Out on yon bald , naked , flat place , where can a body turn to ? Let the red-coats come over a hill , they can spy you miles away ; and the sorrow 's in their horses ' heels , they would soon ride you down . It 's no good place , David ; and I 'm free to say , it 's worse by daylight than by dark . '' `` Alan , '' said I , `` hear my way of it . Appin 's death for us ; we have none too much money , nor yet meal ; the longer they seek , the nearer they may guess where we are ; it 's all a risk ; and I give my word to go ahead until we drop . '' Alan was delighted . `` There are whiles , '' said he , `` when ye are altogether too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me ; but there come other whiles when ye show yoursel ' a mettle spark ; and it 's then , David , that I love ye like a brother . '' The mist rose and died away , and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea ; only the moorfowl and the pewees crying upon it , and far over to the east , a herd of deer , moving like dots . Much of it was red with heather ; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools ; some had been burnt black in a heath fire ; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs , standing like skeletons . A wearier-looking desert man never saw ; but at least it was clear of troops , which was our point . We went down accordingly into the waste , and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge . There were the tops of mountains all round -LRB- you are to remember -RRB- from whence we might be spied at any moment ; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor , and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care . Sometimes , for half an hour together , we must crawl from one heather bush to another , as hunters do when they are hard upon the deer . It was a clear day again , with a blazing sun ; the water in the brandy bottle was soon gone ; and altogether , if I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees , I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise . Toiling and resting and toiling again , we wore away the morning ; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep . Alan took the first watch ; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second . We had no clock to go by ; and Alan stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead ; so that as soon as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east , I might know to rouse him . But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch ; I had the taste of sleep in my throat ; my joints slept even when my mind was waking ; the hot smell of the heather , and the drone of the wild bees , were like possets to me ; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing . The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away , and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens . I looked at the sprig of heath , and at that I could have cried aloud : for I saw I had betrayed my trust .
My head was nearly turned with fear and shame ; and at what I saw , when I looked out around me on the XXXXX , my heart was like dying in my body .
Appin bogs day fire firs hags hour moor moorfowl second