"That means," he said, "that the whole crew are out, and they are expecting a cargo from the south. The white stone to the north and the bit ribbon—Flora is waiting, then, at the Seggy Goats."
He strained his eyes forward, but they could see nothing. Far away to the south he heard voices, and a gun cracked. "I'm well off the ridge," he muttered; "they could have marked me down like a foumart as I ran. They'll be fetching a cargo up from the Brig o' Cree," he added, "and it'll be all Snug at the 'Back o' Beyont' before the morning." He listened again, and laughed low to himself, the pleased laugh a lover laughs when things are speeding well with him.
"Maybe," said he, "Roy Campbell may miss something from the 'Back o' Beyont' the morrow's morn, that a score of casks of Isle of Man brandy will not make up for."
So saying, he took his way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath, brushing through the "gall"[8] bushes, splashing through the shallow pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel, not six inches from where the young man lay, a gun was discharged, evidently by the sudden jerk upon the earth, and the air was rent above him by a perfect tornado of vigorous Gaelic—a good language, as has been said, for preaching or swearing.
[Footnote 8: The bog-myrtle is locally called "gall" bushes. It is the most characteristic and delightful of Galloway scents.]
"That's Roy himsel'!" said the young man. "It's a strange chance when a Kennedy comes near to getting his brains knocked out on his own land by the heel of an outlaw Highlander."
Once on the hillside again, he kept an even way over the boulders and stones which cumbered it, with less care than hitherto, as though to protest against the previous indignity of his position. But, Kennedy though he might be, it had been fitter if he had remembered that he was on the No Man's Land of the Dungeon of Buchan, for here, about this time, was a perfect Adullam cave of all the broken and outlaw men south of the Highland border. A challenge came from the hill-side—"Wha's there?" Kennedy dropped like a stone, and a shot rang out, followed immediately by the "scat" of a bullet against the rock behind which he lay concealed.
A tramp of heavy Galloway brogans was heard, and a half-hearted kicking about among the heather bushes, and at last a voice saying discontentedly—
"Gin Roy disna keep Kennedy's liftit beasts in the hollow whaur they should be, he needna blame me gin some o' them gets a shot intil their hurdies."
"My beasts!" said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, "mine for a groat!" He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more caution to that northern gateway he had called the Seggy Goats.