“Will they follow?” I asked Shalah.

“I do not think so.  They are not hill-men, and fear the high places where the gods smoke.  Further-more, there is no need.”

“We have escaped, then?” I asked, with a great relief in my voice.

“Say rather we have been shepherded by them into a fold.  They will find us when they desire us.”

It was a perturbing thought, but at any rate we were safe for the moment, and I resolved to say nothing to alarm the others.  We overtook them presently, and Shalah became our guide.  Not that more guiding was needed than Ringan or I could have given, for the lift of the ground gave us our direction, and there was the sound of a falling stream.  To an upland-bred man mist is little of a hindrance, unless on a featureless moor.

Ever as we jogged upward the air grew colder.  Rain was blowing in our teeth, and the ferny grass and juniper clumps dripped with wet.  Almost it might have been the Pentlands or the high mosses between Douglas Water and Clyde.  To us coming fresh from the torrid plains it was bitter weather, and I feared for Elspeth, who was thinly clad for the hill-tops.  Ringan seemed to feel the cold the worst of us, for he had spent his days in the hot seas of the south.  He put his horse-blanket over his shoulders, and cut a comical figure with his red face peeping from its folds.

“Lord,” he would cry, “I wish I was in the Dry Tortugas or snug in the beach-house at the Isle o’ Pines.  This minds me painfully of my young days, when I ran in a ragged kilt in the cold heather of Cruachan.  I must be getting an old man, Andrew, for I never thought the hills could freeze my blood.”

Suddenly the fog lightened a little, the slope ceased, and we had that gust of freer air which means the top of the pass.  My head was less dizzy now, and I had a momentary gladness that at any rate we had done part of what we set out to do.

“Clearwater Gap!” I cried.  “Except for old Studd, we are the first Christians to stand on this watershed.”

Below us lay a swimming hollow of white mist, hiding I knew not what strange country.

From the vales below I had marked the lie of the land on each side of the gap.  The highest ground was to the right, so we turned up the ridge, which was easier than the glen and better travelling.  Presently we were among pines again, and got a shelter from the driving rain.  My plan was to find some hollow far up the mountain side, and there to make our encampment.  After an hour’s riding, we came to the very place I had sought.  A pocket of flat land lay between two rocky knolls, with a ring of good-sized trees around it.  The spot was dry and hidden, and what especially took my fancy was a spring of water which welled up in the centre, and from which a tiny stream ran down the hill.  ’Twas a fine site for a stockade, and so thought Shalah and the two Borderers.