How fades the turmoil and distraction of daily thought beneath the cool, sweet, starry midnight! As each man paced between the watch-fires, gazing from time to time towards the recumbent drove, the silent, dark, mysterious forest, the blue space-eternities of the firmament, a feeling of calm, approaching to awe, fell on the party. High over the dark line of the illimitable forest rose towering snow-clad pinnacles, ghostly in their pallid grandeur. The rivulet murmured and rippled through the night-hush, plainly audible in the oppressive silence.
‘One would think,’ said Argyll to O’More, as they met on one of their rounds by a watch-fire, ‘that this night would never come to an end. What possesses me I can’t think, but I have an uncanny feeling, as Mrs. Teviot would say, that I cannot account for. If there was a ghost possible in a land without previous occupation, I should swear that one was near us this minute.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts then?’ asked O’More.
‘Most certainly,’ said Argyll, with cheerful affirmation; ‘all Highlanders do. We have our family Appearance—a spectre I should recommend no man to laugh at. But that something is going to happen I will swear.’
‘What on earth can happen?’ said O’More. ‘If it be only these skulking niggers, I wish to Heaven they would show out. It would be quite a relief after all this humbug of Warleigh’s and that old fool of a stock-rider.’
‘The old man’s no fool,’ said Argyll gravely; ‘and though I felt annoyed with Warleigh to-day, I never have heard a word against his courage and bushmanship. Here he comes. By Jove! he treads as silently as the “Bodach Glas” himself. What cheer, General?’
Hubert held up a warning hand. ‘Don’t speak so loud,’ he said; ‘and will you mind my asking you to stand apart and to keep a bright look-out till daylight? Old Tom and I and the dogs are agreed that the blacks are not far off. I only hope the beggars will keep off till then. I intend to get out of this tribe’s “tauri” to-morrow. In the meantime have your guns handy, for you never can tell when a blackfellow will make his dart.’
‘I shouldn’t mind going into half-a-dozen with a good blackthorn,’ said O’More. ‘It’s almost cowardly to pull a trigger at naked men armed with sharp sticks.’
Hubert Warleigh looked straight at O’More’s careless, wayward countenance for a few seconds before he answered; then he said, without sign of irritation: