CHAPTER I

THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

“MR. ROWL”

THE WOUNDED NAME

THE YELLOW POPPY

SIR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD

THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

BY

D. K. BROSTER

“But the heron’s flight is that of a

celestial messenger bearing important, if

not happy, tidings to an expectant people.”

—“V.”, _As You See It_.

1925

London: William Heinemann Ltd.

_First published . . . 1925_

Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and

London

TO

VIOLET JACOB

IN HOMAGE

CONTENTS

PAGE

_PROLOGUE_. A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER. . . . . . . . . . . 11

I THROUGH ENGLISH EYES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

II FLOOD-TIDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

III THE EBB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

IV ‘YOUR DEBTOR, EWEN CAMERON’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

V THE HERON’S FLIGHT IS ENDED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

_EPILOGUE_. HARBOUR OF GRACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

PROLOGUE

A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER

THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

PROLOGUE

A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER

(1)

The sun had been up for a couple of hours, and now, by six o’clock,

there was scarcely a cloud in the sky; even the peaked summit of Ben

Tee, away to the north-east, had no more than the faintest veil

floating over it. On all the western slopes the transfiguring light,

as it crept lower and lower, was busy picking out the patches of July

bell-heather and painting them an even deeper carmine; and the

mountains round were smiling (where sometimes they frowned) on Loch na

h-Iolaire, to-day a shining jewel which to-morrow might be a mere blot

of grey steel. It was going to be a very fine day, and in the West of

Scotland such are none too plentiful.

Loch na h-Iolaire, the Loch of the Eagle, was not large—little more

than a mile long, and at its greatest breadth perhaps a quarter of a

mile wide. It lay among the encircling hills like a fairy pool come

upon in dreams; yet it had not the desolate quality of the high

mountain tarns, whose black waters lie shoreless at the foot of

precipices. Loch na h-Iolaire was set in a level space as wide as

itself. At one end was a multitude of silver-stemmed birches, of

whom some loved the loch (or their own reflection) so dearly that they

leaned over it until the veil of their hair almost brushed its

surface; and with these court ladies stood a guard of very old pines,

severe and beautiful, and here and there was the feathered bravery of

a rowan tree. Everywhere underfoot lay a carpet of bogmyrtle and

cranberry, pressing up to the feet of the pungent-berried junipers and

the bushes of the flaming broom, now but dying fires. And where this

shore was widest it unexpectedly sent out into the lake a jutting crag

of red granite, grown upon in every cranny with heather, and crowned

with two immense Scots pines.

The loch’s beauty, on this early summer morning of 1745, seemed at

first to be a lonely and unappreciated loveliness, yet it was neither.

On its northern shore, where the sandy bank, a little hollowed by the

water, rose some three feet above it, a dark, wiry young Highlander,

in a belted plaid of the Cameron tartan, was standing behind a couple

of large juniper bushes with a fowling-piece in his hands. He,

however, was plainly not lost in admiration of the scene, for his keen

eyes were fixed intently on the tree-grown islet which swam at anchor

in the middle of the loch, and he had all the appearance of a hunter

waiting for his quarry.

Suddenly he gave an exclamation of dismay. Round the point of the

island had just appeared the head, shoulder and flashing arm of a man

swimming, and this man was driving fast through the barely rippled

water, and was evidently making for the shore in his direction. The

Highlander dropped out of sight behind the junipers, but the swimmer

had already seen him.

“Who is there?” he called out, and his voice came ringing imperiously

over the water. “Stand up and show yourself!”

The discovered watcher obeyed, leaving the fowling-piece on the

ground, and the swimmer, at some six yards’ distance, promptly trod

water, the better to see.

“Lachlan!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing there?”

And as the Highlander did not answer, but suddenly stooped and pushed

the fowling-piece deeper into the heather at his feet, the occupant of

the loch, with a few vigorous strokes, brought himself in until he was

able to stand breast-high in the water.

“Come nearer,” he commanded in Gaelic, “and tell me what you are

doing, skulking there!”

The other advanced to the edge of the bank. “I was watching yourself,

Mac ’ic Ailein,” he replied in the same tongue, and in the sulky tone

of one who knows that he will be blamed.

“And why, in the name of the Good Being? Have you never seen me swim

before?”

“I had it in my mind that someone might steal your clothes,” answered

Lachlan MacMartin, looking aside.

“_Amadain!_” exclaimed the swimmer. “There is no one between the Garry

and the water of Arkaig who would do such a thing, and you know it as

well as I! Moreover, my clothes are on the other side, and you cannot

even see them! No, the truth, or I will come out and throw you into

the loch!” And, balancing his arms, he advanced until he was only

waist-deep, young and broad-shouldered and glistening against the

bright water and the trees of the island behind him. “Confess now, and

tell me the reason in your heart!”

“If you will not be angry I will be telling you,” replied Lachlan to

his chieftain Ewen Cameron, who was also his foster-brother.

“I shall make no promises. Out with it!”

“I cannot shout it to you, Mac ’ic Ailein; it would not be lucky.”

“Do you think that I am coming out to hear it before I have finished

my swim?”

“I will walk in to you if you wish,” said Lachlan submissively, and

began to unfasten his plaid.

“Do not be a fool!” said the young man in the loch, half laughing,

half annoyed; and, wading to the bank, he pulled himself up by the

exposed root of a birch-tree, and threw himself unconcernedly down

among the heather and bogmyrtle. Now it could be seen that he was some

inches over six feet and splendidly made; a swift runner, too, it was

likely, for all his height and breadth of shoulder. His thick auburn

hair, darkened by the water to brown, was plaited for the nonce into a

short pigtail like a soldier’s; his deepset blue eyes looked out of a

tanned face, but where the sunburn ended his skin was as fair as a

girl’s. He had a smiling and determined mouth.

“Now tell me truly why you are lurking here like a grouse on Beinn

Tigh,” he repeated.

The half-detected culprit glanced from the naked young man at his feet

to the only partially concealed fowling-piece. “You will not be

pleased, I am thinking.”

“All the more reason for knowing, then,” responded his chieftain

promptly, hugging his bent knees. “I shall stay here until you tell

me . . . _dhé_, how these vegetables prick! No, I do not want your

plaid; I want the truth.”

“I am here,” began Lachlan MacMartin with great unwillingness,

“because there is something in the loch which may bring you ill-fortune,

and——”

“In the loch! What, an _each uisge_, a water-horse?” He was smiling.

“No, not a water-horse. But my father says——”

“Ah, it is a matter of the two sights? Angus has been ‘seeing’ again!

What was the vision?”

But at that moment the speaker himself saw something, though not by

the supernatural gift to which he was referring. He stretched out a

wet, accusing arm and pointed towards the juniper bush. “What is that

gun doing here?” And at the very plain discomposure on its owner’s

face a look of amusement came into his own. “You cannot shoot a

water-horse, Lachlan—not with a charge of small shot!”

“It is not a water-horse,” repeated his foster-brother. He suddenly

crouched down in the heather close to the swimmer. “Listen, Mac ’ic

Ailein,” he said in a low, tense voice. “My father is much troubled,

for he had a ‘seeing’ last night across the fire, and it concerned

you, but whether for good or ill he could not tell; neither would he

tell me what it was, save that it had to do with a heron.”

“It is a pity Angus cannot be more particular in his predictions,”

observed the young man flippantly, breaking off a sprig of bogmyrtle

and smelling it. “Well?”

“You know that I would put the hair of my head under your feet,” went

on Lachlan MacMartin passionately. “Now on the island yonder there

lives a heron—not a pair, but one only——”

The young chieftain laid a damp but forcible hand on his arm. “I will

not have it, Lachlan, do you hear?” he said in English. “I’ll not

allow that bird to be shot!”

