a great
fallen log and sunk to the knees in touchwood; I have sought to stay
myself, in falling, against what looked to be a solid trunk, and the
whole thing has whiffed at my touch like a sheet of paper. Stumbling,
falling, bogging to the knees, hewing our way, our eyes almost put out
with twigs and branches, our clothes plucked from our bodies, we
laboured all day, and it is doubtful if we made two miles. What was
worse, as we could rarely get a view of the country, and were
perpetually justled from our path by obstacles, it was impossible even
to have a guess in what direction we were moving.

A little before sundown, in an open place with a stream, and set about
with barbarous mountains, Ballantrae threw down his pack. "I will go no
further," said he, and bade me light the fire, damning my blood in terms
not proper for a chairman.

I told him to try to forget he had ever been a pirate, and to remember
he had been a gentleman.

"Are you mad?" he cried. "Don't cross me here!" And then, shaking his
fist at the hills, "To think," cries he, "that I must leave my bones in
this miserable wilderness! Would God I had died upon the scaffold like a
gentleman!" This he said ranting like an actor; and then sat biting his
fingers and staring on the ground, a most unchristian object.

I took a certain horror of the man, for I thought a soldier and a
gentleman should confront his end with more philosophy. I made him no
reply, therefore, in words; and presently the evening fell so chill that
I was glad, for my own sake, to kindle a fire. And yet God knows, in
such an open spot, and the country alive with savages, the act was
little short of lunacy. Ballantrae seemed never to observe me; but at
last, as I was about parching a little corn, he looked up.

"Have you ever a brother?" said he.

"By the blessing of Heaven," said I, "not less than five."

"I have the one," said he, with a strange voice; and then presently, "He
shall pay me for all this," he added. And when I asked him what was his
brother's part in our distress, "What!" he cried, "he sits in my place,
he bears my name, he courts my wife; and I am here alone with a damned
Irishman in this tooth-chattering desert! O, I have been a common gull!"
he cried.

The explosion was in all ways so foreign to my friend's nature that I
was daunted out of all my just susceptibility. Sure, an offensive
expression, however vivacious, appears a wonderfully small affair in
circumsta