The victim rolled over, displaying the countenance of an entire stranger, eight or ten years Andrew's senior, and with strikingly handsome features. "Thank you, thank you, my good friend!" he gasped, pulling himself to his feet; "that was the torture of a fiend, I assure you! Your hand, one instant, please." By dint of leaning on Andrew's arm, and after several battles with successive tough boughs, in which the new-comer showed that he possessed strength and dexterity, the two finally scrambled out of all the labyrinth of foliage and into clear space. Andrew flung down the axe and assisted his new acquaintance to a seat upon the prostrate trunk. "The next matter is to examine your hurts, sir!" Boyd exclaimed, taking a sharp look at his dignified _protégé_. The latter returned this scrutiny as keenly, however. "I begin to suspect that such hurts amount to little or naught," returned the stranger, dropping Andrew's hand which he had held in a grateful pressure. "I have nothing worse than a bruised shin, a scraped shoulder and back, I fancy. Heaven be blessed, nothing is broken in my anatomy!" Andrew laughed, although he knelt down all the same and began a rigid inspection of the bruises. He remarked how spare and muscular were the stranger's legs and arms, as if from much exertion and little food. His costume was odd: a faded Highland suit, rent and stained, ill-fitting brogans, agape with holes cut by mountain flints; his throat and face were surprisingly sunburnt, though his natural complexion seemed to be fair. But what of his clothing or his tan? As the man leaned against the prostrate trunk, with one leg boldly out before the other for Andrew's care, there was something commanding, fascinating to Boyd in his whole bearing. Andrew had not read Shakespeare, but if he had he might well have recalled the lines in "Coriolanus": "----though thy tackle's torn Thou showest a noble vessel." While the hurried surgery progressed the object of it aided therein with no small skill, venting now and then an ejaculation of pain. He stealthily studied Andrew. It was a question which should first act on the opinions shaped by this mutual caution. But in those gray blue eyes sparkled a quizzical light that made Andrew smile, as he suddenly observed it, when rising from his bowed attitude. "Name for name, it must be, I see; and faction for faction, eh? Well, I don't wonder that you and I have eyed each other askance. These be days when honest men can ill be known as such. It would be strange, too, if loyal subjects of Hanover, like you and your axe, should not remember spies and renegades when you pluck strangers out of tree-tops." "You--you overheard my thoughts while I hewed!" returned Andrew, first red, then pale. "I--I knew not that I ran them so heedlessly into speech. Evil speech to be overheard, sir."