But Lachlan continued to pour out Gaelic. “_Eoghain_, marrow of my

heart, ask me for the blood out of my veins, but do not ask me to let

the heron live now that my father has seen this thing! It is a bird of

ill omen—one to be living there alone, and to be spying when you are

swimming; and if it is not a _bòchdan_, as I have sometimes thought,

it may be a witch. Indeed, if I had one, I would do better to put a

silver bullet——”

“Stop!” said the marrow of his heart peremptorily. “If my father Angus

has any warning to give me, he can tell it into my own ear, but I will

not have that heron shot, whatever he saw! What do you suppose the

poor bird can do to me? Bring your piece here and unload it.”

Out of the juniper bush and the heather Lachlan, rising, pulled the

fowling-piece, and, very slowly and reluctantly, removed the priming

and the charge.

“Yet it is an evil bird,” he muttered between his teeth. “You must

know that it is unlucky to meet a heron when one sets out on a

journey.”

“Yes,” broke in Ewen Cameron impatiently, “in the same way that it is

unlucky to meet a sheep or a pig—or a snake or a rat or a mouse,

unless you kill them—or a hare, or a fox, or a woman, or a flat-footed

man . . . and I know not what besides! Give me the gun.” He examined

it and laid it down. “Now, Lachlan, as you have not yet promised to

respect my wishes in this matter, and a gun is easily reloaded, you

shall swear on the iron to obey me—and that quickly, for I am getting

cold.”

Startled, the Highlander looked at his young chieftain to see

whether he were serious when he suggested the taking of so great and

inviolable an oath. But, unable from his expression to be sure, and

being blindly, fanatically devoted to him, he obediently drew his dirk

from its sheath, and was about to raise it to his lips to kiss it when

his foster-brother caught his arm.

“No, I was jesting, Lachlan. And . . . you do not keep your _biodag_

very clean!”

“Not clean?” exclaimed its owner, lowering the formidable, hiltless

blade. Then he bit his lip. “_Dhia gleidh sinn_! you are right—how

came that rust there?”

“Rust? It is blood!” Ewen took it from him by its black handle of

interlaced design and ran a finger down it. “No, I am wrong; it was

only the early sun on the steel.”

For the weapon lay across his palm, spotless and shining, the whole

foot and a half of it.

The dark Lachlan had turned very pale. “Give it to me, Mac ’ic Ailein,

and let me throw it into the loch. It is not well to keep it if we

both saw . . . what we saw.”

“No,” said his master with more composure, “it is a good dirk, and too

old a friend for that—and what I imagined can only have been some

memory of the times when it has gralloched a deer for us two.” He gave

it back. “We are neither of us _taibhsear_ like your father. I forbid

you to throw it away. Nor are you to shoot that heron—do you hear?”

If his young chief was not, Lachlan MacMartin was plainly shaken by

what had happened. He thrust the dirk deep into the heather as though

to cleanse it before he returned it to the sheath. “I hear,” he

muttered.

“Then see that you remember!” Shivering slightly, the young man sprang

to his feet. “Now, as you have forced me to land on this side of the

loch, Lachlan, I shall dive off the _creag ruadh_. A score of times

have I meant to do it, but I have never been sure if there were enough

water below. So, if a water-horse gets me, you will know whose was the

fault of it!” And laughing, disregarding entirely his foster-brother’s

protests, which went so far as the laying of a detaining hand on his

bare shoulder, he slid down the bank, ran along the narrow strip of

sand below it, and disappeared round a bend of the shore. A moment or

two later his white figure was seen clambering up the heather-clad

side of the red crag which gave the whole property its name. A pause,

then he shot down towards the lake in the perfect dive of the athlete;

and the water received him with scarcely a splash.

“The cross of Christ be upon us!” murmured Lachlan, shutting his eyes;

and, though he was no Papist, he signed himself. When he opened them

the beloved head had reappeared safely, and he watched it till the

island once more hid it from his view.

* * * * * *

Still tingling with his dive, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, when he had

reached the other side of the little island, suddenly ceased swimming

and, turning on his back, gave himself to floating and meditation. He

was just six-and-twenty and very happy, for the sun was shining, and

he felt full of vigour, and the water was like cold silk about him,

and when he went in to breakfast there would be Alison, fresh as the

morning, to greet him—a foretaste of the mornings to come when they

would greet each other earlier than that. For their marriage contract

was even now in his desk at Ardroy awaiting signature, and the Chief

of Clan Cameron, Lochiel himself, Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, Ewen’s near

kinsman by marriage as well as his overlord, was coming to-morrow from

his house of Achnacarry on Loch Arkaig to witness it.

Lochiel indeed, now a man of fifty, had always been to his young

cousin elder brother and father in one, for Ewen’s own father had been

obliged to flee the country after the abortive little Jacobite attempt

of 1719, leaving behind him his wife and the son of whom she had been

but three days delivered. Ewen’s mother—a Stewart of Appin—did not

survive his birth a fortnight, and he was nursed, with her own

black-haired Lachlan, by Seonaid MacMartin, the wife of his father’s

piper—no unusual event in a land of fosterage. But after a while

arrived Miss Cameron, the laird’s sister, to take charge of the

deserted house of Ardroy and to look after the motherless boy, who

before the year had ended was fatherless too, for John Cameron died of

fever in Amsterdam, and the child of six months old became ‘Mac ’ic

Ailein,’ the head of the cadet branch of Cameron of Ardroy. Hence

Ewen, with Miss Cameron’s assistance—and Lochiel’s supervision—had

ruled his little domain for as long as he could remember, save only

for the two years when he was abroad for his education.

It was there, in the Jacobite society of Paris, that he had met Alison

Grant, the daughter of a poor, learned and almost permanently exiled

Highland gentleman, a Grant of Glenmoriston, a plotter rather than a

fighter. But because Alison, though quite as much in love with her

young chieftain as he with her, had refused to leave her father alone

in exile—for the brother of sixteen just entering a French regiment

could not take her place—Ewen had had to wait for four long years

without much prospect of their marriage. But this very spring Mr. Grant

had received intimation that his return would be winked at by the

Government, and accordingly returned; and so there was nothing to

stand in the way of his daughter’s marriage to the young laird of

Ardroy in the autumn. And Alison’s presence here now, on a visit with

her father, was no doubt the reason that, though her lover was of the

same political creed as they, never questioning its fitness, since it

was as natural to him as running or breathing, he was not paying very

particular attention to the rumours of Prince Charles Edward’s plans

which were going about among the initiated.

With deliberate and unnecessary splashings, like a boy, Ewen now

turned over again, swam for a while under water, and finally landed,

stretched himself in the sun, and got without undue haste into a

rather summary costume. There was plenty of time before breakfast to

make a more ordered toilet, and his hair would be dry and tied back

with a ribbon by then. Perukes and short hair were convenient, but,

fashionable or no, he found the former hot. When he was Lochiel’s age,

perhaps, he would wear one.

Before long he was striding off towards the house, whistling a French

air as he went.

(2)

Between the red crag and the spot where he had rated his foster-brother

that morning Ardroy stood alone now with his betrothed. The loch was

almost more beautiful in the sunset light than when its waters had

closed over his head all those hours ago, and even with Alison on his

arm Ewen was conscious of this, for he adored Loch na h-Iolaire with

little less than passion. So they stood, close together, looking at it,

while here and there a fish rose and made his little circle, widening

until it died out in the glassy infinity, and near shore a shelduck

with her tiny bobbing brood swam hastily from one patch of reeds to

another.

Presently Ewen took off his plaid and spread it for Alison to sit upon,

and threw himself down too on the carpet of cranberries; and now he

looked, not at the loch, but at her, his own (or nearly his own) at

last. Alison’s hand, waited for so patiently . . . no, not always so

patiently . . . strayed among the tiny leaves, and Ewen caught the

little fingers, with his ring upon the least but one, and kissed them.

