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middle of the back, a wound more like the smash of a bayonet - thrust than the puncture of a small-bore bullet. "Yes, I've got 'im, sure," muttered Brade, looking down on his work with a smile. With one accord the two bearers closed quietly on him and took him each by an arm. "What did yer down 'im for?" asked one of them, "and in the Lord's name what with. Yon was never the work of one of our snivellin' bullets?" "Because I hated him, and he me," answered Brade steadily, "and the holy Saints themselves must have cast that bullet, for I swear 'twas but one out of me magazine."

The General ordered a drumhead court martial-not a usual nor a very wise thing to do, as a rule, for justice is about the only debt that is paid the better by leisurely liquidation. But the crime had got about the army like wildfire, it was inconvenient to send the prisoner back along an insecure line of communication to the distant base, and in any case Brade made not the least pretence of innocence. He was in due course condemned to death; and just about the moment when, during a truce two days later, his victim was being buried, he himself fell back riddled with a dozen bullets into his nameless grave behind the bivouacs. Since the deed he had shown not a trace either of contrition or fear. His last request had been for a pipe of tobacco. "D'ye

think there will be tobacco in heaven?" he had asked of the corporal of his escort. "What's that to you? You're not going there!" the N.C.O., a gentleman ranker with a turn of wit, had neatly replied.

Scarcely had the firing party-a dozen pale - faced youngsters, not one of whom but prayed that not every bullet had found its billet, so that he, at least, might think for the rest of his days that he had missed,—scarcely had they lowered their rifles, when an officer came galloping headlong from the front, violently reined in his horse, and flung himself from the saddle. "Is the man shot?" he shouted excitedly to the subaltern in charge of the execution. The young officer pointed silently to the empty ground, above which nothing but a boot projected. "Good Lord!" groaned the newcomer.

"He was inno

cent, he didn't shoot Maguire. The surgeon up on the hill has been examining the dead before burial, passing 'em as qualified, you know, and he has discovered that poor old Maggie wasn't hit from behind at all, but from the front-the fools might have known that a bullet only makes such an awful hole where it comes out! Besides, he has actually found the bullet in the poor chap's clothes, and it isn't our pattern at all, but one of the enemy's; it lost all its way in his body, and just dropped clear! Oh! Thank the Lord I wasn't a member of that Court Martial!"

IN QUEST OF A CURE.

THE story of the following innocent adventures is the story of a "bend in the road." For many a year I had lived in one small remote corner of Scotland, with no particular prospect of seeing much of the world beyond, and yet cherishing within me a spirit of adventure and exploration, inherited, I should like to think, from a far-away ancestor who sailed the high seas as 8 buccaneer and who (the doubtful character of his career being delicately veiled by the mists of time) seems to have been a delightfully picturesque person. We, his descendants, would in our early youth have been proud to follow in the footsteps of such an ancestor, and buccaneering being confused in our minds with piracy, we longed to make our visionary enemies walk the narrow plank into a cold and preferably moonlit sea; we inherited roving instincts, and would fain have explored the Arctic for the North Pole, or hunted in the centre of Thibet for that rare sort of game, the Grand Llama; but as these glowing deeds were, owing to the tyranny of circumstance, impossible for us, we explored instead the tiny paths in the birch-woods below our father's manse, or warily pursued fugitive Covenanters among the small caves in a certain enchanted mountain - side. In our own small way we had

the spirit of Columbus. Yet in all the many years between then and the beginning of my tale I had seen, as I said, but little of the world. The familiar road of my life lay straight and level ahead, with no hint of new and unexplored country anywhere, till, suddenly, there came a bend-an unpleasant bend and then, when the bend was rounded, a new country.

It all began in the month of April. of April. The winter had been cold and wild and wet, and when I told the parish doctor that I ached from head to foot with rheumatism, he comforted me with the information that half the population ached along with me.

"How would it do," said I, "if Cathal and myself went on a bicycle tour to Xto drink the waters?"

The doctor thought it would do very well. There was nothing like a change, after all, when one was out of sorts.

Cathal was my youthful brother. In the seclusion of our paternal manse, surrounded by silent mountains, he was studying for the University Prelim. I went home and pointed out to him the advantages of a fortnight's holiday, and secure in the unwonted possession of a five-pound note, I painted the joys that lay before us. Almost without a struggle Cathal succumbed.

On the day appointed we

intended to start early, but some Fate attached to our family always prevents this ever-recurring aspiration from coming to anything. We had little packing to do. My fellow Gael who on the pier at Portree bewailed the loss of his "portmanteau," and was heard excitedly describing and defining it as "a small tin canister," had more luggage than we. It was the bicycles that gave us trouble from the outset, or, to be more accurate, it was one bicycle. As far as I remember, something happened to a "nut." At all events, Cathal spent the morning in the village smithy, labouring with the help of the blacksmith to get the injured steed in order. It was three o'clock before we started, and after that we halted at the shoemaker's to inquire for the address of his wife's sister, who kept an excellent boarding. house at X- His wife was curious as to our business at the Spa, and I confessed with reluctance to the twinges of rheumatism. With the arrogance of the strong I despised such things, and there seemed something a little ridiculous in their connection with myself.

"You might be as well to send a telegram to Susy," said the shoemaker's wife. "You might be late of arriving," she added with prophetic genius.

