With these we need not trouble our readers.  They were of an evasive nature, calculated to meet a proposal which Montrose considered to have been made only for the purpose of gaining time.  When he had put Captain Dalgetty in complete possession of his instructions, and when that worthy, making his military obeisance, was near the door of his apartment, Montrose made him a sign to return.

“I presume,” said he, “I need not remind an officer who has served under the great Gustavus, that a little more is required of a person sent with a flag of truce than mere discharge of his instructions, and that his general will expect from him, on his return, some account of the state of the enemy’s affairs, as far as they come under his observation.  In short, Captain Dalgetty, you must be Un PEU Clair-VOYANT.”

“Ah ha! your Excellency,” said the Captain, twisting his hard features into an inimitable expression of cunning and intelligence, “if they do not put my head in a poke, which I have known practised upon honourable soldados who have been suspected to come upon such errands as the present, your Excellency may rely on a preceese narration of whatever Dugald Dalgetty shall hear or see, were it even how many turns of tune there are in M’Callum More’s pibroch, or how many checks in the sett of his plaid and trews.”

“Enough,” answered Montrose; “farewell, Captain Dalgetty:  and as they say that a lady’s mind is always expressed in her postscript, so I would have you think that the most important part of your commission lies in what I have last said to you.”

Dalgetty once more grinned intelligence, and withdrew to victual his charger and himself, for the fatigues of his approaching mission.

At the door of the stable, for Gustavus always claimed his first care,—­he met Angus M’Aulay and Sir Miles Musgrave, who had been looking at his horse; and, after praising his points and carriage, both united in strongly dissuading the Captain from taking an animal of such value with him upon his present very fatiguing journey.

Angus painted in the most alarming colours the roads, or rather wild tracks, by which it would be necessary for him to travel into Argyleshire, and the wretched huts or bothies where he would be condemned to pass the night, and where no forage could be procured for his horse, unless he could eat the stumps of old heather.  In short, he pronounced it absolutely impossible, that, after undertaking such a pilgrimage, the animal could be in any case for military service.  The Englishman strongly confirmed all that Angus had said, and gave himself, body and soul, to the devil, if he thought it was not an act little short of absolute murder to carry a horse worth a farthing into such a waste and inhospitable desert.  Captain Dalgetty for an instant looked steadily, first at one of the gentlemen and next at the other, and then asked them, as if in a state of indecision, what they would advise him to do with Gustavus under such circumstances.