could mend the speed of the boat's coming: time stood still with us through that uncanny period of waiting.
"There is one thing I would like to ken," say Alan. "I would like to ken these gentry's orders. We're worth four hunner pound the pair of us: how if they took the guns to us, Davie! They would get a bonny shot from the top of that lang sandy bank."
"Morally impossible," said I. "The point is that they can have no guns. This thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but never guns."
"I believe ye'll be in the right," says Alan. "For all which I am wearing a good deal for yon boat."
And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.
It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes. There was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.
"This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in," says Alan suddenly; "and, man, I wish that I had your courage!"
"Alan!" I cried, "what kind of talk is this of it! You're just made of courage; it's the character of the