It was an exquisite spring day. To our right the sea was blue and shining, and to our left, beyond the brown heatherolad hills, the distant blue mountains rose into a blue sky.

Though it was the end of April the birch woods were still bare, but hardy green ferns were showing, and here and there in sheltered spots there were early primroses. To reach Xwe had seventy miles to go, and we meant to halt half-way and spend the night at the friendly manse of Carron. We were a little troubled by the reflection that we had sent no word of our intentions before us, for though we had some acquaintance with the minister, he had recently married a lady from the south who might not yet be initiated into our easy-going Highland ways. However, it was time for dark forebodings, and we rode gaily on.

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For the first ten miles or so all went well. It was pleasant riding along by the sea and clambering up and down the long tongues of land that, like ridges in a gigantic furrowed field, stretched out into the Atlantic. Then of a sudden trouble came. There was a little ripping noise, and I saw a great jagged tear appear in the outer tyre of my front wheel. Cathal and I contemplated it with dismay. We had nothing to mend it with, and we were twenty miles from our destination. We should pass no village on our way, nothing but an occasional shepherd's house, and many miles farther on a little crofter township.

"Never mind," said Cathal, whose spirits were seldom damped. "We'll tie it up with string." He produced a

lengthy piece of stout twine from a capacious pocket and bound the tyre and wheel together in much the same fashion that a fishing-rod is spliced. After that I went very well, and the only trouble was that it was now impossible to use a brake on the machine, and going down the steep winding hills I must either back-pedal or get off altogether. After the first twelve miles the road was new to both of us. Hitherto, on the rare occasions on which we had visited Carron, it had been by sea. Night began to come on and we found ourselves in some difficulty, for I had no light and Cathal's fine acetylene lamp refused to work. In vain he stopped at every sound of a tinkling burn and poured in water where water was required. It would blaze cheerfully for a few minutes and then flicker out again. We began to grow hungry and to meditate ruefully on the possibilities of arriving at Carron after the manse folk had gone to bed. In that case we must go to the inn, and we had no fancy for inns.

We were now among the great Bens, and their huge masses rose awesomely about us, the road winding among them like a dim grey ribbon. It was just where the mountains seemed gloomiest and the way loneliest that a little company of dark figures came suddenly upon

carrying among them a coffin on a stretcher. They were taking it, no doubt, to some little house of mourning among the

hills, and next day there would be a funeral on the road. At such a place and at such an hour it was an eerie encounter.

After being for many miles away from it we had dipped to the sea again, and there was something strangely mysterious in the sound of the little waves lapping up almost to the edge of the road in this lonely dark place. From sea-level we toiled upwards for half an hour or so, and it was as we went downhill once more on the other side of the ridge that I came near to getting rid for ever not only of my rheumatic aches but of all other fleshly ills.

The night was now as dark as it was likely to become. There was no blackness, but only an opaque greyness in which mountains melted away to nothingness, and merely a yard or two of road was visible at one time. Cathal had stopped to expend fresh efforts upon his lamp, and I rode cautiously forward, back-pedalling my old-fashioned wheel, and holding myself ready to jump off should the road threaten to become too steep for riding without a brake. Then all of a moment I seemed to shoot forward, and before I could stop myself I had lost hold of the pedals and was coasting at a tremendous pace into an abyss of greyness. I clung on to the handle bars, and tried desperately to keep the bicycle steady. It was all I could attempt, and despite my efforts the machine shook and rocked from side to side

with the speed. Had there been the smallest obstacle in its way I do not like to think what would have happened. A turning in the road would have been fatal. I could only oling on and hope the way was clear before me. An acquaintance once told us that during a similar experience, but in daylight, he was conscious of an aged Highlandman standing by the side of the road ahead of him and holding up his hands in horror. "That's good-bye to you, anyhow," he had shouted as the rider shot by him,—a remark about as cheering in the circumstances as the tolling of funeral bells. I remember wondering what was going to happen next, and then just as I and the bicycle seemed about to turn somersaults the descent was over, and still at a mad pace I flew along a grey plain,

till after what seemed a long time I found my pedals again, and finally dismounted, trembling, I must confess, from head to foot.

Cathal rode up presently, quite unconscious and grumbling about his lamp, and in a few moments we went on again, and found ourselves riding into Carron. It was now ten o'clock, and only one light shone from an upper window of the manse. We stood among the trees before the house, staring up at it, but we could not summon up courage to ring the door-bell.

Finally we went, as we had feared we might have to do, to the village inn. Life was still stirring there, and sitting down to tea and scones and ham and eggs, we said we had had a glorious day.

I thought my rheumatism was a little better.

Next morning I was somewhat dismayed to find light showers of snow falling. The ground was powdered white, and Cathal and I looked anxiously up the long glen to the great range of mountains that lay between us and the Spa. To be caught in a snowstorm was no part of our programme.

I remember that certain dark presentiments, always possible to a Celt, assailed me -forebodings of ill-warnings, as the old people called them, and indeed these had visited

II.

me occasionally from the moment when I first thought of the trip.

The more modern and enlightened side of me had, however, refused to give heed to these shadowy premonitions, and although the idea of turning back and going ignominiously home did for a moment occur to me, I chased it from me at once. The clouds disappeared, the sun shone out, and Cathal and I went up to the manse. The minister was studying for his evening prayer-meeting; the minister's wife, in a coquettish overall

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