Perhaps the bouman was honest enough; perhaps he had meant to cheat, and then, finding himself alone with two of us in a desert place, cast back to honesty as being safer; at least, and all at once, he seemed to find that button and handed it to Alan.
“Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls,” said Alan, and then to me, “Here is my button back again, and I thank you for parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me.” Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. “For,” says he, “ye have done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always give you the name of a good man.”
Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Alan and I (getting our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.
[26] A bouman is a tenant who takes stock from the landlord and shares with him the increase.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE MOOR
Some seven hours’ incessant hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Alan said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser.