He squandered
upon the great task of dogging Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and
again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of
kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination. He traveled until at
last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the
forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great partition between Spain
and France. An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow
him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed!
As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a
nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the
way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain. He journeyed _en
prince_ with his secretary and his physician, servants and
pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an
armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against
just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe. This
noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth
cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be. They had
been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest
inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pass through
which ran their further road. Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the
inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd.
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