and the easterly course of the streams.

By midday we had mounted to the crest of a long scarp which fell away
in a narrow and broken promontory towards the plains. So far we had
seen nothing to give us pause, and the only risk lay in some Indian
finding and following our trail. We lay close in a scrubby wood, and
rested for a little, while we ate some food. Everything around us
dripped with moisture, and I could have wrung pints from my coat and
breeches.

"Oh for the Dry Tortugas!" Ringan sighed. "What I would give for a hot
sun and the kindly winds o' the sea! I thought I pined for the hills,
Andrew, but I would not give a clean beach and a warm sou'-wester for
all the mountains on earth."

Then again: "Yon's a fine lass," he would say.

I did not reply, for I had no heart to speak of what I had left behind.

"Cheer up, young one," he cried. "There was more lost at Flodden. A
gentleman-adventurer must live by the hour, and it's surprising how
Fortune favours them that trust her. There was a man I mind, in
Breadalbane...." And here he would tell some tale of how light came out
of black darkness for the trusting heart.

"Man, Ringan," I said, "I see your kindly purpose. But tell me, did
ever you hear of such a tangle as ours being straightened out?

"Why, yes," he said. "I've been in worse myself, and here I am. I have
been in a cell at Cartagena, chained to a man that had died of the