It is fine how the spur of danger, especially danger to somebody else, dear if not near, helps a man's spirits upward. The blood flows more quickly in him, his hand is surer, his brain works better. He feels that the die has been cast, that nothing more matters, except the reckoning, and, so feeling, he sheds all timorous self-consciousness and is himself. That, at all events, was how I felt as I took the road southward, across the hills towards Deeside, with a cracking wind to walk against. I would intercept the Black Colonel's raid on Marget and her mother, and break the whole scheme behind it--if I could! So we scheme, we glorious little fellows of this world, bent on love or hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it. Anyway, Nature has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for lighting. But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's. My estimate was that if I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction. My information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing, having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff. Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from the wind, and got out my fodder. It consisted only of "whisky bukky," oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily carried and sustaining. Haggis is better food for the march, because it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew, but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my hand upon. While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me, half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should appear. I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs there. If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed, sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane, the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.