On the brow of the high ground close to Fort Augustus there sat a solitary man wrapped to his nose in a great Highland plaid. Night was falling and a thin drizzle of rain coming out of the west. The black outline of hills closed about the Fort as though to overwhelm it. No sound there was but the weary dripping of rain and the noise of running water over stones.
The figure on the mist-ridden hill-side never moved, but remained as lifeless as the crag behind him—part as it were of the tragic twilight.
Down in the Fort lights flickered here and there, and a horseman plunged out of the obscure light and entered the gates.
The man upon the hill never raised his head but watched him for all that, the rain pouring from his bonnet to his plaid and running in little streams upon the heather.
A bugle sounded down below. Following hard on its muffled notes came the clanging of the gates.
The Fort was closed for the night.
The swift darkness of a Highland night smoothed out the ragged line of mountain, obliterating with its travelling shadows the outlines of the desolate glen, the clumps of trees about the low-lying country and in a flash the man upon the hill. He had become in a breath of time inseparably of the night itself.
Long after a clear whistle sounded from the pathway below. It was followed by a softer longer whistle.
With a sigh the man upon the hill gained his feet, being very stiff and cold with waiting, and passing over the sodden heather stood looking about him into the mist. Presently two figures loomed into sight.
The first of them, wrapped like the man himself in the folds of a heavy plaid, addressed him in a familiar voice.