Again they walked some distance in silence. Alister began to discover that his companion was weary, and his good heart spoke.
"Let me carry your gun," he said.
"See you damned!" returned Valentine, with an angry laugh.
"You fancy your gun protects your bag?"
"I do."
The same instant the gun was drawn, with swift quiet force, through the loop of his arm from behind. Feeling himself defenceless, he sprang at the highlander, but he eluded him, and in a moment was out of his reach, lost in the darkness. He heard the lock of one barrel snap: it was not loaded; the second barrel went off, and he gave a great jump, imagining himself struck. The next instant the gun was below his arm again.
"It will be lighter to carry now!" said the Macruadh; "but if you like I will take it."
"Take it, then. But no!—By Jove, I wish there was light enough to see what sort of a rascal you look!"
"You are not very polite!"
"Mind your own politeness. I was never so roughly served in my life!—by a fellow too that had taken my money! If I knew where to find a magistrate in this beastly place,—"
"You would tell him I emptied your gun because you threatened me with it!"
"You were going off with my bag!"
"Because I undertook to carry your bag, was I bound to endure your company?"
"Alister!" said a quiet voice out of the darkness.
The highlander started, and in a tone strangely tremulous, yet with a kind of triumph in it, answered—
"Ian!"
The one word said, he stood still, but as in the act to run, staring into the darkness. The next moment he flung down the game-bag, and two men were in each other's arms.
"Where are you from, Ian?" said the chief at length, in a voice broken with gladness.
All Valentine understood of the question, for it was in Gaelic, was its emotion, and he scorned a fellow to show the least sign of breaking down.
"Straight from Moscow," answered the new-comer. "How is our mother?"
"Well, Ian, thank God!"
"Then, thank God, all is well!"
"What brought you home in such haste?"
"I had a bad dream about my mother, and was a little anxious. There was more reason too, which I will tell you afterwards."
"What were you doing in Moscow? Have you a furlough?"
"No; I am a sort of deserter. I would have thrown up my commission, but had not a chance. In Moscow I was teaching in a school to keep out of the way of the police. But I will tell you all by and by."
The voice was low, veiled, and sad; the joy of the meeting rippled through it like a brook.
The brothers had forgotten the stranger, and stood talking till the patience of Valentine was as much exhausted as his strength.
"Are you going to stand there all night?" he said at last. "This is no doubt very interesting to you, but it is rather a bore to one who can neither see you, nor understand a word you say."
"Is the gentleman a friend of yours, Alister?" asked Ian.
"Not exactly.—But he is a Sasunnach," he concluded in English, "and we ought not to be speaking Gaelic."
"I beg his pardon," said Ian. "Will you introduce me?"
"It is impossible; I do not know his name. I never saw him, and don't see him now. But he insists on my company."
"That is a great compliment. How far?"
"To the New House."
"I paid him a shilling to carry my bag," said Valentine. "He took the shilling, and was going to walk off with my bag!"
"Well?"
"Well indeed! Not at all well! How was I to know—"
"But he didn't—did he?" said Ian, whose voice seemed now to tingle with amusement. "—Alister, you were wrong."
It was an illogical face-about, but Alister responded at once.
"I know it," he said. "The moment I heard your voice, I knew it.—How is it, Ian,"—here he fell back into Gaelic—"that when you are by me, I know what is right so much quicker? I don't understand it. I meant to do right, but—"
"But your pride got up. Alister, you always set out well—nobly—and then comes the devil's turn! Then you begin to do as if you repented! You don't carry the thing right straight out. I hate to see the devil make a fool of a man like you! Do YOU not know that in your own country you owe a stranger hospitality?"
"My own country!" echoed Alister with a groan.
"Yes, your own country—and perhaps more yours than it was your grandfather's! You know who said, 'The meek shall inherit the earth'! If it be not ours in God's way, I for one would not care to call it mine another way."—Here he changed again to English.—"But we must not keep the gentleman standing while we talk!"
"Thank you!" said Valentine. "The fact is, I'm dead beat."
"Have you anything I could carry for you?" asked Ian.
"No, I thank you.—Yes; there! if you don't mind taking my gun?—you speak like a gentleman!"
"I will take it with pleasure."
He took the gun, and they started.
"If you choose, Alister," said his brother, once more in Gaelic, "to break through conventionalities, you must not expect people to allow you to creep inside them again the moment you please."
But the young fellow's fatigue had touched Alister.
"Are you a big man?" he said, taking Valentine gently by the arm.
"Not so big as you, I'll lay you a sovereign," answered Valentine, 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