"I can hear the owl passing over the brae in the night, I can see the stag hunkered amongst the crags, I can catch the otter at his play."
"Can you call the weasel from his hole?" asked Rob.
"Maybe I can," replied the other, "but try you first."
At that, getting rather red in the face, Rob uttered a thin squeal such as a wounded rabbit gives, like the squeal of a rat for shrillness. Again and again he made it, but nothing moved in the broken place under the bank.
"None so bad," said the stranger, and distending his lips he sent forth such a screech that it froze Rob's blood. In it was the terror of the chase—the fear of what was following, and the drawing of blood.
And before their eyes, not four feet away, at the very first note the lithe form of a weasel leapt quivering upon the heather.
"It takes a deal of practice," said the stranger gentleman for fear he might seem overproud.
But Rob was utterly crushed.
Back dived the weasel for his lair, and lying down, the stranger told Rob of the ways of wild things until it was dusk. Presently without so much as a good-day but only a nod he buttoned his coat and crossing the burn set off up the hill, and Rob saw him no more, at least not for two full years and over, not indeed until the Jacobites came to Inverness in the year '46.
It was about nine of the clock on the morning of February the 18th, 1746, that two horsemen rode into the town of Inverness.