The Highlander had a piece of bread in his hand, from which he had been recklessly munching as he had stood for a moment’s breathing spell on the horizontal ledge beside the niche before venturing to enter, for the command had broken camp with scant allowance of time for breakfast.  With a genial laugh he thrust a morsel into the pappoose’s open mouth and put the rest in its little fingers.

Perhaps it was because of his relief to find no bigger Cherokee man stowed away here in ambush; perhaps because he was himself hearty and well-fed and disposed to be gracious; perhaps because he had a whole-souled gentle nature hardly consonant with the cruel arts of war which he practiced,—­at all events he was thoughtful enough of others to mark the ravenous look which the women cast upon the food in the child’s hand.

“Gude guide us!” he exclaimed.  “This is fearfu’ wark!  The hellicat hempies are half starved!”

For if Colonel Grant compassionated the plight of the savages, as he has recorded, and shrank from the ruin wrought in the discharge of his duty of destroying their capacities for resistance and the maintenance of existence other than as peaceful dependents of the British colonies, the rank and file of his command, weighted with no such responsibilities, may well have indulged now and then a qualm of pity.

The British soldier had been ordered to halloo for help should he encounter armed resistance, but otherwise to rest a bit at the top of the precipice before making the effort to descend, lest he become dizzy from fatigue and the long strain upon his faculties, and fall; the ensign added a pointed reminder that he had no means of transportation for “fules with brucken craigs.”  The opportunity was propitious.  The Highlander utilized the interval to open his haversack and dispense such portion of its contents as he could spare.  While thus engaged he was guilty of an oversight inexcusable in a soldier:  the better to handle and divide the food, he leaned his loaded gun against the wall.

A vague shadow flickered across the niche.

The young Highlander was a fine man physically, although there was no great beauty in his long, thin, frank, freckled face, with its dare-devil expression and bantering blue eyes.  But he was tall, heavily muscled, clean-limbed, of an admirable symmetry, and the smartest of smart soldiers.  His kilt and plaid swung and fluttered with martial grace in his free, alert, military gait as he stepped about the restricted space of the cavity, bestowing his bounty on all three women.  His “bonnet cocked fu’ sprash” revealed certain intimations in his countenance of gentle nurture, no great pretensions truly, but betokening a higher grade of man than is usually found in the rank and file of an army.  This fact resulted from the peculiar situation of the Scotch insurgents toward government after the “Forty-Five,” and the consequent breaking up of the resources of many well-to-do middle-class families as well as the leaders of great clans.