a number of others, it was none too soon for David
Balfour.

A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks
leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and
at the first sight inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may
say he had as good as four hands) failed twice in an attempt
to climb them; and it was only at the third trial, and then
by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with such force
as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he
secured a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern
girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow foot-
holds in the rock, I scrambled up beside him.

Then I saw why he had come there; for the two rocks,
being both somewhat hollow on the top and sloping one to
the other, made a kind of dish or saucer, where as many as
three or four men might have lain hidden.

All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and
climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I
knew that he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. Even
now we were on the rock he said nothing, nor so much as
relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat
down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place
of shelter scouted all round the compass. The dawn had
come quite clear; we could see the stony sides of the valley,
and its bottom, which was bestrewed with rocks, and the
river, which went from one side to another, and made white
falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living
creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff.

Then at last Alan smiled.

"Ay," said he, "now we have a chance;" and then look-
ing at me with some amusement, "ye're no very gleg ¹ at the
jumping," said he.

At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he
added at once, "Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared
of a thing and yet to do it is what makes the prettiest kind
of a man. And then there was water there, and water's a
thing that dauntons even me. No, no," said Alan, "it's no
you that's to blame, it's me."

I asked him why.

"Why," said he, "I have proved myself a gomeral this
night. For first of all I take a wrong road, and that in my

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