open part of the hill below me.

The lawyer and the sheriff's officer were standing just above the road,
crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats,
musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.

"Why should I come back?" I cried. "Come you on!"

"Ten pounds if ye take that lad!" cried the lawyer. "He's an accomplice.
He was posted here to hold us in talk."

At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the
soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth
with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the
danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and
character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of
a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.

The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up
their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.

"Jock* in here among the trees," said a voice close by.

* Duck.

Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I
heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.

Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with
a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for
civilities; only "Come!" says he, and set off running along the side of
the mountain towards Balaehulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.

Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the
mountain-side; now crawling on all fours among the heather. The pace was
deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time
to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder,
that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height
and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great far-away
cheering and crying of the soldiers.

Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the
heather, and turned to me.

"Now," said he, "it's earnest. Do as I do, for your life."

And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we
traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had
come, only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the
upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay,
with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.

My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my