from
my _dorlach_, though the ecstasy of the meeting with the girl left me
no great recollection of all that happened. But in a quiet part of the
afternoon we sat snugly in our triangle of fir roots and discoursed of
trifles that had no reasonable relation to our precarious state. Betty
had almost an easy heart, the child slept on my comrade's plaid, and I
was content to be in her company and hear the little turns and accents
of her voice, and watch the light come and go in her face, and the smile
hover, a little wae, on her lips at some pleasant tale of Mover's.

"How came you round about these parts?" she asked--for our brief
account of our doings held no explanation of our presence in the wood of
Strongara.

"Ask himself here," said John, cocking a thumb over his shoulder at me;
"I have the poorest of scents on the track of a woman."

Betty turned to me with less interest in the question than she had shown
when she addressed it first to my friend.

I told her what the Glencoe man had told the parson, and she sighed.
"Poor man!" said she, "(blessing with him!) it was he that sent me here
to Strongara, and gave me tinder and flint."

"We could better have spared any of his friends, then," said I. "But you
would expect some of us to come in search of you?"

"I did," she said in a hesitancy, and crimsoning in a way that tingled
me to the heart with the thought that she meant no other than myself.
She gave a caressing touch to the head of the sleeping child, and
turned to M'Iver, who lay on his side with his head propped on an elbow,
looking out on the hill-face.

"Do you know the bairn?" she asked.

"No," he said, with a careless look where it lay as peaceful as in a
cradle rocked by a mother's foot.

"It's the oe of Peggie Mhor," she said.

"So," said he; "poor dear!" and he turned and looked out again at the
snow.

We were, in spite of our dead Glencoe man's assurance, in as wicked
a piece of country as well might be. No snow had fallen since we left
Tombreck, and from that dolorous ruin almost to our present retreat was
the patent track of our march.

"I'm here, and I'm making a fair show at an easy mind," said M'I ver;
"but I've been in cheerier circumstances ere now."

"So have I, for that part of it," said Betty with spirit, half
humorously, half in an obvious punctilio.

"Mistress," said he, sitting up gravely, "I beg your pardon. Do you
wonder if I'm not in a mood for saying dainty things? Our