“Ay, indeed,” the other agreed.  “It would have been hard if you and I, after going through all the battlefields of the Low Countries, should have been drowned here together in a Scottish burn.  Your young friend is a gallant lad and a good swimmer, for in truth it was no light task to swim that torrent with the water almost as cold as ice.”

“Now, sirs, will you please to ride on,” the boy said; “it is getting dark fast, and the sooner we are across the better.”

So saying he went off at a fast run, the horses trotting behind him.  A mile above he reached the spot he had spoken of.  The river was narrower here, and the stream was running with great rapidity, swirling and heaving as it went, but with a smooth even surface.

“Two hundred yards farther up,” the boy said, “is the beginning of the deep; if you take the water there you will get across so as to climb up by that sloping bank just opposite.”

He led the way to the spot he indicated, and then plunged into the stream, swimming quietly and steadily across, and allowing the stream to drift him down.

The horsemen followed his example.  They had swum many a swollen river, and although their horses snorted and plunged at first, they soon quieted down and swam steadily over.  They just struck the spot which the boy had indicated.  He had already arrived there, and, without a word, trotted forward.

It was soon dark, and the horsemen were obliged to keep close to his heels to see his figure.  It was as much as they could do to keep up with him, for the ground was rough and broken, sometimes swampy, sometimes strewn with boulders.

“It is well we have a guide,” Colonel Munro said to his companion; “for assuredly, even had we got safely across the stream, we should never have found our way across such a country as this.  Scotland is a fine country, Hume, a grand country, and we are all proud of it, you know, but for campaigning, give me the plains of Germany; while, as for your weather here, it is only fit for a water rat.”

Hume laughed at this outburst.

“I sha’n’t be sorry, Munro, for a change of dry clothes and a corner by a fire; but we must be nearly there now if I remember right.  Graheme’s hold is about three miles from the Nith.”

The boy presently gave a loud shout, and a minute later lights were seen ahead, and in two or three minutes the horsemen drew up at a door beside which two men were standing with torches; another strolled out as they stopped.

“Welcome, Hume!  I am glad indeed to see you; and —­ ah! is it you, Munro? it is long indeed since we met.”

“That is it, Graheme; it is twelve years since we were students together at St. Andrews.”

“I did not think you would have come on such a night,” Graheme said.

“I doubt that we should have come tonight, or any other night, Nigel, if it had not been that that brave boy who calls you uncle swam across the Nith to show us the best way to cross.  It was a gallant deed, and I consider we owe him our lives.”