On this mountain-side, some distance below the fastness, a stone,
displaced by a human foot, rolled down the slope with a clattering
sound. The fugitive above heard it, thought, too, that he caught other
sounds. He crossed to the nook whence he had view of the way of
approach. Far down he saw the redcoats, and then, much nearer, coming
out from dwarf woods, still King George's men.
Ian caught up his belt and pistols. He sheathed his sword. "They'll
find you and save you, Glenfernie! I do not think that you will die!"
Above him sprang the height of crag, seemingly unscalable. But he had
been shown the secret, just possible stair. He mounted it. Masked by
bushes, it swung around an abutment and rose by ledge and natural
tunnel, perilous and dizzy, but the one way out to safety. At last, a
hundred feet above the old shelter, he dipped over the crag head to a
saucer-like depression walled from all redcoat view by the surmounted
rock. With a feeling of triumph he plunged through small firs and
heather, and, passing the mountain brow, took the way that should lead
him to the next glen.
CHAPTER XXII
The laird of Glenfernie, rising from the great chair by the table,
moved to the window of the room that had been his father's and
mother's, the room where both had died. He remembered the wild night
of snow and wind in which his father had left the body.
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