tle patches. The sea was here very deep and still, and
had scarce a wave upon it: so that I must put the water to my lips
before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side
were high, rough, and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the
clouds, but all silver-laced with little water-courses where the sun
shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to
care as much about as Alan did.

There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started, the
sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the
waterside to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers' coats;
every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as
though the sun had struck upon bright steel.

I asked my boatman what it should be; and he answered he supposed it was
some of the red-soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against
the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and
whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something
prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen
King George's troops, I had no good will to them.

At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch
Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest
fellow, and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have
carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my
secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the
wood of Lettermore (or Lettervore, for I have heard it both ways) in
Alan's country of Appin.

This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a
mountain that overhung the loch. It had many openings and ferny howes;
and a road or bridle-track ran north and south through the midst of it,
by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some
oat-bread of Mr. Henderland's, and think upon my situation.

Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more
by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join
myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I
should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south
country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr.
Campbell or even Mr. Henderland would think of me if they should ever
learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to
come in on me