Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

190                                    KIDNAPPED.
sometimes thought since then, that it may have been
the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was in
the time of King William. But for the details of our
itinerary, I am all to seek; our way lying now by short
cuts, now by great detours; our pace being so hurried;
our time of journeying usually by night; and the
names of such places as I asked and heard, being in the
Gaelic tongue and the more easily forgotten.
The first peep of morning, then, showed us this
horrible place, and I could see Alan knit his brow.
"This is no fit place for you and me," he said.
"This is a place they're bound to watch.'
And with that he ran harder than ever down to the
water side, in a part where the river was split in two
among three rocks. It went through with a horrid
thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung
over the lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked
neither to the right nor to the left, but jumped clean
upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands and
knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he
might have pitched over on the far side. I had scarce
time to measure the distance or to understand the peril,
before I had followed him, and he had caught and
stopped me.
So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock
slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us,
and the river dinning upon all sides. When I saw
where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear,
and I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and