Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 4 - 1819.djvu/140

 face from sun and weather, lean, and half-starved in aspect, his wild grey eyes appearing to fill up ten times the proportion usually allotted to them in the human face, crept out as a wild beast might have done from a thicket of brambles and briars.

"Give your horse to the gillie," said Ranald MacEagh; "your life depends upon it."

"Och! och!" said the despairing veteran, "Eheu! as we used to say at Mareschal College, must I leave Gustavus in such grooming?"

"Are you frantic, to lose time thus?" said his guide; "do we stand on friend's ground, that you should part with your horse as if he were your brother? I tell you, you shall have him again; but if you never saw the animal, is not life better than the best colt ever mare foaled?"

"And that is true too, mine honest friend," sighed Dalgetty; "yet if you knew but the value of Gustavus, and the things we two have done and suffered to-