It was John Murray of Broughton.
The three men round the fire made no motion, threatening or otherwise. They crouched on their haunches as before, watching him under their shaggy eyebrows.
Murray, who was no coward in ordinary circumstances, but only highly strung and with the Lowland caution, stood out of their range obviously ill at ease, awaiting the innkeeper's return.
To Rob he looked very worn and hollow-cheeked and his clothes cheap and ill-fitting like the dress of a small Ayrshire farmer. A sword was at his side and there was a bulge in his coat-pocket like the butt end of a pistol, but Rob took little comfort from that, knowing how poor a defence a single man like Murray would put up under a swift attack.
The innkeeper re-entered the room and, shutting the door, barred it across with a heavy slab of wood. For weal or woe they were there till morning.
He motioned Murray forward saying nothing, and the men about the fire made room for him, watching him all the time as dogs eye a stranger, ready at a word to fling themselves upon his throat.
Murray hesitated before he sat down and cast one fleeting glance about the room. A sudden inclination came to Rob to shout a warning and leap down to join him before it was too late. But he knew that they would complete their evil work before even he could take a part.
The innkeeper stirred the iron pot and drew out a hank of meat upon a dirk. This he handed to Murray, who took it in a dejected fashion and began to eat, and very quietly, while Rob watched him in a stupor of horror, he stepped behind him. But he made no attack. Instead he shook his head at the others and jerked a thumb towards the room where Rob lay watching them. They evidently purposed to kill them both at one and the same time.
Underneath him the horse coughed and rattled its bit. Only an inch or two of wood between him and safety—only a thin decayed layer of wood. A rat was gnawing in a far corner; he heard it squeak in the darkness. Down below they were sitting quite speechless about the fire, waiting for the newcomer to seek his sleep. Murray was white and brooding, knowing no Gaelic, certain that danger was all about him, nodding with weariness and ever pulling up for dread of what was biding its time to strike. In haste Rob examined the flooring of the loft. His fingers ran along the fringes of the boards. No flaw, no splintered grain, no crumbling of worm-eaten plank. Still the rat gnawed with steady persistence in the far corner. Perhaps there was a way there. He groped about, and his hands encountered a sack propped up against the wall. It was very heavy but he moved it gradually. The rat scuttled away and dropped out of the room. He heard it fall upon the soft mud below, and into his face there rose the warm smell of cows.
Breathlessly he examined the flooring behind the sack, and at the corner where the thing had stood his hands groped in vacancy. There was a hole a foot in breadth. Without delay he gripped the frayed edge, where the rat had gnawed, in his strong muscular fingers and, setting his feet against the wall opposite him, strained to his fullest power.