Queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to France. Well then, we’ll can strike east.”
“East be it!” says I, quite cheerily; but I was thinking, in to myself: “O, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take any other, it would be the best for both of us.”
“Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs,” said Alan. “Once there, David, it’s mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow’s in their horses’ heels, they would soon ride you down. It’s no good place, David; and I’m free to say, it’s worse by daylight than by dark.”
“Alan,” said I, “hear my way of it. Appin’s death for us; we have none too much money, nor yet meal; the longer they seek, the nearer they may guess where we are; it’s all a risk; and I give my word to go ahead until we drop.”
Alan was delighted. “There are whiles,” said he, “when ye are altogether too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me; but there come other whiles when ye show yoursel’ a mettle spark; and it’s then, David, that I love ye like a brother.”
The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the peewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up
