"It is MacPherson, Black Evan of Ballychroan!" they exclaimed; and the whole regiment crowded to gaze on what they believed to be the remains of this brave but terrible fellow.
"Quick—let us bury him!" said some of the soldiers.
But louder cries of astonishment rose from all, when he began to move and breathe; and then, like one awakening from a long trance, opened his eyes and gazed wildly about him.
For six days he had survived the horrors of that dark and terrible vault! The surgeons were promptly on the spot, and no means were left untried to restore MacPherson.
"Oich! oich!" muttered the Strathspeymen; "leave him to himself—the hour of his end is not yet come." Sergeant Grant, who was ordered to see if the vault was now cleared of dead bodies, entered it slowly and with some reluctance; but in a moment after he came forth with a bound, as if he had been shot from a mortar, leaving his bonnet behind him; his grey hair was on end, his eyes dilated, and his usually nut-brown and weather-beaten cheek was deadly pale with terror.
"What the devil is the matter now?" asked several officers.
"The Devil himself is the matter," gasped the sergeant.
"How—what have you seen?" asked General Moore, laughing.
Hamish could not explain himself in English; but to the Black Watch who crowded about him he related that, on entering the black-hole—for so they named the mine—he had seen in the further end thereof the figure of a man, and believing he was some Frenchman who had found concealment there, he drew his sword and approached. Then a pair of bright, fierce, and terrible eyes, flaring like those of an owl or snake, met his gaze; and while secret awe and horror filled his soul, he found himself confronted by a man who was of giant stature, and whose face was darker than that of a mulatto, with a beard of raven blackness, and wearing a grey plaid and Lowland bonnet.
He was the stranger whom they had seen in the Forest of Gaich!