“And to think,” he said softly, “that by this time to-morrow we shall

be contracted in writing, and you not able to get away from me!”

Alison looked down at him. In her dark eyes swam all kinds of

sweetness, but mischief woke and danced now at the corners of her

small, fine, close-shut mouth, which could be so tender too.

“Oh, Ewen, does the contract make you more sure of me? You’d not hold

me to a bit of paper if I were to change my mind one fine morning and

say, ‘Ardroy, I’m sweir to tell it, but wed you I cannot’?”

“Would I not hold you to it! Try, and see!”

One of Alison’s dimples appeared. “Indeed, I’m minded to try it, just

for that, to see what you would do. What would you do, _Eoghain

mhóir_?”

“Carry you off,” replied Ewen promptly.

“And marry me by force?”

“And marry you by force.”

“There speaks the blood of Hieland reivers! I’d think shame to say

such a thing!”

“And are you not Hieland yourself, Miss Grant?” enquired her lover.

“And was there never cattle-lifting done in Glenmoriston?”

“Cattle!” exclaimed Alison, the other dimple in evidence. “That I

should be likened, by him that’s contracted to be married to me, to a

steer or a cow!”

“I likened you to no such thing! You are like a hind, a hind that one

sees just a glimpse of before it is gone, drinking at the lake on a

misty morning. Oh, my heart’s darling,” he went on, dropping into

Gaelic, “do not make jests upon our marriage! If I thought that you

were in earnest—Alison, say that you are not in earnest!”

Alison Grant looked into the clear blue eyes, which had really grown

troubled, and was instantly remorseful. “Oh, my dear, what a wretch am

I to torment you thus! No, no, I was teasing; Loch na h-Iolaire shall

run dry before I break my troth to you. I’ll never force you to carry

me off; ’tis like I’ll be at the kirk before you.” She let him draw

her head without words upon his shoulder, and they sat there silent,

looking at happiness: both the happiness which they knew now, and the

greater, the long happiness which was coming to them—as stable and

secure in their eyes as the changeless mountains round them.

Yet Alison knew her lover’s mind, or at least a part of it, so well

that she presently said, “And yet I am not jesting, Ewen, when I say

that I think you would be hard put to it to choose between me and Loch

na h-Iolaire—Loch na h-Iolaire and the house of Ardroy.”

His arm tightened round her. “Alison, how can you——”

“But you’ll never have to choose, _m’eudail_. I love this place most

dearly already. I have never had a home like it to love, living as we

have for so long, now in France, now in Holland. But your heart is as

strongly rooted here as . . . the red crag yonder.”

Ewen gave a little sigh. “You see a long way into my heart, you that

are the core of it. Indeed, when I am dying I think this is the last

place I shall have sight of in my mind. I hope I may be seeing it with

my eyes also.”

Alison did not shudder or change the subject, or implore him not to

speak of such things, for she was Highland too, with her race’s

half-mystical preoccupation with the dead. But she thought, “I hope

I’ll die the same day, the same hour. . . .”

The shadows on the loch crept a little farther. Behind them Ben Tee

changed colour for the hundredth time; his pointed peak seemed to

soar. It grew cooler too, and Ewen wrapped the ends of the plaid about

his lady.

“On Wednesday we will spend the day at Loch Arkaig,” he announced. “We

will take ponies, and you and Mr. Grant shall ride.”

“And Miss Cameron?”

“Aunt Marget detests such jaunts. Meals for the parlour, and the

parlour for meals, that is her creed.—Alison, are you not cold?”

“In this?” She fingered the plaid where it hung over her shoulders,

and added after a moment: “How strange it will be, to wear another

tartan than one’s own!”

“You shall always wear the Grant if it pleases you better.”

“No, it does not please me better,” answered Alison softly. “I

feel . . . very warm in the Cameron.”

He kissed her for that, smiling, and, raising his head from his kiss,

became aware of a dark object beating towards them out of the sunset

sky. It was the solitary heron of the island, winging his strong way

home with a deceptive slowness. The sight reminded Ewen of his

morning’s encounter with Lachlan, and he was about to tell Alison of

it when Fate’s messenger, who for the last five minutes had been

hurrying round the loch, came past the red crag of Ardroy, and Ewen’s

quick ear caught the snap of a breaking stick under the deerskin

brogues. He looked quickly round. A bearded Highlander was trotting

towards them under the birches and pines.

“It is Neil—what can he want? Forgive me!” He rose to his feet, and

Neil MacMartin, who was Lachlan’s elder brother and Ewen’s piper,

broke into a run.

“Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has just sent this by a man on horseback,” he

said somewhat breathlessly, pulling a letter from his sporran.

Ewen broke the seal. “Perhaps it is to say that Lochiel cannot come

to-morrow,” he observed to his betrothed. But as he read his face

showed stupefaction. “Great God!”

Alison sprang to her feet. “Ewen! Not bad news?”

“Bad? No, no!” He waved Neil out of hearing and turned to her with

sparkling eyes. “The Prince has landed in Scotland!”

She was at first as amazed as he. “The Prince! Landed! When . . .

where?”

Ewen consulted his letter again. “He landed at Borradale in Arisaig on

the twenty-fifth. Lochiel desires me to go to Achnacarry at once.”

“He has come—at last!” said Alison to herself, almost with awe. “And

you will go with Lochiel to kiss his hand, to—Oh, Ewen, how I envy

you!”

The light which had come into her lover’s eyes died out a little. “I

do not know that Lochiel _is_ going to Arisaig, darling.” He glanced at

the letter again. “He is troubled, I can see; there are no troops with

the Prince, none of the hoped-for French help.”

“But what of that?” cried the girl. “It is not to be thought of that

Lochiel’s sword, of all others, should stay in the scabbard!”

“Lochiel will do what is right and honourable; it is impossible for

him ever to act otherwise,” answered Ewen, who was devoted to his

Chief. “And he wants speech with me; I must set out at once. Yes, Clan

Cameron will rise, not a doubt of it!”

And, youth and the natural ardour of a fighting race reasserting

themselves, he snatched up his bonnet and tossed it into the air. “Ah,

now I know why Lachlan and I thought we saw blood on his dirk this

morning!” Then he caught Alison to him. “_My dearest on earth, give me

your kiss!_”

It was the title of one of the ancient pibrochs that he was quoting,

and the Highland girl put her arms round his neck and gave him what he

asked.

* * * * * *

Loch na h-Iolaire, bereft of the echoing voices, sank into a silence

that was not broken until the heron rose again from the island and

began to fly slowly towards the sunset. Then the stillness was rent by

a sharp report; the great bird turned over twice, its wings beating

wildly, and fell all huddled into the lake. A little boat shot out

from the side of the _creag ruadh_, and in a moment or two Lachlan

MacMartin, leaving his oars, was bending over the side with the end of

a cord in his hand. There was a splash as he threw overboard the large

stone to which the cord was fastened; and having thus removed the

evidence of his blind effort to outwit destiny, he pulled quickly back

to the shelter of the crag of Ardroy.

Soon the same unbroken calm, the same soft lap and ripple, the same

gently fading brightness were once more round Loch na h-Iolaire; yet

for all those who to-day had looked on its waters the current of life

was changed for ever.

I

THROUGH ENGLISH EYES

“One of them asked . . . how he liked the Highlands. The question

seemed to irritate him, for he answered, ‘How, sir, can you ask me

what obliges me to speak unfavourably of a country where I have been

hospitably entertained? Who _can_ like the Highlands—I like the

inhabitants very well.’”

—BOSWELL. _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_.

