Ian had long been bedfellow of wild adventure. He thought that he knew
the mood in which it was best met. The mood represented the grist of
much subtle effort, comparing, adjustment, and readjustment. He
cultivated it now. The banditti admired courage, coolness, and good
humor. They had provision of food and wine, the sun still shone warm.
The robber hold was set amid dark, gipsy beauty.

The sun went down, the moon came up. Ian, lying upon shaggy skins,
knew well that to-morrow night--the night after at most--he might not
see the sun descend, the moon arise. What then?

Alexander Jardine, sailing from Scotland, came to Lisbon a month after
Ian Rullock. He knew the name of the ship that had carried the
fugitive, and fortune had it that she was yet in this port, waiting
for her return lading. He found the captain, learned that Ian had
transhipped north to Vigo. He followed. At Vigo he picked up a further
trace and began again to follow. He followed across Spain on the long
road to France. He had money, horses, servants when he needed them,
skill in travel, a tireless, great frame, a consuming purpose. He made
mistakes in roads and rectified them; followed false clues, then
turned squarely from them and obtained another leading. He squandered
upon the great task of dogging Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and
again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of
kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination. He traveled until at
last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the
forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great partition between Spain
and France. An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow
him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed!

As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a
nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the
way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain. He journeyed _en
prince_ with his secretary and his physician, servants and
pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an
armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against
just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe. This
noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth
cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be. They had
been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest
inn of a town set at a short distance from