"Young blood," grunted Castleleathers, "he only needs managing."
"You're all the same," murmured Miss Macpherson slyly.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR MEN
Of the travelling of Rob to the south there is little enough to tell until he reached Rannoch, the country of Robertsons and Stewarts, and other clans more like to pick a pocket than to cry God-speed.
On the evening following the departure of Muckle John, Rob had bartered with a pedlar upon the road for a suit of old clothes, and too fearful of the future to refuse the exorbitant price demanded, he gave him some silver and buried his kilt in a mountain pool.
And so, with more confidence, he stepped out towards the south, and reached Loch Linnhe without misadventure. It was his intention to avoid all the district about Fort William by taking boat to the other side.
In this manner he passed through Glencoe and travelling by day, reached the head of Loch Rannoch in a dusk of drizzling rain.
Now the country that includes Rannoch, Lochaber and Breadalbane had no rival for insubordination in those days. It swarmed with broken men—cattle thieves and desperadoes of all kinds owning fealty to none but their own good pleasure, and only Jacobite so far as it was politic to be, and with an unsleeping eye to the plunder of the Lowlands.
It was with anxious steps, therefore, that Rob approached a solitary huddle of buildings lying in a snug hollow of the hills, thatched to the colour of the brown trees, with here and there a patch of young heather over the top of it. It was strangely hidden and quiet, with all the look of an old inn fallen on evil days.