The smoke mounted to the top of the cavern, curled there or passed out into the glen through the briers that dropped like a portcullis.  The fagots crackled in the flame, the light danced, the warmth was pleasant.  So was the sense of adventure and of solitude a deux.  They stretched themselves beside the flame.  Alexander produced from his pouch four small red-cheeked apples.  They ate and talked, with between their words silences of deep content.  They were two comrade hunters of long ago, cavemen who had dispossessed bear or wolf, who might presently with a sharpened bone and some red pigment draw bison and deer in procession upon the cave wall.—­They were skin-clad hillmen, shag-haired, with strange, rude weapons, in hiding here after hard fighting with a disciplined, conquering foe who had swords and shining breastplates and crested helmets.—­They were fellow-soldiers of that conquering tide, Romans of a band that kept the Wall, proud, with talk of camps and Caesars.—­They were knights of Arthur’s table sent by Merlin on some magic quest.—­They were Crusaders, and this cavern an Eastern, desert cave.—­They were men who rose with Wallace, must hide in caves from Edward Longshanks.—­They were outlaws.—­They were wizards—­good wizards who caused flowers to bloom in winter for the unhappy, and made gold here for those who must be ransomed, and fed themselves with secret bread.  The fire roared—­they were happy, Ian and Alexander.

At last the fagots were burned out.  The half-murk that at first was mystery and enchantment began to put on somberness and melancholy.  They rose from the rocky floor and extinguished the brands with their feet.  But now they had this cavern in common and must arrange it for their next coming.  Going outside, they gathered dead and fallen wood, broke it into right lengths, and, carrying it within, heaped it in the corner.  With a bough of pine they swept the floor, then, leaving the treasure hold, dropped the curtain of brier in place.  They were not so old but that there was yet the young boy in them; he hugged himself over this cave of Robin Hood and swart magician.  But now they left it and went on whistling through the glen: 

    Gie ye give ane, then I’ll give twa,
      For sae the store increases!

The sides of the glen fell back, grew lower.  The leap of the water was not so marked; there were long pools of quiet.  Their path had been a mounting one; they were now on higher earth, near the plateau or watershed that marked the top of the glen.  The bright sky arched overhead, the sun shone strongly, the air moved in currents without violence.

“You see where that smoke comes up between trees?  That’s Mother Binning’s cot.”

“Who’s she?”

“She’s a wise auld wife.  She’s a scryer.  That’s her ash-tree.”

Their path brought them by the hut and its bit of garden.  Jock Binning, that was Mother Binning’s crippled son, sat fishing in the stream.  Mother Binning had been working in the garden, but when she saw the figures on the path below she took her distaff and sat on the bench in the sun.  When they came by she raised her voice.