ain wrought long for it. He but drees the doom he intended for
me. Hanging or drowning--it is just the same. But I wish, for all that,
they had put a ball or a dirk through the traitor's breast. It will
cause talk--the fashion of his death--though all the world knows that
Helen Mac-Gregor has deep wrongs to avenge."

Whereupon he quitted the subject altogether, and spoke of Frank
Osbaldistone's affairs. He was glad to hear that he had received the
stolen papers from Diana Vernon's own hands.

"I was sure you would get them," he said; "the letter you brought me
contained his Excellency's pleasure to that effect, and it was for that
purpose I asked ye to come up the glen in order that I might serve you.
But his Excellency has come across Rashleigh first."

Rob Roy's words made much clear to the young man, yet some things
remained mysterious. He remembered that Diana Vernon had left the
library and immediately returned with the letter which was afterwards
claimed by Rob Roy in the tolbooth of Glasgow. The person whom he now
called his Excellency must therefore have been in Osbaldistone Hall at
the same time as himself, and unknown to all except Diana and possibly
to her cousin Rashleigh. Frank remembered the double shadows on the
windows, and thought that he could now see the reason of those.

But Rob would give him no clew as to who or what his Excellency was.

"I am thinking," he said cautiously, "that if you do not know that
already, it cannot be of much consequence for you to know at all. So I
will e'en pass over that part of it. But this I will tell you. His
Excellency was hidden by Diana Vernon in her own apartment at the Hall,
as best reason was, all the time you were there. Only Sir Hildebrand and
Rashleigh knew of it. You, of course, were out of the question, and as
for the young squires, they had not enough wit among the five of them to
call the cat from the cream!"

The two travellers, thus talking together, had approached within a
quarter of a mile from the village, when an outpost of Highlanders,
springing upon them, bade them stand and tell their business. The single
word _Gregarach_, pronounced in the deep commanding tones of Frank's
companion, sufficed to call forth an answering yell of joyous
recognition. The men threw themselves down before the escaped Chief,
clasping his knees, and, as it were, worshipping him with eyes and lips,
much as poor Dougal had done in the Glasgow tolbooth.

The very hill