If,
however, he kept the man a little longer in his present frame of mind,
it was very evident that presently the exciseman would be too tipsy to
do anything but go to sleep. And so it proved. From being merely
merry--in a fashion somewhat tempered by the ugly, threatening muzzle of
a pistol, he became almost friendly; from friendly he became aggrieved,
moaning over the insult that a breekless Highlander had put on him; then
the sentimental mood seized him, and he wept maudlin tears over the
ingratitude and neglect shown to him by his superior officers; finally,
in the attempt to sing a most dolorous song, he rolled off his seat and
lay on his back, snorting.
As soon as he had satisfied himself that the enemy was genuinely
helpless and not shamming, Donald promptly set about saving his own
property. The exciseman's horse still stood where his master had left
him, hitched to a rowan tree a few yards from the door. Him Donald
impressed into his service, and long before morning everything in the
hut had been removed to a safe hiding-place, and scarcely a trace was
left to show that the law had ever been broken here, or that illicit
whisky had been distilled.
Before daylight came, however, the exciseman had awakened in torment--a
racking headache, deadly thirst, a mouth suggestive of a bird-cage, all,
in fact, that a man might expect who had partaken too freely of raw and
fiery whisky.
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