"If it were not your mother's I would never wear it again," she said, plucking the skirt of it into her hand and shaking it as if it were a naughty child. "I thought you would never come round. For nearly an hour, I should think, you looked stone-dead. Then you just opened your eyes, but closed them before I dared speak, and lay so at least another hour. You have given me such a fright, sir, that, now you are up and about again, I'm beginning to feel I have a grievance against you."
"I'm sorry, madam," said I, very soberly.
"Now you're laughing at me, sir," was the brisk reply.
The word made me shiver. "Laughing"--over Jack's body! Margaret was in her stride back to her mistress-ship again yet her eye changed instantly with her mood when she saw me wince. Indeed, her mind flashed after my mind like a hawk after a pigeon, but I dodged the trouble by looking casually around to examine our whereabouts.
We were following a track down a dip in an open moorland. Across the shallow valley, and climbing the slope ahead of us, was another small body of Highlanders, whom I took to be our scouting party. The sun was a dim blob in the sky, and I saw from its position that our direction was easterly. A joyous hail from behind made me spin round, whereupon I saw the Colonel on Sultan and the young Chief on the sorrel turning the brow behind us. It took them a few minutes to trot down to us, and before they reached us four more wild warriors, our rear-guard apparently, came in view. One of them was my son of Anak, astride Margaret's mare, and so looking more gigantesque than ever.
"Good morning, commander!" was the Colonel's greeting. "Slids! But I'm glad to see you on your feet again. How's the head?"
"It still bumbles a bit," said I, "but, truth to tell, I'm thinking more of my breakfast than my head. I'm as empty as a drum."
"It's a guid prognostick to feel hungry after sic a crack o' the head," said the chieftain, smiling, and I thought with a twinge what a handsome, wholesome sight he made.
"I'm another drum," said the Colonel, "but deuce take me, Oliver, if I know how we're to be filled. Madge would have us start off with you at once, quite rightly too, and we'd neither bite nor sup before we took the road."
"And where were you taking me?" cried I.