CHAPTER I

In all Lochaber—perhaps in all the Western Highlands—there was no

more bored or disgusted man this sixteenth of August than Captain

Keith Windham of the Royal Scots, as he rode down the Great Glen with

a newly-raised company of recruits from Perth; and no more nervous or

unhappy men than the recruits themselves. For the first time in their

lives the latter found themselves far north of ‘the Highland line’,

beyond which, to Lowland as well as to English minds, there stretched

a horrid region peopled by wild hill tribes, where the King’s writ

did not run, and where, until General Wade’s recent road-making

activities, horsed vehicles could not run either. Yesterday only had

they reached Fort Augustus, two companies of them, and this afternoon,

tired and apprehensive, were about half-way through their thirty-mile

march to Fort William. As for the English officer, he was cursing with

all his soul the young Adventurer whose absurd landing on the coast of

Moidart last month had caused all this pother.

Had it not been for that event, Captain Windham might have been

allowed to return to Flanders, now that his wound of Fontenoy was

healed, to engage in real warfare against civilised troops, instead of

marching through barbarous scenery to be shut up in a fort. He could

not expect any regular fighting, since the savage hordes of these

parts would probably never face a volley. Nevertheless, had he been in

command of the column, he would have judged it more prudent to have a

picket out ahead; but he had already had a slight difference of

opinion with Captain Scott, of the other company, who was senior to

him, and, being himself of a temper very intolerant of a snub, he

did not choose to risk one. Captain Windham had no great love for

Scotsmen, though, ironically enough, he bore a Scottish Christian name

and served in a Scottish regiment. As it happened, he was no more

responsible for the one fact than for the other.

It was hot in the Great Glen, though a languid wind walked occasionally

up Loch Lochy, by whose waters they were now marching. From time to

time Captain Windham glanced across to its other side, and thought

that he had never seen anything more forbidding. The mountain slopes,

steep, green and wrinkled with headlong torrents, followed each other

like a procession of elephants, and so much did they also resemble a

wall rising from the lake that there did not appear to be space for

even a track between them and the water. And, though it was difficult

to be sure, he suspected the slopes beneath which they were marching

to be very nearly as objectionable. As a route in a potentially

hostile country, a defile, astonishingly straight, with a ten-mile

lake in the middle of it, did not appeal to him.

However, the mountains on the left did seem to be opening out at last,

and General Wade’s new military road, upon which they were marching,

was in consequence about to leave the lake and proceed over more

open moorland country, which pleased Captain Windham better, even

though the wide panorama into which they presently emerged was also

disfigured by high mountains, in particular by that in front of them,

which he had been told was the loftiest in Great Britain. And about

twelve miles off, under those bastions, lay Fort William, their

destination.

But where was the river which, as he knew, they had first to cross? In

this wide, rough landscape Captain Windham could not see a sign of it.

Then, farther down the slope and about a mile ahead of them, he

discerned a long, thick, winding belt of trees, and remembered to

have heard an officer of Guise’s regiment at Fort Augustus say last

night that the Spean, a very rapid stream, had carved so deep a

channel for itself as almost to flow in a ravine, and that Wade must

have had some ado to find a spot where he could carry his road over

it. He had done so, it appeared, on a narrow stone structure whose

elevation above the river-bed had earned it the name of High Bridge.

Indeed the Englishman now saw that the road which they were following

was making for this deeply sunken river at an angle which suggested

that General Wade had had little choice in the position of his bridge.

Ahead of Captain Windham on his mettlesome horse the scarlet ranks

tramped down the gently sloping road through the heather; ahead of

them again, at the rear of the foremost company, Captain Scott sat his

white charger. The English officer looked with an unwilling curiosity

at the great mountain mass over Fort William; it actually had traces

of snow upon it . . . in August! What a country! Now in Flanders——

What the devil was that?

It was, unmistakably, the skirl of a bagpipe, and came from the

direction of the still invisible bridge. But if the bridge was not to

be seen, something else was—tartan-clad forms moving rapidly in and

out of those sheltering trees. Evidently a considerable body of

Highlanders was massing by the river.

The senior officer halted his men and came riding back. “Captain

Windham, I believe there is an ambush set for us down yonder.”

“It does not _sound_ like an ambush, egad!” replied his colleague

rather tartly, as the heathenish skirling grew louder. “But I

certainly think there are Highlanders posted at the bridge to dispute

our crossing.”

“I’ll just send forward a couple of men to get some notion of their

numbers,” said Scott, and rode back again. Keith shrugged his

shoulders. “Somewhat of a tardy precaution!” he thought to himself.

A sergeant and a private were thereupon dispatched by Captain Scott to

reconnoitre. Their fate was swift and not encouraging, for they had

not gone far ere, before the eyes of all their comrades, they were

suddenly pounced upon by two Highlanders who, with a yell, darted out

from the trees and hurried them out of sight.

The intimidated recruits began to shuffle and murmur. Captain Windham

spoke vigorously to his subaltern, and then rode forward to consult

with his senior.

Captain Scott wheeled his horse to meet him. “This is unco awkward,”

he said, dropping his voice. “The Deil knows how many of those fellows

there are down yonder, but do you observe them, Captain Windham,

skipping about like coneys among the trees? The bridge, I’ve heard, is

uncommon narrow and high, with naught but rocks and torrent below. I

doubt we can get the men over.”

“We _must_!” retorted Keith. “There’s no other means of reaching Fort

William. The Royals to hesitate before a few beggarly cattle-thieves!”

Alas, the Royals did more than hesitate. Even as he spoke there were

signs that the half-seen ‘cattle-thieves’ on the bridge were preparing

for a rush, for loud orders could be heard, and the piping swelled

hideously. And at that the scarlet-clad ranks on the slope wavered,

broke, turned, and began to flee up the rise as fast as their legs

could carry them.

It was in vain that their two captains endeavoured to rally them. A

man on a horse cannot do much to stem a flood of fugitives save

perhaps on a narrow road, and here the road had unlimited space on

either side of it. Helter-skelter the recruits ran, and, despite their

fatigue and their accoutrements, never ceased running for two miles,

till they stopped, exhausted, by Loch Lochy side once more.

By that time Captain Windham was without suitable words in which to

address them; his vocabulary was exhausted. Captain Scott was in like

case. There was another hasty consultation beneath the unmoved stare

of those steep green mountains. Scott was for sending back to Fort

Augustus for a detachment of Guise’s regiment to help them force the

bridge, and Captain Windham, not seeing what else was to be done,

concurred in this opinion. Meanwhile the recruits should be marched at

an easy pace in the direction of Fort Augustus to their junction with

these reinforcements, which were, of course, to come up with all

speed. There had been no sign of pursuit by the successful holders of

the bridge, and it might be hoped that in a little the morale of the

fugitives would be somewhat restored.

Captain Scott thereupon suggested that Captain Windham should lend one

of the lieutenants his horse, which was much faster than his own white

charger—no other officers but they being mounted—but Keith objected

with truth that a strange rider would never manage his steed, and

offered to make over his company to his lieutenant and himself ride

back to Fort Augustus if Captain Scott thought good. And Captain Scott

hastily agreed to what both officers felt was a somewhat unusual

course justified by circumstances.

To a man who, three months ago, had borne his part in the wonderful

retreat at Fontenoy, that epic of steadiness under fire, and who had

even been complimented by the Duke of Cumberland on his conduct, the

last half-hour had been a nightmare of shame, and Keith Windham, glad

to be able to extricate himself from it with the confidence that he

was not abandoning his men on the eve of a fight, he set spurs to his

horse with great relief.

He had gone about five miles along the loch—always with those

abominable mountains on either side of him—when a report echoed

soundingly among them, and a bullet struck the road a little ahead of

him. His pulling, nervous horse reared and plunged; and Keith swore.

He was not unobserved, then, and might very well be picked off by some

unseen marksman up there. Bullets, however, did not discompose him

like cowardice, and, cramming his hat farther down upon his head, he

merely urged the animal to greater speed.

