Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

220                                     KIDNAPPED.
him, for I had enough ado to keep my feet; but because
it is plain he must have been as stupid with weariness
as myself, and looked as little where we were going, or
we should not have walked into an ambush like blind
men.
It fell in this way. We were going down a heathery
brae, Alan leading and I following a pace or two behind,
like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the
heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped
out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs,
each with a dirk at his throat.
I don't think I cared: the pain of this rough hand-
ling was quite swallowed up by the pains of which I
was already full; and I was too glad to have stopped
walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in the
face of the man that held me; and I mind his face was
black with the sun and his eyes very light, but I was
not afraid of him. I heard Alan and another whispering
in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to me.
Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken
away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather.
"They are Cluny's men," said Alan. "We couldnae
have fallen better. We're just to bide here with these,
which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the
chief of my arrival.
Now Cluny Macpherson, the chief of the clan
Vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great re-
bellion six years before; there was a price on his life;
and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the