“And no skill for getting out of it?” he asked.
“No more than you had in getting into it,” I confessed.
“My good scholar,” said he, “I could walk you out into a drove-road in the time you would be picking the bog from your feet I’m not making any brag of an art that’s so common among old hunters as the snaring of conies; but give me a bush or a tree here and there in a flat land like this, and an herb here and there at my feet, and while winds from the north blow snell, I’ll pick my way by them. It’s my notion that they learn one many things at colleges that are no great value in the real trials of life. You, I make no doubt, would be kenning the name of an herb in the Latin, and I have but the Gaelic for it, and that’s good enough for me; but I ken the use of it as a traveller’s friend whenever rains are smirring and mists are blowing.”
“I daresay there’s much in what you state,” I confessed, honestly enough; “I wish I could change some of my schooling for the art of winning off Moor Rannoch.”
He changed his humour in a flash. “Man,” said he, “I’m maybe giving myself overmuch credit at the craft; it’s so seldom I put it to the trial that if we get clear of the Moor before night it’ll be as much to your credit as to mine.”
As it happened, his vanity about his gift got but a brief gratification, for he had not led me by his signs more than a mile on the way to the south when we came again to a cluster of lochans, and among them a large fellow called Loch Ba, where the mist was lifting quickly. Through the cleared air we travelled at a good speed, off the Moor, among Bredalbane braes, and fast though we went it was a weary march, but at last we reached Loch Tulla, and from there to the Bridge of Urchy was no more than a meridian daunder.
The very air seemed to change to a kinder feeling in this, the frontier of the home-land. A scent of wet birk was in the wind. The river, hurrying through grassy levels, glucked and clattered and plopped most gaily, and bubble chased bubble as if all were in a haste to reach Lochow of the bosky isles and holy. Oh! but it was heartsome, and as we rested ourselves a little on the banks we were full of content to know we were now in a friendly country, and it was a fair pleasure to think that the dead leaves and broken branches we threw in the stream would be dancing in all likelihood round the isle of Innishael by nightfall.
We ate our chack with exceeding content, and waited for a time on the chance that some of our severed company from Dalness would appear, though M’Iyer’s instruction as to the rendezvous had been given on the prospect that they would reach the Brig earlier in the day. But after an hour or two of waiting there was no sign of them, and there was nothing for us but to assume that they had reached the Brig by noon as agreed on and passed on their way down the glen. A signal held together by two stones on the glen-side of the Brig indeed confirmed this notion almost as soon as we formed it, and we were annoyed that we had not observed it sooner. Three sprigs of gall, a leaf of ivy from the bridge arch where it grew in dark green sprays of glossy sheen, and a bare twig of oak standing up at a slant, were held down on the parapet by a peeled willow withy, one end of which pointed in the direction of the glen.
It was M’Iver who came on the symbols first, and “We’re a day behind the fair,” said he. “Our friends are all safe and on their way before us; look at that.”
I confessed I was no hand at puzzles.