"Fareweel, Hamish," says Dan, and put his hand to mine on the cliff head. "I'll harrow my ain ploughing."
"Go on, man, go on," I cried; "they're coming," for lights were flashing on the road, and loud voices raised. We had gained a bare half-mile on the cliff face, for the road up was "round about," and Ronny was impatient.
"Och, will ye wait for the hangman's rope?" in a fierce whisper below his breath. "There's a hidie-hole I ken, but little good it'll dae ye when the hitch is on your thrapple." And we started the long race to the hills, picking out the patches behind the dykes where the ground was bare.
[1] Lag 'a bheithe=the hollow of the birch.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BLAZING WHINS.
McKinnon was first in that long race and I next to him, for Dan would not let me out of his sight lest I should lag behind and get rough handling, although indeed, except the gaugers would yelp questions at me which I might not find easy to answer, there was little I had to fear, but it was always in Dan's mind that he had the charge of me. The land was cultivated on a stey[1] face of maybe a half-mile before the hill common started, and over the common (where in the summer the cattle and hens were taken) the heather was patchy with bog hay, and short crisp turf in places. It was this wrought land I feared most, for the snow was not swept in wreaths, leaving darker patches, but lay like a white napkin over the land, and a black object could be seen from a great distance. But there was a belting of beech-trees and Scots firs marching two farms; and coorieing in sheuchs, where the ice crinkled in metallic splinters under our feet, we crawled to the belting, and were able to stand upright again, at which I breathed a sigh of relief, for my back had a pain like a band of hot iron with the long bending. We scrambled among the trees, and lay a moment, for there was a roughness of bushes and briars, and the snow had been blown off the branches, so there was little likelihood of our being seen. We lay breathing hard and peering through the bushes for signs of pursuit (for the exciseman who cried the news at Finlay Stuart's, not knowing his listener, would have roused his pack by this time), and that Rob Beag was in their pay secretly there was now little doubt. It would be short shrift for Dan if he were caught. Maybe two minutes we lay, and I could have counted every beat of my heart, as it rose with a great thud against my chest, and I felt the blood throb in my head like a prisoner dashing against his cell. The noise of a fall of snow from the fir branches seemed loud as thunder, although we must have been quiet enough, for I mind me of the rabbits loping from the burrows daintily, and sitting up very boldly, almost under reach of a shepherd's crook from me.
"They will have taken roun' the road," says Ronny; "they'll be on us before we see them if we lie here."
On we went in single file in the belting. Briars swung back and cut me across the face, branches tore at us in passing all unheeded, and once my leg, to the knee, sunk into a hole and threw me bodily; but I pulled myself out, and was lame for six steps maybe, and forgot about it. When we were half-way to the hill common there came sharp and clear through the night the neigh of a horse.
"The doited fules," cries Ronny. "They've ta'en the horses to ride a man doon among the hills."