me it followed
after, and it was swirling black about Stair Garland's knees as he
scrambled up the high platform of the Bothy, at the place where you
could dig out the sand and sea-shells of a past age from among the roots
of the heather.

"That will put out one or two of their fires for them!" he exclaimed
triumphantly, and even as he spoke he heard cries announcing danger,
hasty preparations for flight, while the red "skarrows" in the sky
winked only once or twice more and were then wiped out clean all along
the east and west borders of the Wild. Only on the high southern cliffs
the fires still shone. And Stair knew that it was thither that the
drowned-out investing parties would be compelled to retreat.

From the north there came no sign, for there alone no fires had been
lighted. But the Wild spread the farthest and was most dangerous and
inaccessible in that direction. Only morning would reveal the solitary
tiny zigzag of path which connected them with their fellows, a path
which Stair believed to be quite impossible--_unless_--and here a
suspicion went flashing through his mind which sent him indoors with a
bound. No, Eben the Spy was lying on his bed apparently sound asleep.

Stair gazed at him with a bitter smile.

"That's what comes of having a bad record against you," he murmured,
"the man may be quite innocent. He may be really asleep. Yet as things
are I dare not treat him as if he were either. To-morrow he must do a
little scouting for us. He shall feel for the enemy, and if they fire
upon him--well and good, then he has not brought the enemy down upon us.
But because of his past, he must undergo the ordeal by fire and water.

"Well, we will let him sleep, but all the same I shall keep an eye upon
him to see that he does not take French leave during the night!"

Stair called Mr. Wemyss from his reading. The ex-ambassador thought that
a new parcel of books had arrived, and made haste to obey. He saw the
door of the Bothy open and Stair, a large, dark shape vaguely outlined
against a rosy illumination, the cause of which he did not understand,
leaning easily with his shoulder against the lintel-post, blocking all
exit.

"Well, Stair," said Julian, "did you find Joseph? Had he any word of the
_Good Intent_?"

"I did find Joseph," said Stair curtly, "and it will be a long time
before I find him again. Do you see that?"

"That" referred to the numerous fires which were now being lighted on
the heights