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Updated: June 15, 2025
So there was another crawling performance down from this exposed height; and eventually the small party managed to hide themselves in a black and moist peat-hag, where their extremely frugal repast was produced. "But look here, Roderick," Lionel said, "it's only twelve o'clock now; do you mean to say we have to stop in this wet hole till two or three in the afternoon?"
For two days scores of men searched every likely spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags had been hung. Then some said it was a dream that guided them some one thought of an old, disused road along which there was possibility the lost men might have made their way.
"These," said the pedlar, "must be the out-scourers of Murray's party; let us lie down in the peat-hag, and keep ourselves out of sight." "And why so?" said Halbert; "let us rather go down and make a signal to them." "God forbid!" replied the pedlar; "do you ken so ill the customs of our Scottish nation?
"Here goes for congestion of the lungs," he philosophically observed to himself, as he shiveringly munched his wet sandwiches. Presently Roderick came along the peat-hag. "Would you like to wait here, sir, for a while?" said he, in his accustomed undertone.
And after all, he laughs best who laughs last. But they saw no more of Dicky of Kingswood. When we think of "the Border," the picture that rises to mind is usually one of hill and dale, of peat-hag and heathery knoll, of brimming burns that tumble headlong to meet the embrace of rivers hurrying to their rest in the great ocean.
'Whisht! whisht! gudewife, said her husband, with a smack that had much more affection than ceremony in it; 'never mind, never mind; there's a gentleman that will tell you that, just when I had ga'en up to Lourie Lowther's, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily awa hame, twa landloupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me or I was thinking, and got me down, and knevelled me sair aneuch, or I could gar my whip walk about their lugs; and troth, gudewife, if this honest gentleman hadna come up, I would have gotten mair licks than I like, and lost mair siller than I could weel spare; so ye maun be thankful to him for it, under God. With that he drew from his side-pocket a large greasy leather pocket-book, and bade the gudewife lock it up in her kist.
They threw her into a peat-hag filled with water, and left her to sink or swim. She did not swim, however, but sank never to rise again. Her spirit had been broken, and life had been rendered a burden to her. Her body was only discovered some time after, when the process of decomposition had deformed one of the most pleasing countenances which ever beamed with innocence and piety.
The room was as cold as a well, and the bed, when I had found my way to it, as damp as a peat-hag; but by good fortune I had caught up my bundle and my plaid, and rolling myself in the latter, I lay down upon the floor under lee of the big bedstead, and fell speedily asleep.
The stag's last effort had been to clear this gully; but it had only managed to strike the opposite bank with its forefeet when the death-wound did its work, and then the hapless animal had rolled back with its final groan into the position in which they now found it. In a second, Roderick was down in the peat-hag beside it, holding up its head by one of the horns, and examining the bulletmark.
"Chist wait," Roderick said, with much simplicity; and then he and the gillie withdrew a little way down the peat-hag, so that they might have their luncheon and a cautious whispering in Gaelic by themselves. It was tantalizing in the last degree.
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