Turning for a moment, she asked Bertram if he remembered the way.
"Not very clearly!" he answered.
"Ay," she said, "here was the very spot where Frank Kennedy was pulled from his horse. I was hiding behind the bour-tree bush at the moment. Sair, sair he strove and sair he cried for mercy. But he was in the hands of them that never kenned the word."
Continuing her way, she led them downward to the sea by a secret and rugged path, cut in the face of the cliff, and hidden among brushwood. There on the shore lay the stone under which the body of Frank Kennedy had been found crushed. A little farther on was the cave itself in which the murderers had concealed themselves. The gipsy pointed mysteriously.
"He is there," she said, in a low voice, "the man who alone can establish your right—Jansen Hatteraick, the tyrant of your youth, and the murderer of Frank Kennedy. Follow me—I have put the fire between you. He will not see you as you enter, but when I utter the words, 'The Hour and the Man'—then do you rush in and seize him. But be prepared. It will be a hard battle, for Hatteraick is a very devil!"
"Dandie, you must stand by me now!" said Bertram to his comrade.
"That ye need never doubt," returned the Borderer; "but a' the same it's an awesome thing to leave the blessed sun and free air, and gang and be killed like a fox in his hole. But I'll never baulk ye—it'll be a hard-bitten terrier that will worry Dandie!"
So forward they went, creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out—which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them all their lives.
However, Dandie freed his ankle with a kick, and instantly a voice behind him whispered, "It is a friend—Charles Hazlewood!"
As soon as they had gained the higher part of the cave, Meg Merrilies began rustling about among the dried branches, murmuring and singing, to cover the noise made by the entrance of the three men who followed her. From the deep dark where they stood, they could see Dirk Hatteraick at the farther end of the cave, behind a fire which he was continually building up by throwing into it bits of dried sticks. Hatteraick was of powerful build, and his features were beyond description savage and rugged. A cutlass hung by his side, and into his belt he had thrust, ready to his hand at a moment's notice, two pairs of pistols. Truly the capture of Dirk Hatteraick was no light adventure, and Bertram, having been warned by Dandie in a cautious whisper of Hazlewood's arrival, thought within himself that they would be none the worse of the third who had come so opportunely to their assistance.