"What has come over ye?" he asked. "Would ye hang yersel' just to spite me? What's done is done, Rob; and I'm no perhaps the saint ye took me for. But save ye I will, and that's the naked truth." "Let me pass!" cried Rob, and took a step to the right of him. "Very good," he replied grimly, "but come ye will," and catching him into his huge arms, he flung him suddenly upon the ground and bound his wrists. Struggle as Rob would it availed him less than nothing, and so at last, with hands tied together and a dirk-point in his ribs, he must needs march in the direction Muckle John wished. For a full hour they trudged on thus, leaving the cart to care for itself. Then at last he spoke. "Stop!" he said, holding out his wrists. "I have had enough of this." "Brawly spoken!" said Muckle John, and he cut the thongs. "Where," asked Rob, "are you taking me, for I have important business in the south?" "What might that be?" "It is the warning of Lord Lovat." "It is done already; I have sent a man two days since." "Am I, then, your prisoner?" His captor broke into a laugh. "Just a visitor, Rob," he replied, "and nothing more." In this manner they travelled northwards, passing through wild, desolate glens and black ravines, scaling rugged hills, seeing few upon the road, and more in the heather. Several times in the night they saw the camp-fires of the English, but Muckle John seemed as familiar with the country even in black darkness. During the day they lay close hid in some cranny of the rocks, or skulked upon the crest of a hill, watching the surrounding district for sight of moving troops. It was nearing nightfall two days after Rob's escape from Fort Augustus when they entered a small, precipitous glen, shut in by lowering, ragged crags, while through its tortuous course a burn was drumming in a melancholy undertone. No drearier spot had ever met Rob's eye. Deserted even by the eagles, it might have been a habitation of the dead. Now at the side of the burn a shattered pine tree was standing against the evening sky, and as such gruesome thoughts passed through Rob's mind he raised his eyes, and a cry came and died unuttered on his lips. For on a solitary branch about the height of a tall man from the heather, a human head was stuck with the hair still fluttering in the breeze; while underneath dangled the faded uniform of an English soldier. "Look!" cried Rob. But Muckle John only nodded absently. "They're as common as berries hereabouts," he replied. "Hereabouts?" repeated Rob. "Then whose land is this?" For answer Muckle John sprang upon a rock and with his hands hollowed about his mouth, sent a clear, penetrating call. From up the hillside a reply came swift as an echo. "Some call it," he said, "the country of Muckle John." Before Rob could reply several Highlanders came running down the hill-side, and greeted his companion with every sign of respect and pleasure, all of which he took very naturally.