The exciseman had jumped to his feet at Donald’s first outburst.  But he had underrated his man, and now it was too late.  To attempt to draw a pistol now would be fatal—­that was a movement with which he should have opened the affair.  The exciseman was disposed to try bluster; but bluster does not always win a trick in the game, more especially when the ace of trumps, in the shape of a pistol, is held by the adversary.  In this instance, after a long glance at the Highlander, the gauger’s eyes wavered and fell; he swallowed hard in his throat once or twice, and lost colour; and finally he sat down in the seat from which a minute ago he had sprung full of fight.  Then slowly, and almost as it seemed, against his own volition, his hand went out and closed on the whisky bottle.  He helped himself largely, drank copiously, without diluting too much with water, but still said never a word.  Now his colour came back a little, and he nibbled at the oatcake and cheese.  Then more whisky.  Gradually the man became talkative—­even laughed now and then a trifle unsteadily.  And all the time Donald kept on him a watchful eye, and had him covered, giving him no opportunity to turn the tables.  For here the Highlander saw his chance.  He had no wish to murder the gauger, but, at any price, he was not going to be taken.  If, however, he kept the man a little longer in his present frame of mind, it was very evident that presently the exciseman would be too tipsy to do anything but go to sleep.  And so it proved.  From being merely merry—­in a fashion somewhat tempered by the ugly, threatening muzzle of a pistol, he became almost friendly; from friendly he became aggrieved, moaning over the insult that a breekless Highlander had put on him; then the sentimental mood seized him, and he wept maudlin tears over the ingratitude and neglect shown to him by his superior officers; finally, in the attempt to sing a most dolorous song, he rolled off his seat and lay on his back, snorting.

As soon as he had satisfied himself that the enemy was genuinely helpless and not shamming, Donald promptly set about saving his own property.  The exciseman’s horse still stood where his master had left him, hitched to a rowan tree a few yards from the door.  Him Donald impressed into his service, and long before morning everything in the hut had been removed to a safe hiding-place, and scarcely a trace was left to show that the law had ever been broken here, or that illicit whisky had been distilled.

Before daylight came, however, the exciseman had awakened in torment—­a racking headache, deadly thirst, a mouth suggestive of a bird-cage, all, in fact, that a man might expect who had partaken too freely of raw and fiery whisky.  He felt, indeed, extremely and overpoweringly unwell, as, with an infinity of trouble, he groped his devious way to the open air, and to the burn that went singing by.  Here, after drinking copiously, he lay till grey dawn, groaning,