Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan John

guard.”

      “It was an abominable lie,” said Dickson crossly.

      “Not at all. It was a necessary and proper ruse de guerre. It explained why we spent the right here, and now Dobson and his friends can get about their day’s work with an easy mind. Their suspicions are temporarily allayed, and that will make our job easier.”

      “I’m not coming with you.”

      “I never said you were. By ‘we’ I refer to myself and the red-headed boy.”

      “Mistress, you’re my auntie,” Dickson informed Mrs. Morran as she set the porridge on the table. “This gentleman has just been telling the man at the inn that you’re my Auntie Phemie.”

      For a second their hostess looked bewildered. Then the corners of her prim mouth moved upwards in a slow smile.

      “I see,” she said. “Weel, maybe it was weel done. But if ye’re my nevoy ye’ll hae to keep up my credit, for we’re a bauld and siccar lot.”

      Half an hour later there was a furious dissension when Dickson attempted to pay for the night’s entertainment. Mrs. Morran would have none of it. “Ye’re no’ awa’ yet,” she said tartly, and the matter was complicated by Heritage’s refusal to take part in the debate. He stood aside and grinned, till Dickson in despair returned his notecase to his pocket, murmuring darkly the “he would send it from Glasgow.”

      The road to Auchenlochan left the main village street at right angles by the side of Mrs. Morran’s cottage. It was a better road than that by which they had come yesterday, for by it twice daily the postcart travelled to the post-town. It ran on the edge of the moor and on the lip of the Garple glen, till it crossed that stream and, keeping near the coast, emerged after five miles into the cultivated flats of the Lochan valley. The morning was fine, the keen air invited to high spirits, plovers piped entrancingly over the bent and linnets sang in the whins, there was a solid breakfast behind him, and the promise of a cheerful road till luncheon. The stage was set for good humour, but Dickson’s heart, which should have been ascending with the larks, stuck leadenly in his boots. He was not even relieved at putting Dalquharter behind him. The atmosphere of that unhallowed place lay still on his soul. He hated it, but he hated himself more. Here was one, who had hugged himself all his days as an adventurer waiting his chance, running away at the first challenge of adventure; a lover of Romance who fled from the earliest overture of his goddess. He was ashamed and angry, but what else was there to do? Burglary in the company of a queer poet and a queerer urchin? It was unthinkable.

      Presently, as they tramped silently on, they came to the bridge beneath which the peaty waters of the Garple ran in porter-coloured pools and tawny cascades. From a clump of elders on the other side Dougal emerged. A barefoot boy, dressed in much the same parody of a Boy Scout’s uniform, but with corduroy shorts instead of a kilt, stood before him at rigid attention. Some command was issued, the child saluted, and trotted back past the travellers with never a look at them. Discipline was strong among the Gorbals Die-Hards; no Chief of Staff ever conversed with his General under a stricter etiquette.

      Dougal received the travellers with the condescension of a regular towards civilians.

      “They’re off their gawrd,” he announced. Thomas Yownie has been shadowin’ them since skreigh o’ day, and he reports that Dobson and Lean followed ye till ye were out o’ sight o’ the houses, and syne Lean got a spy-glass and watched ye till the road turned in among the trees. That satisfied them, and they’re both away back to their jobs. Thomas Yownie’s the fell yin. Ye’ll no fickle Thomas Yownie.”

      Dougal extricated from his pouch the fag of a cigarette, lit it, and puffed meditatively. “I did a reckonissince mysel’ this morning. I was up at the Hoose afore it was light, and tried the door o’ the coal-hole. I doot they’ve gotten on our tracks, for it was lockit—aye, and wedged from the inside.”

      Dickson brightened. Was the insane venture off?

      “For a wee bit I was fair beat. But I mindit that the lassie was allowed to walk in a kind o’ a glass hoose on the side farthest away from the Garple. That was where she was singin’ yest’reen. So I reckonissinced in that direction, and I fund a queer place.” Sacred Songs and Solos was requisitioned, and on a page of it Dougal proceeded to make marks with the stump of a carpenter’s pencil. “See here,” he commanded. “There’s the glass place wi’ a door into the Hoose. That door maun be open or the lassie maun hae the key, for she comes there whenever she likes. Now’ at each end o’ the place the doors are lockit, but the front that looks on the garden is open, wi’ muckle posts and flower-pots. The trouble is that that side there’ maybe twenty feet o’ a wall between the pawrapet and the ground. It’s an auld wall wi’ cracks and holes in it, and it wouldn’t be ill to sklim. That’s why they let her gang there when she wants, for a lassie couldn’t get away without breakin’ her neck.”

      “Could we climb it?” Heritage asked.

      The boy wrinkled his brows. “I could manage it mysel’—I think—and maybe you. I doubt if auld McCunn could get up. Ye’d have to be mighty carefu’ that nobody saw ye, for your hinder end, as ye were sklimmin’, wad be a grand mark for a gun.”

      “Lead on,” said Heritage. “We’ll try the verandah.”

      They both looked at Dickson, and Dickson, scarlet in the face, looked back at them. He had suddenly found the thought of a solitary march to Auchenlochan intolerable. Once again he was at the parting of the ways, and once more caprice determined his decision. That the coal-hole was out of the question had worked a change in his views, Somehow it seemed to him less burglarious to enter by a verandah. He felt very frightened but—for the moment—quite resolute.

      “I’m coming with you,” he said.

      “Sportsman,” said Heritage, and held out his hand. “Well done, the auld yin,” said the Chieftain of the Gorbals Die-Hards. Dickson’s quaking heart experienced a momentary bound as he followed Heritage down the track into the Garple Dean.

      The track wound through a thick covert of hazels, now close to the rushing water, now high upon the bank so that clear sky showed through the fringes of the wood. When they had gone a little way Dougal halted them.

      “It’s a ticklish job,” he whispered. “There’s the tinklers, mind, that’s campin’ in the Dean. If they’re still in their camp we can get by easy enough, but they’re maybe wanderin’ about the wud after rabbits. Then we maun ford the water, for ye’ll no’ cross it lower down where it’s deep. Our road is on the Hoose side o’ the Dean, and it’s awfu’ public if there’s onybody on the other side, though it’s hid well enough from folk up in the policies. Ye maun do exactly what I tell ye. When we get near danger I’ll scout on ahead, and I daur ye to move a hair o’ your heid till I give the word.”

      Presently, when they were at the edge of the water, Dougal announced his intention of crossing. Three boulders in the stream made a bridge for an active man, and Heritage hopped lightly over. Not so Dickson, who stuck fast on the second stone, and would certainly have fallen in had not Dougal plunged into the current and steadied him with a grimy hand. The leap was at last successfully taken, and the three scrambled up a rough scaur, all reddened with iron springs, till they struck a slender track running down the Dean on its northern side. Here the undergrowth was very thick, and they had gone the better part of half a mile before the covert thinned sufficiently to show them the stream beneath. Then Dougal halted them with a finger on his lips, and crept forward alone.

      He returned in three minutes. “Coast’s clear,” he whispered. “The tinklers are eatin’ their breakfast. They’re late at their meat though they’re up early seekin’ it.”

      Progress was now very slow and secret, and mainly on all fours. At one point Dougal nodded downward, and the other two saw on a patch of turf, where the Garple began to widen into its estuary, a group of figures round a small fire. There were four of them, all men, and Dickson thought he had never seen such ruffianly-looking customers. After that they moved high up the slope, in a shallow glade of a tributary