IR AMANG THE HEATHER.

When I came to myself my cousin Walter Gordon was standing over me. He
was dressed in countryman's apparel, and seemed most like a chapman,
with a small pack of goods upon his back for sale in the farm-towns and
cottars' houses. It was grey day.

"Where is the beast?" I asked, for I was greatly bewildered by my
swound.

"What beast? There is no beast," he replied, thinking that I dreamed.

Then I told him of what I had seen; but as I might have expected he took
little heed, thinking that I did but dream in that uncouth place. And in
the grey light he went forward with a fair white cloth in his hand
wherewith to wrap his father's head for the burial. But when he came to
the corner of the vault, lo! there was naught there, even as I had said.
And saving that the earth seemed newly stirred, no trace of the horror I
had seen, which staggered him no little. Yet me it did not surprise, for
I knew what I had seen.

But in a little he said, "That is all folly, William--you and your
beasts. Ye buried it yourself in your sleep. How many times have ye
walked the ramparts of Earlstoun in your sark!"

This indeed seemed likely, but I still maintain that I saw the
mowdiewort.

Nevertheless, when we came to consider the matter, it was in sooth no
time to think of freits or portents. It was no question of our fathers'
heads. Our own were in danger whether the Duke of Wellwood lived or
died; and we behoved to look limber if we were to save them at all. It
is a strange feeling that comes and stays about the roots of the neck,
when one first realises that the headsman may have to do therewith or
many weeks pass by. And it is a feeling that I have taken to bed with me
for years at a time.

Wat Gordon had warned my men as well as his own. So at the outside of
the town toward the back of the Boroughmuir, Hugh Kerr met us with the
beasts. Here we took horse and rode, having happily seen nothing of the
city guard. It was judged best that my cousin and I should ride alone.
This we wished, because we knew not whom to trust in the strange case in
which we found ourselves. Besides we could the better talk over our
chances during the long night marches in the wilderness, and in our
weary hidings among the heather in the daytime.

So we steadily rode southward toward Galloway, our own country, for
there alone could we look for some ease from the long arm of the Privy
Council. Not that Galloway was safe. The dragoo