wondering why he should ask.

"Then look here!" said Alister; "you get astride my shoulders, and
I'll carry you home. I believe you're hungry, and that takes the
pith out of you!--Come," he went on, perceiving some sign of
reluctance in the youth, "you'll break down if you walk much
farther!--Here, Ian! you take the bag; you can manage that and the
gun too!"

Valentine murmured some objection; but the brothers took the thing so
much as a matter of course, and he felt so terribly exhausted--for he
had lost his way, and been out since the morning--that he yielded.

Alister doubled himself up on his heels; Valentine got his weary
legs over his stalwart shoulders; the chief rose with him as if he
had been no heavier than mistress Conal's creel, and bore him along
much relieved in his aching limbs.

So little was the chief oppressed by his burden, that he and his
brother kept up a stream of conversation, every now and then
forgetting their manners and gliding off into Gaelic, but as often
recollecting themselves, apologizing, and starting afresh upon the
path of English. Long before they reached the end of their journey,
Valentine, able from his perch to listen in some measure of ease,
came to understand that he had to do, not with rustics, but,
whatever their peculiarities, with gentlemen of a noteworthy sort.

The brothers, in the joy of their reunion, talked much of things at
home and abroad, avoiding things personal and domestic as often as
they spoke English; but when they saw the lights of the New House, a