Even as he brooded on the matter the grey horse tripped and fell. No power on earth could have kept it on its feet. It was utterly done. With a groan it collapsed upon its knees and rolled over on its side. Muckle John had slipped off as it staggered and now stood above it studying the next move. He was above all anxious to get a glimpse of his pursuers. Loosening his sword and taking a pistol from his great-coat pocket, he lay alongside the horse as though his leg were securely fastened beneath it in its fall. It was an old trick, but this was a country of few horses and worth a trial. He knew that they would close in on him if they saw him apparently crippled and at their mercy. Slowly the minutes passed and there was no sound, while a mist rose from the moist bed of the valley and hung in wreaths between the hills. Muckle John lay perfectly still, his pistol hidden beneath the tail of his coat, one leg stretched over the horse's flank, the other doubled up beneath him. Near at hand a stone clinked at the burnside. It might have been a hill fox creeping away, but Muckle John knew that a fox does not do such things. He felt the eyes of some one upon him--but he could see nothing, and all the time the darkness was falling swiftly and his nerves were strained to the uttermost, waiting as he was upon his side for the rush of perhaps a dozen men. Up the hill he heard an owl call and at that he smiled, for he knew--who better--that it was not the night for owls to cry Glengarry way, and that there is a world of difference between the call of a man and the call of an owl except to those who have never made it their business to note such things. It was all falling out as he had expected, and he waited quite coolly for what was to come, foreseeing nothing of what really happened. Indeed it all came about so swiftly and so silently that few save Muckle John would have lived to learn another lesson in methods of attack.