In the next few miles, as occasional bullets winged their way at

varying distances past his person, Keith Windham began to think that

the hapless Royals behind him were perhaps being outflanked by some

enemy marching parallel to them on the hillside—and marching much

faster. The prospect of their being attacked seemed by no means so

remote. Still, in any case, it was now his business to go on. But when

he came in sight of the village beyond the end of Loch Lochy through

which they had passed that morning, he could see armed Highlanders

there in such numbers that it was unlikely he would be allowed to ride

through it. Gad! he thought, the rout at the bridge had served, then,

as a spark to all this tinder! For a moment—since under a mask of

indifference and cynicism he was a very hot-tempered young man—the

sting of that knowledge prompted him to attempt cutting his way

through regardless of consequences. Then common sense triumphed.

Better to avoid the enemy altogether by crossing to the farther side

of the smaller lake just ahead of him (he did not know its name) on

the wide flat isthmus which separated it from Loch Lochy. If there

were no ambushes on that side he would yet reach Fort Augustus, since,

as the Highlanders did not appear to have horses, he was safe from

mounted pursuit.

It became, however, a question whether he would get to the isthmus in

time to evade the enemy ahead, of whom half a dozen or so, suspecting

his intention, were running down the road towards him, targe on arm

and broadsword in hand, to cut him off. Keith spurred his horse hard,

fired at the foremost figure (which he missed) and next moment dropped

his own pistol with an exclamation, his arm tingling to the shoulder.

A bullet had struck the barrel, ricocheting off Heaven knew where;

in any case it was one of the nearest escapes which he had ever

experienced. For the moment his right arm was useless; but here, at

last, was the end of the waters of this interminable Loch Lochy. He

turned his almost frantic horse and galloped like mad across the

green, spongy isthmus, pursued now only by ineffectual yells which he

soon ceased to hear.

The neck of land, though narrow, was longer than he remembered; there

were perhaps two miles of it before the next lake came to separate

him from his enemies. But, whether or no the fact of his having a

fast horse deterred them from pursuit, not one Highlander attempted

to cross after him. Possibly they were reserving their forces

undiminished for the attack on the main body of the Royals, a thought

which caused the Englishman to maintain his headlong pace. Fortunately

this side of the lake seemed deserted; no man was going to stop him

now!

And no man did. But he had not gone a mile by the lake side when a

large grey-and-white object flapped up suddenly from the water’s edge

almost under the nose of his excited horse; the beast shied, swerved,

crossed its legs and came heavily down, flinging its rider against a

fallen tree with a force which knocked him senseless.

* * * * * *

Captain Windham was not stunned for very long, though to him it was an

unknown space of time that he lay sprawling in the dust by the side of

the pine-trunk. When he dizzily raised himself and looked about him no

human being was in sight, but there on the road, within a few feet of

him, with snorting nostrils and terrified eyes, lay his unfortunate

horse, trying desperately and repeatedly to get to its feet again,

despite a broken foreleg. For an instant Keith stared at the poor

sweating, plunging brute, then, passing a hand over his bruised and

bleeding forehead, he got to his own feet. There was only one thing to

be done; though the sound of a shot would very likely draw undesirable

attention upon himself, he could not leave the animal there in agony.

His remaining pistol was in his holster, and during the process of

extracting it he realized that he had twisted an ankle in his fall. A

moment or two later the sound of a shot went ringing over the waters

of Loch Oich, and the troubles of Captain Windham’s charger were over.

But his were not; indeed he fancied that they had but just begun.

Dismounted, his brilliant scarlet-and-blue uniform rendering him in

the highest degree conspicuous, his head aching, and in one place

excoriated by contact with the tree-trunk, he saw that he could never

summon reinforcements in time now; it was doubtful whether he would

reach Fort Augustus at all. His ankle, as he soon discovered, was

swollen and painful; moreover he had somehow to get back to Wade’s

road when he reached the end of this lake. With his hand to his head

he glanced in disgust at the prostrate trunk with which it had just

made such painful acquaintance. Detestable country, where even the

wildfowl and the vegetation were in league with the inhabitants!

Hearing a sound of water, he looked about till he found a tiny

ice-cold spring between the track and the lake, and, dipping his

handkerchief into this, bathed his forehead. Had he known of the seven

gory severed heads which had been washed in that innocent-looking

little source less than a hundred years before, perhaps he would not

have done so. Hardly had he reloaded his pistol, his next care, when a

distant noise, like many running feet, sent him hurriedly to the

shelter of the steep, tree-clad hillside on his left. Here, among the

scanty undergrowth, he crouched as best he could while, some minutes

later, a score of armed Highlanders poured past on the track below

him. So this side of the lake was gathering, too!

Captain Windham waited in his concealment until the way was clear and

silent again, and then descended, since it was impossible for him to

keep in cover if he meant to reach Fort Augustus—and where else should

he make for? Leaning on the branch of oak which he had broken off to

assist his steps, he began to trudge grimly forward.

There soon came in sight, on its rock by the lake side, the keep of

Invergarry Castle. Captain Windham did not know that it belonged to

the chief of Glengarry, but he was sure that it was the hold of some

robber or other, and that he himself might not improbably see the

inside of it. It looked ruinous, but that was no safeguard—on the

contrary. And here were some dwellings, little, roughly thatched

buildings, but obviously inhabited. Yet all he saw of their occupants

were a few white-haired children who ran screaming away, and one old

woman at her door, who crossed herself devoutly at sight of him. So,

to add to all their other vices, the people of these parts were

Papists!

The next obstacle was a river, which he had to cross as best he could

on insecure and slippery stones, and the difficulties of doing this

with an injured ankle took his mind off remoter possibilities, so that

when he was safely over he was surprised to find the ominous tower

well behind him, and he went on somewhat cheered. The sun was now

getting lower, and though the other side of the glen was in full warm

light, this side felt almost cold. Another peculiarity of this

repulsively mountainous district. Gently swelling hills one could

admire, but masses of rock, scored with useless and inconvenient

torrents, had nothing to recommend them. He did not wonder at the

melancholy complaints he had heard last night from the officers

quartered at Fort Augustus.

And what would the garrison there say when they heard of this

afternoon’s disgrace? Captain Windham’s thoughts went angrily back to

it. What, too, had happened to those chicken-hearted recruits by this

time? He pulled out his watch; to his surprise it was already after

six o’clock. And he still had the watch in his hand when his ear was

caught by the sound of horse’s hoofs behind him. He stopped to listen.

The pace, a smart trot, did not seem hurried; the rider might be some

unconcerned traveller. But he might on the other hand be an enemy.

Keith Windham looked for cover, but here there was none convenient as

a while ago, and the best he could do was to hobble on ahead to where

a solitary oak-tree reared itself by the side of the road, for he was

minded to have something to set his back against if necessary.

When he was nearly there he looked round, and saw the rider, a big

Highlander on a grey horse. He was not alone, for at his heels came

another, keeping up with the horse with long loping strides like a

wolf’s. To Keith one tartan was as yet like another, so, for all he

knew, these two might be of a friendly clan. He awaited them by the

oak-tree.

As the horseman came on Keith saw that he was young, vigorous-looking

and well armed. He wore trews, not a kilt like the other. But as he

came he rose in his stirrups and shouted something in which Keith

clearly caught the word ‘surrender’. So he was not friendly. Very well

then! Captain Windham raised the pistol which he had ready, and

fired—rather at the horse than the rider. The young Highlander, with a

dexterity which he could not but admire, pulled aside the animal in

the nick of time, and the shot missed. Keith’s sword leapt out as,

with a yell, the man on foot flung himself past the horse towards him,

dirk in hand. But the rider called out something in Gaelic, which had

an immediate effect, for the gillie, or whatever he was, came to an

abrupt stop, his eyes glowering and his lips drawn back, as like a

wolf about to spring as possible.

