He thought, "If I can get abroad out of this danger, out of
old circles, I'll roam and study and go to school to wider plans!" He
suddenly thought, "This kind of thing is what Old Steadfast meant when
he used to say that I did not see widely enough." He moved sharply. A
hot and bitter flood seemed to well up within him. "He himself is
seeing narrowly now--Alexander Jardine!"
He left the crag and went for a scrambling and somewhat dangerous walk
along the mountain-side. There was peril in leaving that one
rock-curtained place. Two days before he had seen what he thought to
be signs of red-coated soldiers in the glen far below. But he must
walk--he must exercise his body, note old things, not give too much
time to new perceptions! He breathed the keen, sweet mountain air;
with a knife that he had he fell to making a staff from a young oak;
he watched the pass below and the shadows of the clouds; he climbed
fairly to the mountain-top and had a great view; he sang an old song,
not aloud, but under his breath; and at last he must come back with
solitude to his fastness. And here was brooding thought again!
Two more days passed. The man from the hut below in the pass came at
dusk with food carefully sent from the chieftain's hall. Redcoats had
gone indeed through the glen, but they could never find the path to
this place! They might return or they might not; they were like the
devil who rose by your side when you were most peaceful! Angus went
down the mountain-side.
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