"But Myles darlin', you shouldn't go out in the frost wid your back all that way; the frost will stiffen it cruel sharp."

"That's one rason I'm goin'," he replied. "I'd want to have them marks well stamped into me, 'fear I'd ever forget 'em." And he shut the door.

"The Bird Alone" warbled no more for that evening.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WRONG MAN.

TEMPTATION always draws nigh when we are readiest for its reception. Explain the fact as we will, it remains a fact that when a man has nursed in himself some evil feeling-rage or revenge, or other of the Protean forms of sin which can be evoked from the hidden corners of the soul-he is seldom long without an incitement to overt acts bearing the same image; as if some unseen spiritual watcher fomented the rising wrath or wickedness, and quickly presented the opportunity for those irrevocable deeds which enchain the perpetrator beyond remedy.

The idea is awful, yet inconsistent neither with reason nor with revelation. Scripture teaches that an artful enemy watches our unguarded moments of passion, to apply evil suggestions and urge temptations which yielded to may destroy both body and soul. Well may it speak of him as "a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." To how many besides Peter may the Saviour's words apply" Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not."

Myles Furlong believed with sufficient fervency in ghosts, and would not pass near a graveyard after nightfall for a week's earnings: yet, of the arch-fiend who was stimulating the revenge

in his heart, he had then no thought. He had given himself up to intemperate anger; everything in his life seemed distorted; malice and hate, and a legion of subordinate evil ones, entered in and dwelt in the turbulent deeps of his soul. Had he known and felt the awful peril in which he stood, he would have cried, in an agony of earnestness, "Lord, save; or I perish."

He hardly knew how far or how long he had been wandering through the moonless March night, when he found himself on the very summit of the Yellow Mountain. He saw, gleaming off there on the dusk lowlands, lights which he knew to burn in Doon Castle; he sat down by the bank which edged the road, and gazed malevolently towards them. The stripes on his shoulders ached keenly, and he did not wish their pain less. "The whole earth can never make me forget this night," he said to himself, with a sort of grim satisfaction.

Presently, through the still air, which was forming hoar-frost on everything, he heard a horse's step on the road, slowly pacing up the steep, as if the reins were on his neck to do as he list. "Wouldn't it be quare if it was the same man back again ?" Myles thought. Before the dark looming shadows were narrowed into recognizable shape, he noted the sparks struck from the stones in the path. ""Tis him," said the smith, identifying the white off-leg which he had shod. So he rose and came out into the highway. "Holloa!" exclaimed the rider, reining in his horse and pulling out a pistol. "Who are you?"

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Nobody you need shoot," was the answer. "It is one of the farrier's friends-Myles Furlong of Doon forge."

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"Ay, ay!" interjected the stranger, dismounting immediately, and passing his arm through the bridle as he walked along. "I heard of your landlord's and your foster-brother's kind attentions to you this day. 'Twas most condescending of him to remit fifty lashes, eh ?”

"I'd rather have had the whole hundred," said Myles, between his teeth. "I wouldn't be beholden to him for the saving of one single lash, if I could help it."

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'Ah, but you're to reflect, you ignorant man, that he has a regard for his foster-brother, and couldn't bear to see you in pain. Don't you make any allowance for his good, kind heart ?" "Good, kind heart!" reiterated Myles in a fury. "I b'lieve he don't think we're the same flesh an' blood; I b'lieve he thinks we don't feel it no more than a stick or a stone; we ought to be proud of the flogging-proud they takes so much notice of us as to lash us itself."

"No, no, Myles," soothingly observed his companion. "They're good, kind gentlemen, and merely flog you now to keep you from being hanged by-and-by. You see, it's for your ultimate good; but the worst of it is, you won't be grateful for it. That's your ignorance. But I've no time to talk now. You're a sworn

Defender ?"

"Yes, sir," in some surprise at the question from one who knew him.

"Well, my horse will carry double; so if you get up behind me, I'll take you quicker than your own legs to a meeting of the Friends of the Cause."

The smith hesitated. His companion had mounted already. "Well ?" said he.

"I'm in such a figure," were Myles's words. "Ashamed of your scars, eh? distinction

you

could boast.

They are the most honourable We've all suffered in our own

way. Nobody's a real brother, qualified for the higher grades, till he shows himself of the true sort by something like that. Why, you're not aware of your dignity, man. Come, jump up."

This would have been impossible; but he stiffly scrambled behind

Ꭰ

the saddle somehow. They started away at a round pace, which admitted of no further conversation, and travelled some distance by the most unfrequented paths. At last the horse began to pick his way through a wooded glen, towards a solitary twinkling light among the trees. His rider uttered a low and peculiar whistle; and, a minute afterwards, an owl's hoot sounded dismally from the thickest of the wood.

"We may go on," quoth the stranger, interpreting the signal. Thenceforward he talked freely, and laughed abundantly at the trick which Fin the farrier had played on the colonel.

"Troth, an', sir, I have a great thought you was the farrier yerself," said Myles.

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"Me, my man? why, Fin is as red as a carrot, and I was born a white-headed boy, as fair as flax."

"Sir!" exclaimed the smith, in consternation, "you was as black as a sloe the night you was at the forge."

"My friend, you are dreaming. I at your forge! I as black as a sloe! Ha, ha! that's a good one. Don't you see my fair whiskers? Many a day I wished them black, when I discovered that the ladies mostly like that hue the best. Wait till we come to the light. Well, that's a good joke."

It seemed to tickle his fancy greatly; for he laughed loud and long, and poked Myles with his elbow, as in familiar fun.

"Musha, then, I'd swear bell, book, and candle-light, this was the horse with the white off-leg," asserted Myles, doggedly. "Sir, you're only makin' fun of me, an' to say you're the wrong man afther all."

The smith was growing somewhat afraid of his companion. He crossed himself several times furtively.

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And I think you must be a little mad, my friend. I hope I haven't picked up a lunatic, instead of a Defender, on the roadside. But here we are."

They had reached the wretched hut with the twinkling light; and when the crazy door was opened, the interior seemed to be doing duty as a stable. Myles looked anxiously at his companion, who took up the candle and held it beside his face, as if defying the closest scrutiny.

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Why, then, sure enough ye're white," was the smith's remark, when he could find words. "White hair, white eyebrows, white whiskers, white hair on yer lip. Sure enough, ye're the wrong man intirely intirely, an' it bates all ever I see."

"I hope you are satisfied," said the other, carelessly, tying down his hat again. "If your friend of the forge was black, I'm not he, at all events."

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But I'd swear to the off-leg," persisted Myles, falling back on the certainty of this point.

"Well, I won't quarrel with you about it," said the other, laughing, as he began to attend to his horse.

The dissimilarity, and yet similarity—for there was something familiar in the movements of the man; while a certain thickness of articulation, which Myles had observed even in his first sentences on the road, was not identical with the speech he remembered, yet the tones were not unlike these items of difference, yet resemblance, puzzled him. While still narrowly regarding the other, out went the candle with a flicker, to the surprise of Myles, who had not noticed its decline.

"We'll have to grope our way for the rest," observed his companion.

“Very well,” said the smith; "but it's awkward for a person that never was here before. Spake to me to guide me.”

No response; no sound, except Myles's own groping, and the horse's munching of his fodder. "Where are you at all at all ?" says Myles; "sure 'twould only be civility to spake to a body." He stopped short, and narrowly escaped a severe kick from the