Meanwhile, to Keith’s surprise, the horseman sprang to earth, flung

the reins to his henchman, and came forward empty-handed—a magnificent

specimen of young manhood, as the soldier could not help admitting.

“I advise you to surrender, sir,” he said courteously, lifting his

bonnet, in which were fastened two eagle’s feathers. “I am sorry to

take advantage of an injured man, but I have my Chief’s orders. You

are completely cut off, and moreover your men are all prisoners—indeed

Captain Scott is at this moment in Lochiel’s custody. If you will give

up your sword I shall be honoured to take you into mine.”

“The deuce you will!” exclaimed Keith, secretly astonished at the

polish of his manner—a man who wore a plaid! “And who are you, pray?”

“Cameron of Ardroy,” answered the young man. “Lochiel’s second

cousin,” he added.

“I don’t care whose second cousin you are, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy,”

returned Captain Windham to this, “but if you think that you are going

to have my sword for the asking, you and your cut-throat there, you

are vastly mistaken!”

For provided—but it was a big proviso—that the two did not rush upon

him at once he thought that he could deal with each separately.

Splendidly built as this young Highlander was, lean too, and,

doubtless, muscular, he probably knew no more of swordplay than was

required to wield that heavy basket-hilted weapon of his, and Captain

Windham himself was a good swordsman. Yes, provided Lochiel’s second

cousin did not use the pistol that he wore (which so far he had made

no motion to do) and provided that the wolf-like person remained

holding the horse . . .

“Come on and take me,” he said provocatively, flourishing his sword.

“You are not afraid, surely, of a lame man!” And he pointed with it to

the rough staff at his feet.

Under his tan the large young Highlander seemed to flush slightly. “I

know that you are lame; and your forehead is cut. You had a fall; I

came upon your dead horse. That is why I do not wish to fight you.

Give up your sword, sir; it is no disgrace. We are two to one, and you

are disabled. Do not, I pray you, constrain me to disable you

further!”

Hang the fellow, why did he behave so out of his cateran’s rôle? “You

are considerate indeed!” retorted Captain Windham mockingly. “Suppose

you try first whether you _can_ disable me further!—Now, Mr. Cameron,

as I don’t intend to be stopped on my road by mere words, I must

request you to stand out of my way!” And—rashly, no doubt, since in so

doing he no longer had one eye on that murderous-looking gillie—he

advanced sword in hand upon his reluctant opponent. Frowning, and

muttering something under his breath, the young man with the eagle’s

feathers at last drew his own weapon, and the blades rang together.

Thirty seconds of it, and Keith Windham knew that he had attacked a

swordsman quite as good if not better than himself. Breathing hard, he

was being forced back to the trunk of the oak again, and neither his

aching head nor his damaged ankle was wholly to blame for this.

Who said that broadsword play was not capable of finesse? This

surprisingly scrupulous young barbarian could have cut him down just

then, but he drew back when he had made the opening. The certitude of

being spared irritated the soldier; he lost his judgment and began to

fight wildly, and so the end came, for his sword was suddenly torn

from his hand, sailed up into the oak-tree above him, balanced a

moment on a branch, and then fell a couple of yards away. And his

adversary had his foot upon it in a second.

As for Keith Windham, he leant back against the oak-tree, his head all

at once going round like a mill-wheel, with the noise of a sluice,

too, in his ears. For a flash everything was blank; then he felt that

someone was supporting him by an arm, and a voice said in his ear,

“Drink this, sir, and accept my apologies. But indeed you forced me to

it.”

Keith drank, and, though it was only water, sight was restored to him.

It was his late opponent who had his arm under his, and who was

looking at him with a pair of very blue eyes.

“Yes, I forced you to it,” confessed Captain Windham, drawing a long

breath. “I surrender—I can do nothing else, Mr. . . . Cameron.”

“Then I will take you home with me, and your hurts can be dressed,”

said the Highlander, showing no trace of elation. “We shall have to go

back as far as the pass, but fortunately I have a horse. _Lachuin,

thoir dhomh an t’each!_”

The gillie, scowling, brought forward the grey. His captor loosed

Keith’s arm and held the stirrup. “Can you mount, sir?”

“But I am not going to ride your horse!” said Keith, astonished. “It

will not carry two of us—and what will you do yourself?”

“I? Oh, I will walk,” answered the victor carelessly. “I assure you

that I am more accustomed to it. But you would never reach Ardroy on

foot, lame as you are.” And as Keith hesitated, looking at this

disturbing exponent of Highland chivalry, the exponent added,

hesitating a little himself, “There is only one difficulty. If you are

mounted, I fear I must ask you for your parole of honour?”

“I give it you—and that willingly,” answered Keith, with a sudden

spurt of good feeling. “Here’s my hand on it, if you like, Mr.

Cameron!”

CHAPTER II

If to ride along a road in these mountain solitudes was distasteful,

to be following a mere track (and that a very steep one) in amongst

their very folds was worse. When first he had seen the path which they

were to ascend, and the V-shaped depression, sharp against the sunset

sky, up to which it led, Captain Windham had with difficulty repressed

an exclamation of alarm. However, he could not really believe that Mr.

Cameron of Ardroy was taking him up this terrifying route in order to

slay him, since he could already have done this with so much less

trouble on level ground. Therefore, though he had raised his eyebrows,

he had said nothing. After all, it was the horse, and not he, who had

to do the climbing. And now they were half-way up.

The wolf-like attendant, carrying the surrendered sword, kept in the

rear, but Captain Windham was almost physically conscious of his frown

behind him. This unattractive person was, he felt, no willing party to

his capture; he would much have preferred that the redcoat should have

been left cold beneath the oak-tree. Meanwhile his master, the young

chieftain, or whatever he was, walked with a mountaineer’s elastic

step at the horse’s head, occasionally taking hold of the bridle;

rather silent, but uncommonly well-made and good-looking, thought his

captive again, glancing down at him.

Captain Windham’s own dark, rather harsh features were not unpleasing,

save when he frowned, which he was somewhat given to doing, nor were

they devoid of a certain distinction, and he had really fine hazel

eyes. But his mouth had already taken a cynical twist unusual in a

young man of thirty. If he had a passion left in life, it was military

ambition. Earlier he had known others, and they had brought him

nothing but unhappiness. As a boy he had had an extraordinary devotion

to his lovely mother—whom he had not been alone in thinking fair. But

she, too, was ambitious, and her second marriage, to the Earl of

Stowe, with its attendant advantages, was more to her than the claims

of her own son. Then the beautiful boy she bore to Lord Stowe usurped

the place which Keith had never had in her heart. So, in respect of

affection, sometimes even of ordinary attention, he had passed through

a neglected childhood and a starved boyhood, and they had left an

indelible mark on him—more indelible, though he did not guess it,

than the scars of another woman’s betrayal of him four years ago.

The consequence was that at thirty, with a nature at bottom passionate

and impulsive, he had become as disillusioned, as little prone to

enthusiasms, as a man of twice his age. His creed was that it was a

mistake to desire anything very much—a fatal mistake to desire a place

in any person’s affections, or to admit anyone, man or woman, to a

place in your own. By the end of life, no doubt, every human being had

discovered this truth; he had done so early, and could count himself

the more fortunate.

At the same time it needed a rather different kind of detachment to

take his present situation philosophically; and yet, to his own

surprise, Keith Windham knew that he was doing so, even though he had

by now gleaned from his captor the later history of the day’s

disaster, and had learnt its mortifying completeness. Matters had

fallen out for the unfortunate recruits almost exactly as Captain

Windham had afterwards feared; for another body of Highlanders _was_

following them unseen on the hillside, and near the head of Loch Lochy

further progress had been barred by those who had attempted to stay

Keith himself. Though Captain Scott too had tried to cross the

isthmus, it was impossible, since more Highlanders were hastening to

the spot from that direction also. Too tired and panic-stricken to use

their muskets to good effect, the redcoats had, on the contrary,

received a fire which had killed five of them and wounded a dozen,

including Captain Scott himself. Some leader called ‘Keppoch’, Captain

Windham heard, had then called on the Royals to surrender, or they

would be cut to pieces, and to save his men Captain Scott had done so.

