of the bay showed a few dwellers when they landed on the
beach, but little could be learned from them, save directions to a
distant cotter who owned an ass and a cart, and always kept information
and mountain dew for travelers and the gentry. The young men visited the
cotter, and returned with the cart and the news. The rising was said to
have begun, but farther east and south, and the cotter had seen soldiers
and police and squads of men hurrying over the country; but so remote
was the storm that the whole party agreed a ride over the bare hills
threatened no danger.

They mounted the cart in high spirits, now that emotion had subsided.
All matters had been arranged with Captain Curran, who was not to expect
them earlier than the next day at evening, and had his instructions for
all contingencies. They set out for a village to the north, expressly to
avoid encounters possible southward. The morning was glorious. Arthur
wondered at the miles of uninhabited land stretching away on either side
of the road, at the lack of population in a territory so small. He had
heard of these things before, but the sight of them proved stranger than
the hearing. Perhaps they had gone five miles on the road to Cruarig,
when Grahame, driving, pulled up the donkey with suddenness, and cried
out in horror. Eight men had suddenly come in sight on the road, armed
with muskets, and as suddenly fled up the nearest timbered hill and
disappeared.

"I'll wager something," said Grahame, "that these men are being pursued
by the police, or--which would be worse for us--by soldiers. There is
nothing to do but retreat in good order, and send out a scout to make
sure of the ground. We ought to have done that the very first thing."

No one gainsaid him, but Arthur thought that they might go on a bit
further cautiously, and if nothing suspicious occurred reach the town.
Dubiously Grahame whipped up the donkey, and drove with eyes alert past
the wooded hill, which on its north side dropped into a little glen
watered by the sweetest singing brook. They paused to look at the brook
and the glen. The road stretched away above and below like a ribbon. A
body of soldiers suddenly brightened the north end of the ribbon two
miles off.

"Now by all the evil gods," said Grahame, "but we have dropped into the
very midst of the insurrection."

He was about to turn the donkey, when Honora cried out in alarm and
pointed back over the road which they had just travel