all outdoor folks will do when they hear of an escapade which
strikes their fancy. One man--a stranger--hammered his empty pipe-bowl
on the table in applause.

"Whae was the man, d'ye say?" he asked. "A neeger?"

Lewis laughed. "Not a nigger most certainly, though he had a brown
face."

"And ye risked your life for a black o' some kind? Man, ye must be
awfu' fond o' your fellow men. Wad ye dae the same for the likes o' us?

"Surely. For one of my own folk! But it was really a very small
thing."

"Then I have just ae thing to say," said the brown-bearded man. "I am
what ye cal a Raadical, and yestreen I recorded my vote for yon man
Stocks. He crackit a lot about the rights o' man--as man, and I was wi'
him. But I tell ye that you yoursel' have a better notion o' human
kindness than ony Stocks, and though ye're no o' my party, yet I
herewith propose a vote o' confidence in Maister Lewis Haystoun."

The health was drunk solemnly yet with gusto, and under cover of it
Lewis fled out of doors. His despondency had passed, and a fit of
fierce exhilaration had seized him. Men still swore by his name; he was
still loved by his own folk; small matter to him if a townsman had
defeated him. He was no vain talker, but a doer, a sportsman, an
adventurer. This was his true career. Let others have the applause of
excited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man's path, a man's
work, and a man's commendation.

The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in the
still weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides,
as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge shoulder the
lights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. A
sense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil from the
constraint of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozen
fragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure of
life. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful;
laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth and the open
road--all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living.
"I'll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them," he was humming aloud,
when suddenly his bridle was caught and a man's hand was at his knee.

"Lewie," cried Wratislaw, "gracious, man! have you been drinking?" And
then seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through the
stirrup leathers, and walked by the horse's side. "So that's the way
you