“I’ll take your advice gladly,” said Wallace. “When will Quentin Dick be ready to start?”
“In less than an hour. The moon’ll be up soon after that. It’s o’ nae use startin’ on sae dark a nicht till she’s up, for ye’ll hae to cross some nasty grund. Noo, lad, though I’m no a minister, my advice to ye is, to gang doon into the hidy-hole an’ pray aboot this matter. Niver mind the folk ye find there. They’re used to prayin’. It’s my opeenion that if there was less preachin’ an’ mair prayin’, we’d be a’ the better for ’t. It’s a thrawn warld we live in, but we’re bound to mak’ the best o’t.”
Although not much in the habit of engaging in prayer—save at the formal periods of morning and evening—our ex-trooper was just then in the mood to take his friend’s advice. He retired to the place of refuge under Black’s house, where he found several people who had evidently been at the communion on Skeoch Hill. These were engaged in earnest conversation, and took little notice of him as he entered. The place was very dimly lighted. One end of the low vaulted chamber was involved in obscurity. Thither the youth went and knelt down. From infancy his mother had taught him “to say his prayers,” and had sought to induce him to pray. It is probable that the first time he really did so was in that secret chamber where, in much anxiety of soul, he prayed for herself.
After a hasty but hearty supper, he and Quentin Dick set out on their night journey. They carried nothing with them except two wallets, filled, as Wallace could not help thinking, with a needlessly large amount of provisions. Of course they were unarmed, for they travelled in the capacity of peaceful drovers, with plaids on their shoulders, and the usual staves in their hands.
“One would think we were going to travel for a month in some wilderness, to judge from the weight of our haversacks,” observed Wallace, after trudging along for some time in silence.
“Maybe we’ll be langer than a month,” returned Quentin, “ann the wulderness hereaway is warse than the wulderness that Moses led his folk through. They had manna there. Mony o’ us hae naething here.”
Quentin Dick spoke with cynicism in his tone, for he was a stern straightforward man, on whom injustice told with tremendous power, and who had not yet been taught by adversity to bow his head to man and restrain his indignation.
Before Wallace had time to make any rejoinder, something like the appearance of a group of horsemen in front arrested them. They were still so far distant as to render their tramp inaudible. Indeed they could not have been seen at all in so dark a night but for the fact that in passing over the crest of a hill they were for a moment or two dimly defined against the sky.
“Dragoons—fowr o’ them,” muttered Quentin. “We’ll step aside here an’ let them gang by.”
Clambering up the somewhat rugged side of the road, the two men concealed themselves among the bushes, intending to wait till the troopers should pass.