Ian had long been bedfellow of wild adventure.  He thought that he knew the mood in which it was best met.  The mood represented the grist of much subtle effort, comparing, adjustment, and readjustment.  He cultivated it now.  The banditti admired courage, coolness, and good humor.  They had provision of food and wine, the sun still shone warm.  The robber hold was set amid dark, gipsy beauty.

The sun went down, the moon came up.  Ian, lying upon shaggy skins, knew well that to-morrow night—­the night after at most—­he might not see the sun descend, the moon arise.  What then?

Alexander Jardine, sailing from Scotland, came to Lisbon a month after Ian Rullock.  He knew the name of the ship that had carried the fugitive, and fortune had it that she was yet in this port, waiting for her return lading.  He found the captain, learned that Ian had transhipped north to Vigo.  He followed.  At Vigo he picked up a further trace and began again to follow.  He followed across Spain on the long road to France.  He had money, horses, servants when he needed them, skill in travel, a tireless, great frame, a consuming purpose.  He made mistakes in roads and rectified them; followed false clues, then turned squarely from them and obtained another leading.  He squandered upon the great task of dogging Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination.  He traveled until at last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great partition between Spain and France.  An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed!

As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain.  He journeyed en prince with his secretary and his physician, servants and pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe.  This noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be.  They had been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pass through which ran their further road.  Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd.  Presently they went to supper together.  The Englishman meant to tarry a while in this town to observe certain antiquities.  He might stay a week.  He urged that his companion of the last few days stay as well.  But the laird of Glenfernie could not.

“I have an errand, you see.  I am to find something.  I must go on.”