“Poor girl, poor girl!” said he to himself, “I was wrong to have come between you in the long summer day, for here’s in truth the black winter and the short day, homelessness and hunger, and the foe on our heels.”
They got on the front of Sgornoch-mor, and all the north Highlands free of mist were in broken peaks before them, cut with glens, full of roads to liberty and safety, but too far off for a quarry before the hounds.
At the foot of the haw-tree was the rope in coils.
“There’s little time to waste,” said Red John, “for though I said nothing of it at the braefoot, I heard a corps of our followers too close on our heels for comfort. It would be leading them to our den below, and us to some trouble, if they saw the way we went. Will you go first, mistress, and Alan and I will follow?”
“I could die sweetly where I stand,” said Ealasaid, shrunk in weariness and grieving, “but for Alan here,” she added, looking at the lad beside her.
“Dying here, dying there,” said Red John, “I’ll dance a reel at your wedding.”
He was fastening the rope round Ealasaid’s waist as he spoke.
“There’s one thing in my mind,” he said, in some confusion of voice.
“What is that?” she asked, with small interest written in her swimming eyes.
“It’s about Alan,” said he (and busy about the rope): “I am your debtor for many hours I robbed you of, unthinking—my old weakness, as I told you.”
“That’s all bye,” she said; “that’s all bye and done with. Do you fancy I’m thinking now of such small sorrows? If you borrowed my lover, you pay for the loan with my life saved; I owe you that.”
“I’m all the better pleased to hear you say it,” said Red John, “because your taunt about my botched life rankled.”
“I did you less than justice; one should never judge a life till the end of it.”
Down the rock face the two men lowered her to the cave, where she let herself free of the rope, with a shake of it for her signal.
“Hurry, lad,” said Red John, looking into the glen; and Alan went over the edge, and down, foot and hand, eager enough to join Ealasaid.
The torn mists blew farther down the glen, the wind took a curve round Sgornoch-mor, and eye and ear told Red John that a band of the Athol men were close on him. He saw their bonnets on the slope, and heard them roar when they saw him beside the haw-tree.