l; and we will celebrate his
birthday by carving him on Friday. After that we will gird our loins,
and set forth early on Saturday.'

Now this was little better to me than if we had set forth at once.
Sunday being the very first day upon which it would be honourable for me
to enter Glen Doone. But though I tried every possible means with Master
Jeremy Stickles, offering him the choice for dinner of every beast
that was on the farm, he durst not put off our departure later than the
Saturday. And nothing else but love of us and of our hospitality would
have so persuaded him to remain with us till then. Therefore now my only
chance of seeing Lorna, before I went, lay in watching from the cliff
and espying her, or a signal from her.

This, however, I did in vain, until my eyes were weary and often would
delude themselves with hope of what they ached for. But though I lay
hidden behind the trees upon the crest of the stony fall, and waited
so quiet that the rabbits and squirrels played around me, and even the
keen-eyed weasel took me for a trunk of wood--it was all as one; no cast
of colour changed the white stone, whose whiteness now was hateful to
me; nor did wreath or skirt of maiden break the loneliness of the vale.

CHAPTER XXIV

A SAFE PASS FOR KING'S MESSENGER

A journey to London seemed to us in those bygone days as hazardous and
dark an adventure as could be forced on any man. I mean, of course,
a poor man; for to a great nobleman, with ever so many outriders,
attendants, and retainers, the risk was not so great, unless the
highwaymen knew of their coming beforehand, and so combined against
them. To a poor man, however, the risk was not so much from those
gentlemen of the road as from the more ignoble footpads, and the
landlords of the lesser hostels, and the loose unguarded soldiers, over
and above the pitfalls and the quagmires of the way; so that it was hard
to settle, at the first outgoing whether a man were wise to pray more
for his neck or for his head.

But nowadays it is very different. Not that highway-men are scarce, in
this the reign of our good Queen Anne; for in truth they thrive as
well as ever, albeit they deserve it not, being less upright and
courteous--but that the roads are much improved, and the growing use
of stage-waggons (some of which will travel as much as forty miles in a
summer day) has turned our ancient ideas of distance almost upside down;
and I doubt whether God be pleased w