Immediately on this had come up Ewen Cameron’s chief, Lochiel (who had

been asked for assistance), with a number of his clan, including the

present narrator, had taken charge of the prisoners, and marched them

off to his house of Achnacarry. But as the Highlanders from the far

side of Loch Oich reported having seen a dead charger on the road, and

one company of the redcoats was plainly captainless, Lochiel had sent

his young kinsman, since he happened to be mounted, in pursuit of the

missing officer. (And at this point the officer in question had

remarked rather stiffly that he trusted Mr. Cameron knew that his

absence from the scene of conflict was due only to his having gone for

reinforcements, and Mr. Cameron had replied politely that no other

explanation had even occurred to him.)

They were at the top of the pass at last, and had a fine view before

them; but the captive did not find it so, the mountains being too high

for his taste and the downward path too steep. Stones rolled away from

beneath the grey’s hoofs; now and then he slipped a trifle, for which

his owner, leading him carefully by the bridle, apologised. He would

not have come this way, he said, but that it was the shortest from the

spot where he and Captain Windham had ‘chanced to meet’, as he put

it. And then all at once the descent was less steep and they were

looking down on a glen among the mountains, with a little lake, some

signs of cultivation, grazing sheep and cattle, and, in the midst of

trees, the roof and chimneys of a house, whence a welcome smoke

ascended.

“There is Loch na h-Iolaire,” said the young Highlander at Captain

Windham’s bridle, pointing to the sheet of water; and he paused after

he had said it, because, though Captain Windham could not guess it, he

never came upon the loch from any point of the compass without a

little fountain of joy bubbling up and singing to itself in his heart.

“And there is the house of Ardroy, our destination. I am sure that you

will be glad of a meal and a bed, sir.”

Keith admitted it, and the descent continued, in the face of the

sunset afterglow. His captor did not live in a cave, then—but the

Englishman had abandoned that idea some time ago. Indeed Mr. Cameron

was apparently a landed proprietor with tenants, for besides sheep,

goats and cows, there were a good many roughly constructed cottages

scattered about. By and by, skirting the end of the little lake and

its birch-trees, they struck into another track, and Keith saw the

house in front of him, a simple but not undignified two-storeyed

building of which one end was slightly lower than the other, as if

it had been added to. Over the porch was a coat-of-arms, which

successive layers of whitewash had made difficult to decipher.

“I expect that my aunt, who keeps house for me, and my guests are

already supping,” observed the young owner of this domain, assisting

his prisoner to dismount. “We will join them with as little delay as

possible. Excuse me if I precede you.” He walked in and opened a door

on his right. “Aunt Marget, I have brought a visitor with me.”

From behind him the ‘visitor’ could see the large raftered room, with

a long table spread for a meal, and a generous hearth, by which were

standing an elderly man and a girl. But in the foreground was a

middle-aged lady, well-dressed and comely, exclaiming, “My dear

Ewen, what possesses you to be so late? And what’s this we hear about

a brush with the Elector’s troops near Loch Lochy? . . . Mercy on us,

who’s this?”

“A guest whom I have brought home with me from the Glen,” replied the

late-comer. “Yes, there has been a skirmish.—Captain Windham, let me

present you to my aunt, Miss Cameron, to Miss Grant, and to Mr. Grant,

sometime of Inverwick.”

Keith bowed, and the two ladies curtseyed.

“You are just going to sit down to supper?” queried the master of the

house. “We shall be glad of it; and afterwards, Aunt Margaret, pray

find some bandages and medicaments for Captain Windham, who has met

with a bad fall.”

“I had perhaps better tell you, madam,” interpolated Keith at this

point, holding himself rather erect, “that, though Mr. Cameron is kind

enough to call me a guest, I am in reality his prisoner.—But not one

who will put you to any inconvenience of wardership,” he added

quickly, seeing the look which passed over the lady’s expressive

countenance. “I have given Mr. Cameron my parole of honour, and I

assure you that even ‘the Elector’s’ officers observe that!” (For he

believed so then.)

Miss Cameron surveyed him with humour at the corners of her mouth.

“Every country has its own customs, Captain Windham; now I warrant you

never speak but of ‘the Pretender’ in London. You are English, sir?”

“I have that disability, madam.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Cameron, breaking into a smile, “even at that,

no doubt you can eat a Highland supper without choking. But take the

Captain, Ewen, and give him some water, for I’m sure he’ll be wanting

to wash off the traces of battle.”

“I should be grateful indeed,” began Keith uncomfortably, wondering

how much blood and dirt still decorated his face; but his captor broke

in: “You must not think that I am responsible for Captain Windham’s

condition, Aunt Margaret. His horse came down as he was riding to

fetch reinforcements from Kilcumein, and he was disabled before ever I

overtook him.”

“An accident, sir—or was the poor beast shot?” queried Miss Cameron.

“An accident, madam,” responded Keith. “A heron, I presume it was,

rose suddenly from the lake and startled him; I was riding very fast,

and he came down, breaking his leg. I twisted my ankle, besides being

stunned for a while, so that I must apologise if my appearance——” And

this time he put up his hand to his forehead.

“A heron, did you say?” exclaimed Ewen Cameron’s voice beside him,

surprised and almost incredulous. “A _heron_ brought your horse down?”

“Yes,” replied Keith, surprised in his turn. “Why not, Mr. Cameron? An

unusual mischance, I dare say, and none of my seeking, I assure you;

but it is true.”

“I don’t doubt your word, sir,” replied the young man; yet there was

something puzzled in the gaze which he turned on his prisoner. “It is

. . . yes, unusual, as you say. Herons, as a rule——” He broke off. “If

you will come with me, Captain Windham, you shall refresh yourself

before we eat.”

* * * * * *

Captain Windham sat down to a better supper than he had met since he

left London, and even in London he would not have tasted such trout

and venison, and might well have drunk worse claret. Out of regard for

him, perhaps, or out of discretion, the conversation never touched on

political matters, though he thought that he could feel a certain

excitement simmering below the surface of the talk. (And well it

might, he reflected; had not the master of the house this day

committed himself to overt hostilities against His Majesty’s

Government?) The elderly gentleman in the grey wig, who appeared to

have been living recently in Paris, discoursed most innocuously of

French châteaux and their gardens, with frequent references to

Versailles and Marly, and appeals to his daughter—“You remember the

day of our little expedition to the château of Anet, my dear?” Keith

would have thought the deserted shrine of St. Germain a more likely

goal of pilgrimage, for he took Mr. Grant, from his mere presence

here, to be a Jacobite.

But surely his daughter would have preferred to this mild talk of

parterres and façades a recital by Mr. Ewen Cameron of his afternoon’s

prowess! As far as their personal conflict went, Captain Windham was

perfectly willing that this encounter should be related by a victor

who was evidently disposed to allow the fullest weight to the physical

disabilities of the vanquished; yet he was grateful for the tact with

which Mr. Cameron (in his presence at least) had glossed over the

flight of the Royal Scots from the bridge. Only questions, indeed,

drew from him the partial information which he furnished. He would

tell them more afterwards, no doubt. . . . Who was this pretty Miss

Grant with the blue fillet in her dark hair—a kinswoman? If she was

the future mistress of the house, young Cameron had good taste. So, to

be just, had the lady.

