld maimed dog. There are places I can bide until arrangements can be made. Quick, boy--saddle a horse and let us go." "The horses are all gone, my lord," said Rob. "All gone? So that is how they treat me. Then we must walk until we find one. Surely my people will help their chief." "There is a pony, your lordship," cried Rob, and going to the stable he led out the powerful little beast. Shuffling back to the house, Lovat crept up the creaking stairway and returned some minutes later with his strong box. "Fasten it behind the saddle, Rob," he said, "or better still can I trust ye to carry it?" He stood for a moment glooming at the ground and then begun to hunt amongst his pockets for a piece of paper which, when he had found it, he read most carefully and tittered in a strange falsetto manner to himself. Then taking a silver whistle from his waistcoat he blew it three times and took to breathing upon his frozen fingers. From the heather a hundred yards up the glen two men had risen at the first note, and came running towards them--long-haired, ragged gillies, Fraser by their tartan. They stood a little way from Lovat, watching him like dogs ready for the trail. The frost of their night watch stood upon their bonnets and their beards were stiff and glistening. Waving Rob aside Lovat began to speak to them in a low tone, but before he had said more than a dozen words his voice rose to a scream through the influence of some private passion, and he menaced them in Gaelic so that they quailed before his clenched fist. But as suddenly his voice dropped and he caressed them, patting their cheeks and then dismissing them, stood panting beside Rob--all the fire gone--once more just an old sick man. Very slowly he clambered upon the pony, and so they started and began to pass the cluster of huts near Gortuleg. The frightened people trooped out of their doors to see their chief go by, and a dozen Frasers armed with muskets and swords gathered about him and trudged in silence towards the west. At the corner of the brae Lovat turned and looked back on Gortuleg. Beneath his bullying, tyrannical, shifty character there was a kind of bedrock of that highly coloured sentiment that is akin to melodrama. He played to the gallery with infinite zest and genuine enjoyment. It was a nice pose to combat the diminishing power of the chieftainship--where force was a dangerous weapon, sentiment was often a two-edged sword. "Farewell," he said, in his deep voice and with honest tears in his eyes, "for maybe I shall never see you again."