mind, and he dreaded what he might disclose if he began to babble.

Presently there came a blank space of which he had no recollection at all.
The movement had stopped, and he was allowed to sprawl on the ground.
He thought that his head had got another whack from a bough,
and that the pain put him into a stupor. When he awoke he was alone.

He discovered that he was strapped very tightly to a young Scotch fir.
His arms were bent behind him and his wrists tied together with cords
knotted at the back of the tree; his legs were shackled, and further
cords fastened them to the bole. Also there was a halter round the
trunk and just under his chin, so that while he breathed freely enough,
he could not move his head. Before him was a tangle of bracken and
scrub, and beyond that the gloom of dense pines; but as he could see
only directly in front his prospect was strictly circumscribed.

Very slowly he began to take his bearings. The pain in his head was
now dulled and quite bearable, and the flow of blood had stopped,
for he felt the encrustation of it beginning on his cheeks.
There was a tremendous noise all around him, and he traced
this to the swaying of tree-tops in the gale. But there was
an undercurrent of deeper sound--water surely, water churning
among rocks. It was a stream--the Garple of course--and then he
remembered where he was and what had happened.

I do not wish to portray Dickson as a hero, for nothing would
annoy him more; but I am bound to say that his first clear thought
was not of his own danger. It was intense exasperation at the
miscarriage of his plans. Long ago he should have been with Dougal
arranging operations, giving him news of Sir Archie, finding out how