"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.