There was, as it turned out, no need for further worry. As they sat there shivering, gripping bows with hands benumbed with cold, they listened to the distant tumult rise, then fade away into the night.
“All over,” Johnny said at last, rising to ease his stiffened limbs.
“Who—what could it have been?” The girl gripped his hand hard as he assisted her to rise.
“That,” said Johnny, “as far as I can tell was the great banshee.”
“But look,” he said suddenly. “Over there not a quarter of a mile away is a small forest.”
What he had said was true. Had they marched but a quarter of a mile farther they might have slept warm by a roaring fire which would have served to keep the wolves away.
Needless to say, they were not long in packing up and moving to this place of greater safety and comfort.
A half hour later, seated before a fire that fairly blistered their cheeks, the boy and girl, conversing in awed whispers, discussed the strange happenings of the night. In the meantime, rolled in his blankets, and quite as if nothing had happened, Gordon Duncan slept the sleep of the just.
“Heart, did you say?” Johnny nodded toward the sleeping one. “Did you say his heart was bad? Mine was in my throat all the time.”
“So was mine. But he—he’s different. He—he’s a Bruce,” the girl whispered back. “His ancestry goes back to the famous Bruce of old Scotland.”