witches' premonition more than a
message carried on young men's feet.

"But all that," said Sonachan, a pawky, sturdy little gentleman with
a round ruddy face and a great store of genealogy that he must be
ever displaying--"But all that makes it more incumbent on us to hang
together. It may easily be a week before we get into Glenurchy; we must
travel by night and hide by day, and besides the heartening influence of
company there are sentinels to consider and the provision of our food."

Ardkinglas, on the other hand, was a fushionless, stupid kind of man:
he was for an immediate dispersion of us all, holding that only in
individuals or in pairs was it possible for us to penetrate in safety to
real Argile.

"I'm altogether with Sonachan," said M'Iver, "and I could mention half
a hundred soldierly reasons for the policy; but it's enough for me that
here are seven of us, no more and no less, and with seven there should
be all the luck that's going."

He caught the minister's eyes on him at this, and met them with a look
of annoyance.

"Oh yes, I know, Master Gordon, you gentlemen of the lawn bands have
no friendliness to our old Highland notions. Seven or six, it's all the
same to you, I suppose, except in a question of merks to the stipend."

"You're a clever man enough, M'Iver----"

"Barbreck," corrected my friend, punctiliously.

"Barbreck let it be then. But you are generally so sensitive to other
folk's thoughts of you that your skin tingles to an insult no one dreamt
of paying. I make no doubt a great many of your Gaelic beliefs are sheer
paganism or Popery or relics of the same, but the charm of seven has a
Scriptural warrant that as minister of the Gospel I have some respect
for, even when twisted into a portent for a band of broken men in the
extremity of danger."

We had to leave the dead body of our friend, killed by the horse, on the
hillside. He was a Knapdale man, a poor creature, who was as well done,
perhaps, with a world that had no great happiness left for him, for his
home had been put to the torch and his wife outraged and murdered. At as
much speed as we could command, we threaded to the south, not along the
valleys but in the braes, suffering anew the rigour of the frost and the
snow. By midday we reached the shore of Loch Leven, and it seemed as
if now our flight was hopelessly barred, for the ferry that could be
compelled to take the army of Mac-Cailein over the brackish water at
Letter