ened. By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall,
and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all. His bonds, in
that sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarily
cast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.

Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which I
hardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as a
rebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name. I
thought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be at
the risk of my commission. He would be welcome wherever he found a
British camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked. Truly,
there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting man
among the Jacobites had gone far and wide. By-and-by he could return,
when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross they
were, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of his
fathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.

I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind this
plan, for they were. Why should I seek to hide them, even from the
Black Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow. He had one
scheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across my
path. I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if that
were so, why should he not take it and thank me? I was not
ill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to help
him--to help me. When were we to make the reckoning?

He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan,
and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it. The consequence
was that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of his
necessaries. If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark,
awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?"
it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer. The
fellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which his
master ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand. But this, again,
suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found money
handy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship,
who have hungry purses, or none at all.

So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends to
an unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort. It
embellishes a b