I felt the tears brim in my eyes, and trickle scalding down my cheeks. Then I was seized with dread once more. Would the troopers be content with this one victim, or would they come again to my side of the loch and continue their search? I knew not; I could only wait for whatever might happen. In a few minutes I should know.

I could hear the sound of the troopers' voices and their laughter, and peering through the brackens I saw the little cavalcade go back to the edge of the loch where they gave their horses to drink. In a body they marched to the end of the loch. If they swung round to the left and came again to quarter my side of the hill, my fate was sealed. With hands clenched I waited, watching. I was taut as a bow-string with suspense. The string snapped: I was free!--for when they reached the end of the loch, they set their horses to the ascent that led to the top of the hill, and in half an hour the last of them had disappeared. And there on my bed of heather beneath the brackens I lay and cried like a child.

I lay there till the sun went down; then in the gloaming I stole round to the other side of the loch to look for my friend. I found him at last. He was lying on his back, with eyes open, looking into the depth of the sky. There was a smile upon his face, a smile of pride and unspeakable joy. A great bloody gash, where the murderous bullets had struck him, lay over his heart. Beside him, face downward, lay an open book. I picked it up reverently. It was his Bible, and a splash of blood lay upon the open page across these words: "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." Gently I closed the book, and sat down beside him. I had lost a friend; a friend who had shown me the greater love; he was a Covenanter, and I--God help me!--I had been a persecutor. My heart was torn by shame and remorse: but in the dim light his quiet pale face was smiling, as though he was satisfied.

Suddenly a thought struck me. I must give him burial, and quick on the heels of the thought came another: The dead need no covering but the kindly earth; would it be sacrilege to strip him of his clothes? He had no further need of them, while I was in sore straits to get rid of my uniform. I knelt down and peered into his face. The smile there gave me courage. In life he had been shrewd and kindly, and I knew that in death he would understand. So, very gently, I began to strip him. As I took his coat off something fell from the pocket. It was his flute. I put it beside his Bible. I have kept both till this day.

Then when I had stripped him, I cast about in my mind for some means to give him burial. Not far away I knew there was a gash in the hill-side where once some primeval tarn had been. Reverently I lifted his body and bore it thither. Gently I laid it down, and standing with bowed head under the starlit sky, I pronounced over that noble dust all I could remember of the English burial service. Did ever Covenanter have a stranger burial? I trow not. Then reverently I happed him over with heather and brackens and turf which I tore from the hill-side, and laboured on until the trench was filled and I had built a cairn of stones over it.

So I left him sleeping there, and, as I turned away, I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss and loneliness.

I gathered up the clothing which I had taken from his body, and bore it to the side of the loch. There, from the coat, I washed the stains of blood, and laid it on the sward to dry.

Occupied as I had been, I was unconscious of the flight of time; but I was reminded by a sudden access of hunger. A problem faced me, for I had no food of my own. For days I had been depending on the charity of my friend; and I did not know where his store lay hidden. In that wilderness it was well secreted lest any questing bird or four-footed creature of the moorlands might find it. A sudden apprehension seized me, and, with its coming, my hunger disappeared. I hurried to the place where we were wont to take our evening meal together, and then I walked in the direction which he had usually taken when he went to fetch the provender. I sought beneath likely tussocks of heather and under the shadow of boulders and beneath the shelves of overhanging turf, where some sheep, aforetime, had had a rubbing place. But nowhere could I find a trace of his store. Baffled, I determined that I would seek my hiding-place and lie down to sleep for the rest of the night. In the morning, with the help of the light, perhaps my quest would be rewarded. So I betook myself to my heather bed, and as I crawled under the bracken--and laid myself down, I thought how, but for the divine charity of my dead friend, I should at that hour have been sleeping the sleep of death.

CHAPTER XIII

PURSUED