A blaze of light as though the sun had sprung full armoured to the height of heaven smote upon my eyes. I opened them, but in that brilliant glare I could see nothing, though I heard voices about me:
"Wha' think ye he can be?"
"He hasna got a kent face," a woman's voice replied. "Some puir gangrel body nae doot. But what can he be daein' off the high road?"
I let the light filter through a chink between my eyelids, and when I could bear its full brightness I opened them and looked around me. A little group of five people bent over me--an old man, holding a lantern, an old woman, and three young men whom I took to be their sons.
As I looked round there came to me out of the depths some memory of the happenings of the night. I wondered dimly if the tragedy of which I had been witness were reality, or dream. Who could these people be? Were they some chance Samaritans who had come upon me bound hand and foot, and delivered me from the hands of the persecutors? As I wondered I heard the old woman say to her husband:
"Think ye he can be a hill-man? sic another as we found in the laigh field after Rullion Green."
Hill-man! hill-man! the words burned themselves into my torpid brain. I gathered all my strength, and raising myself so suddenly that they fell away from me startled, I cried, "For the love of God, tell me, are you hill-folks?"
"What o' that, what o' that?" asked the old man cautiously.
Then I threw discretion to the winds. "Tell me," I cried, my voice breaking, "are you hill-men, for I bring tidings that will brook no delay."
They gathered round me again and looked at me with anxious eyes.