CHAPTER XXIV
THE END OF A TALE
All that weeping night of rain Rob travelled towards Glen Lyon glad for every foot of heather between him and the weird house upon the loch. Passing through the country of the Mackenzies he reached Killin, and there fell in with a band of gipsies sitting round their camp fire. They numbered about a score—men, women, and little brown children—and they welcomed him to share their meat in the kindliest manner, asking no questions and displaying no curiosity in his affairs. Only the chief knew Gaelic, and he was all the more ready to hear the news of the north from Rob, who gathered that his affection for the red-coats was by no means warm.
Rob accepted his kindness with a qualm of self reproach. It had suddenly occurred to him that in accepting such a wealth of hospitality he was endangering them to the vengeance of the Government. Such a prospect was not to be contemplated.
"Let me speak to you alone," he said to the chief.
In the privacy of the tent he told him all.
"I will not attempt to deny," said he, "that there are those who would give much to capture me, not for any importance I may have, but because of another...."
The gipsy followed his words with expressionless attention. Then rising he drew a paper from his pocket.
"Read," he said simply.
It was a Government notice for posting up under gibbets and suchlike, intimating that anyone who laid one, Rob Fraser, by the heels, dead or alive, would receive a reward of fifty pounds. Rob turned cold at the dreadful wording of it. It described him minutely, and went on to say that he was last seen with the notorious rebel called "Muckle John."