“Bide you whaur ye are!” he exclaimed, rousing his dogs. “Lad, a’ll hae to ca’ ye oot o’ this, an’ dod! we’ll need a’ our time!”
Not far from them a spring was trickling from the fields, dropping in a spurt through the damp mosses between the unpointed stones of the dyke. The obedient dogs drew their master close to it, and he filled a battered pannikin that he took from among his small collection of necessities in the bottom of the cart. He returned with the water, and when Archie had bathed his head in its icy coldness, he drew a whisky-bottle from its snug lair under the bagpipes, and forced him to drink. It was half full, for the friendly publican had replenished his store before they parted on the foregoing night. As the liquid warmed his stomach, Archie raised his head slowly.
“I believe I can walk now,” he said at last.
“Ye’ll need to try,” observed Wattie dryly. “Ye’ll no can ride wi’ me. Come awa’, Maister Flemington. Will a gi’ ye a skelloch o’ the pipes to help ye alang?”
“In God’s name, no!” cried Archie, whose head was splitting.
He struggled on to his feet. The whisky was beginning to overcome the giddiness, and he knew that every minute spent on the highroad was a risk.
The beggar was determined to go to Aberbrothock with Archie; he did not consider him in a fit state to be left alone, and he counselled him to leave the road at once, and to cut diagonally across the high ground, whilst he himself, debarred by his wheels from going across country, drove back to the cross roads, and took the one to the coast. By doing this the pair would meet, Flemington having taken one side of the triangle, while Wattie had traversed the other two. They were to await each other at a spot indicated by the latter, where a bit of moor encroached on the way.
As Wattie turned again to retrace his road, he watched his friend toiling painfully up the slanting ground among the uneven tussocks of grass with some anxiety. Archie laboured along, pausing now and again to rest, but he managed to gain the summit of the ridge. Wattie saw his figure shorten from the feet up as he crossed the sky-line, till his head and shoulders dropped out of sight like the topsails of a ship over a clear horizon; he was disappointed at having missed the sight of so much good fighting. Archie’s account had been rather incoherent, but he gathered that the rebels were in possession of the harbour, and that a French ship had come in in the middle of the affray full of rebel troops. He shouted the information to the few people he met.
He turned southward at the cross roads. Behind him lay the panorama of the Basin and the spread of the rolling country; Brechin, the Esk, the woods of Monrummon Moor, stretching out to Forfar, and, northward, the Grampians, lying with their long shoulders in the autumn light. His beat for begging was down there across the water and round about the country between town and town; but though his activities were in that direction, he knew Aberbrothock and the coast well, for he had been born in a fishing-village in one of its creeks, and had spent his early years at sea. He would be able to put Archie in the way of a passage to Leith without much trouble and without unnecessary explanations; Archie had money on him, and could be trusted to pay his way.
He was the first to reach the trysting-place, and he drew up, glad to give his team a rest; at last he saw Archie coming along with the slow, careful gait of a man who is obliged to consider each step of his way separately in order to get on at all.