Where Stair and Louis placed themselves, though some considerable way from the burn which ran at the bottom of the defile, they were still in a very pit of darkness. The leaves were dense overhead, and only the white gates gleamed very faintly in the trough of gloom where ran the eastern military road.
Louis lay under a tremulous rustle of leaves, for the wind was coming in from the sea, and listened to the trill and chirrup of the burn which carried off the overflow of the White Loch, as it muttered over its sands or clattered across the loose round pebbles of its numerous shallows.
The lads waited long and anxiously, not that they had any fear of having missed their mark, for Stair had searched in vain in all the softest spots for any trace of carriage wheels. They must pass this way. They could not go off the road, because there was no other. But, what would have spoiled the matter more than a squadron of cavalry in attendance, was the fact that if they delayed much longer, the carriage would reach the Elbow of the White Water after daybreak.
From where they lay they could see the ragged fantastic line of the hills to the east behind which the sun would rise. Stair watched these anxiously. They had a clear hour before them, but unless the mist came up again with the tide, they could count on no more time.
Already out on the face of the moorland the curlews were crying tentatively one to the other. Louis would gladly have talked, but Stair sat grave and silent. At last, visibly unquiet, he betook himself up through the wood to the edge of an old turf-built fold where in summer the cows were wont to be milked. Here he occupied himself with the priming of his gun and looked to his pistols. An undefined glimmer from the sky and the absence of trees on the heathery slopes enabled him to dispense with other light.
In ten minutes he was back again by the side of Louis Raincy.
"They are coming," he whispered, "up yonder I heard the rumble of the carriage. Listen—we shall catch it in a minute."
Louis listened intently and at last could make out, from very far to the west, the rhythmic and yet changeful beating of the feet of horses. But it was not till the carriage had actually climbed to the summit and was rumbling down the slope that Stair Garland moved.
"I am going to meet them there at the gates," he said, "be you ready with the horses. There is a part of this business in which there is no need of your being mixed up, only see that Honeypot and Derry Down are ready for Patsy. If for any reason I cannot get away with you, take the upper side of the White Loch till you strike the old track by which we came, then give the little mare her head and she will carry you safe."
"But why will you not be with us? We can ride time about."