So off we started as
the short midsummer night descended.

We were to climb the Law, wait for the signal from Cawda's lonely
height, and then fire Pettybaw's torch of loyalty to the little lady
in black; not a blaze flaming out war and rumours of war, as was the
beacon-fire on the old grey battlements of Edinburgh Castle in the days
of yore, but a message of peace and good-will. Pausing at a hut on
the side of the great green mountain, we looked north toward Helva,
white-crested with a wreath of vapour. (You need not look on your map of
Scotland for Cawda and Helva, for you will not find them any more
than you will find Pettybaw and Inchcaldy.) One by one the tops of the
distant hills began to clear, and with the glass we could discern the
bonfire cairns up-built here and there for Scotland's evening sacrifice
of love and fealty. Cawda was still veiled, and Cawda was to give the
signal for all the smaller fires. Pettybaw's, I suppose, was counted
as a flash in the pan, but not one of the hundred patriots climbing the
mountain-side would have acknowledged it; to us the good name of the
kingdom of Fife and the glory of the British Empire depended on Pettybaw
fire. Some of us had misgivings, too,--misgivings founded upon Miss
Grieve's dismal prophecies. She had agreed to put nine lighted candles
in each of our cottage windows at ten o'clock, but had declined to
go out of her kitchen to see a procession, hear a band, or look at
a bonfire. She had had a fair sickenin' day, an amount of work too
wearifu' for one person by her lane. She hoped that the bonfire wasna
built o' Mrs. Sinkler's coals nor Mr. Macbrose's kindlings, nor soaked
with Mr. Cameron's paraffin; and she finished with the customary, but
irrelative and exasperating, allusion to the exceedingly nice family
with whom she had live in Glasgy.

And still we toiled upward, keeping our doubts to ourselves. Jean was
limping bravely, supported by Robin Anstruther's arm. Mr. Macdonald
was ardently helping Francesca, who can climb like a chamois, but would
doubtless rather be assisted. Her gypsy face shone radiant out of her
black cloth hood, and Ronald's was no less luminous. I have never seen
two beings more love-daft. They comport themselves as if they had
read the manuscript of the tender passion, and were moving in exalted
superiority through a less favoured world,--a world waiting impatiently
for the first number of the story to come out.

Still we climbed, and a