Now near by Killochan there was a school and a schoolmaster, the name of him John Guid. He had been for a long season a friend and crony of our Dominie Mure. To him we resorted, or rather the Dominie went alone to seek him, while I abode with Marjorie and Nell. It was over in the afternoon when he came back, and what was our joy to hear behind him the trampling of a pair of hardy ponies, for with the weariness of her terrible quest and the stress of the night in the Cave of Death, Marjorie looked dismally near to her end. And, indeed, I am not sure that Nell was greatly better. Marjorie had passed some part of the long march in telling us in bits and snatches the tale of her sufferings, her flight and capture, and how by evil and hateful hands she had been flung into the water from off the Heuch of Benerard. It was a tale of most tyrannous wrong, and shall be kept for its own place, when Marjorie came to tell it to a greater and more powerful than either Launcelot Kennedy or Dominie Mure of Maybole. I shall, therefore, let the reader wait yet a brief space for the explanation of many things which are dark to him now, and which had been equally dark to me till that gusty, rain-plashing morning. So we four fared northward over the moors of Carrick, with Marjorie and Nell riding upon the garrons, and the Dominie and myself hasting along by their side with a hand apiece in their stirrup-leathers. We were just by the edge of the Red Moss, and going straight and snell for my Lord Earl’s house of Cassillis, when Nell, who was ever our most keen-eyed watcher, cried out that we were pursued. And when I had turned me about and looked, I saw that of a surety it was so. Then I thought that if it should happen that we were attacked, it might be as well to have the advantage of position. So I posted our party on a little heathery mound, having an open lairy moss in front with dangerous quags, trembling bogs, and square black islands of moss and peat standing in the midst, all gashed and riven. Here we waited, the two men of us under arms in front, and the maids standing close behind the horses, with the bridles loose in their hands. I had cast my cloak over the shoulder of Nell’s sheltie to clear my arms for the fray, if indeed it should come to the clash of blows; and it pleased me well to see her catch it without a word, and fold it like a wife who watches her husband and is pleased to anticipate his need. This indeed (I say it twice) pleased me well, for I knew that she had done with daffing with me any more, and that she had at last forgotten all the matters concerning that pretty tell-tale Kate Allison. The three men who rode toward us were at first to our sight like ships low down on the sea-line. But they mounted steadily, spears and pennons first, after that the shine of armour, and then the heads of their horses, becking and bowing with the travail of the moss.