ike all one road; if there's a sentry at one place, ye just go by
another. And then the heather's a great help. And everywhere there are
friends' houses and friends' byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk
talk of a country covered with troops, it's but a kind of a byword at
the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. I have
fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a
fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another,
and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. This was it," said
he, and whistled me the air.

"And then, besides," he continued, "it's no' sae bad now as it was in
forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with
never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what
tenty[17] folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to
ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like
Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and
oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what
folk'll bear, and what they will not. Or why would Red Colin be riding
his horse all over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to
put a bullet in him?"

And with this Alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad
and silent.

I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he was
skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a
well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in
French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent
fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon.
For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the
worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick
quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle
of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself,
or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more
than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other
men, yet he admired it most in Alan Breck.

FOOTNOTE:

[17] Careful.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LOSS OF THE BRIG

It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that
season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright),
when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.

"Here," said he, "come out and s