But, despite the courtesy shown him, the unwilling guest was not sorry

when, very soon after supper, it was suggested that he should retire,

for his ankle was painful and one shoulder ached, though he protested

that he could look after his own hurts. His conqueror showed him to

his bedchamber exactly as a host might have done. The room was of a

fair size, and had good old-fashioned furniture; and, presumably

because it had been for some time unused, there was even a fire

burning. An elderly woman brought up a crock of hot water, a salve

and linen for bandages, and the Englishman was then left to her

ministrations. And it was not long before his discreet questions had

drawn from this dame, who was not very communicative, and spoke

English as though it were a foreign tongue to her, the information

that Miss Grant was to marry the laird in the autumn. Keith privately

hoped that the prospective bridegroom might not find himself in prison

before that time, as a consequence of having laid hands on himself—if

of nothing worse—though, after that venison, he resolved that he would

not lift a finger to send him there.

When his ankle had been bathed and bound up, and the elderly servant

had withdrawn, the soldier removed his sash, coat and wig, and

extended himself in a comfortable chair in front of the fire, with

his bandaged foot on another. There were books to his hand, as he

discovered by reaching up to a shelf on the wall; but, having pulled

some down, he did not, at first, find that the effort had repaid him.

He had captured a Terence, a Horace, _Télémaque_, and Montesquieu’s

_Lettres Persanes_. They all had Ewen Cameron’s name written in them.

Keith whistled. He was turning over the leaves of the _Lettres_ when

there was a knock and his host—or gaoler—re-entered.

“I hope that Marsali has made you comfortable, sir?—Those books are

not very entertaining, I am afraid. If you intend reading into the

night—which I fear must mean that your foot is paining you—I will see

whether I cannot find you something else. I believe that my aunt has

Mr. Fielding’s novel of _Joseph Andrews_ somewhere.”

“Pray do not trouble, sir,” replied Keith. “I intend to go to bed and

sleep; it was only idleness which directed my hand to that shelf

there. I see that you read French and Latin, Mr. Cameron?” And even as

he uttered the words he thought how ill-bred was the remark, and the

surprise which he had not been able entirely to keep out of his tone.

But the young Highlander answered quite simply, in his gentle, rather

slow voice: “I was partly educated in France—for that, you know, is

easier for us Jacobites. As to Latin, yes, I can read it still, though

I am afraid that my iambics would only procure me the ferule

nowadays.”

Captain Windham’s ideas about the Northern barbarians were undergoing

startling changes. He had already noticed that none of the inmates of

this house used the vernacular which he was accustomed to hear in the

Lowlands; they spoke as good English as himself, if with an unfamiliar

and not displeasing lilt. A little to cover his annoyance at his own

lack of breeding he remarked, “France, yes; I suppose that your

connection is close. And now that the . . . that a certain young

gentleman has come thence——”

“Yes?” asked the other in a slightly guarded manner.

“No, perhaps we had best not engage upon that topic,” said Keith, with

a slight smile. “I will imitate your own courteous discretion at

supper, Mr. Cameron, in saying so little about the episode at the

bridge, of which indeed, as a soldier, I am not proud.—By the way,

having myself introduced that subject, I will ask you if you can make

clear a point in connection with it which has puzzled me ever since.

How was it that no attempt at pursuit—or at least no immediate

attempt—was made by the body posted there?”

“That is easily explained,” replied Ewen Cameron promptly. “The

Keppoch MacDonalds there dared not let you see how few they were, lest

your men should have rallied and crossed the bridge after all.”

“How few?” repeated Captain Windham, thinking he had not heard aright.

“But, Mr. Cameron, there were a quantity of Highlanders there, though,

owing to the trees it was impossible to form an accurate estimate of

their numbers.”

“No, that would be so,” said his captor, looking at him rather oddly.

“You may well have thought the bridge strongly held.”

“You mean that it was not?” And, as his informant merely shook his

head, Keith said impatiently, but with a sudden very unpleasant

misgiving, “Do you _know_ how many men were there, Mr. Cameron?”

Mr. Cameron had taken up a fresh log, and now placed it carefully in

position on the fire before answering. “I believe,” he said, with what

certainly sounded like reluctance, “that there were not above a dozen

there—to be precise, eleven men and a piper.”

Keith’s fingers closed on the arms of his chair. “Are you jesting,

sir?”

“Not in the least,” replied the young man, without any trace either of

amusement or of elation. “I know it to be a fact, because I spoke

afterwards with their leader, MacDonald of Tiendrish. They used an old

trick, I understand, to pass themselves off as more than they really

were.”

He continued to look at the fire. Captain Windham, with a suppressed

exclamation, had lowered his injured foot to the ground, and then

remained silent, most horribly mortified. Two companies of His

Majesty’s Foot turning tail before a dozen beggarly Highlanders with

whom they had not even stayed to exchange shots! The solace, such as

it had been, of reflecting that the recruits had in the end been

surrounded and outnumbered, was swept clean away, for he knew now

that they would never have come to this pass but for their initial

poltroonery. Keith had lost all desire for further converse, and every

instinct of patronage was dead within him. Why the devil had he ever

asked that question?

“I think, sir,” observed his captor, turning round at last, “that it

would be better, would it not, if you went to bed? I hope that you

have been given everything that is necessary?”

“Everything, thank you,” replied Keith shortly. “And also, just now,

something that I could well have done without.” He tried to speak

lightly, yet nothing but vexation, he knew, sounded in his tone.

“I am sorry,” said the Highlander gravely. “I would not have told you

the number had you not pressed me for it. Forget it, sir.” He went to

the door. “I hope that your injured ankle will not keep you awake.”

That ill office was much more likely to be performed by the piece of

news which he had presented to the sufferer. “Eleven men and a piper!”

repeated Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots when the door was

shut; and with his sound leg he drove his heel viciously into the logs

of Highland pine.

CHAPTER III

Captain Keith Windham, unwillingly revisiting the neighbourhood of

High Bridge, which was populated with leaping Highlanders about nine

feet high, and permeated, even in his dream, with the dronings and

wailings of the bagpipe, woke, hot and angry, to find that the

unpleasant strains at least were real, and were coming through the

window of the room in which he lay. He remained a moment blinking,

wondering if they portended some attack by a hostile clan; and finally

got out of bed and hobbled to the window.

In front of the house a bearded piper was marching solemnly up and

down, the ribbons on the chanters of his instrument fluttering in the

morning breeze. There was no sign of any armed gathering. “Good Gad,

it must be the usual reveillé for the household!” thought the

Englishman. “Enough to put a sensitive person out of temper for the

rest of the day.” And he returned to bed and pulled the blankets over

his ears.

At breakfast, an excellent meal, and a pleasant one also, where very

civil enquiries were made concerning the night he had spent and the

state of his injuries, Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he had not

been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’s _piobaireachd_, adding that

he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been. Keith was

then thankful that he had not heard Angus.

When the meal was over he strayed to the window and looked out,

wondering how he should occupy himself all day, but determined upon

one thing, that he would not let these Camerons guess how bitterly he

was mortified over the matter of the bridge. Outside the porch his

host (save the mark!) was already talking earnestly to a couple of

Highlanders, in one of whom Captain Windham had no difficulty in

recognising the ‘cut-throat’ of the previous day; the other, he

fancied, was the musician of the early morning. “I wish I could

persuade myself that Mr. Cameron were putting a ban upon that

performance,” he thought; but he hardly hoped it.

Presently the young laird came in. He was wearing the kilt to-day,

and for the first time Keith Windham thought that there was something

to be said for that article of attire—at least on a man of his

proportions.

“Is not that your attendant of yesterday out there?” remarked the

soldier idly.

“Lachlan MacMartin? Yes. The other, the piper who, I am afraid, woke

you this morning, is his brother Neil.—Captain Windham,” went on the

piper’s master in a different tone, “what I am going to tell you may

be news to you, or it may not, but in either case the world will soon

know it. To-day is Saturday, and on Monday the Prince will set up his

standard at Glenfinnan.”

There was a second’s silence. “And you, I suppose, Mr. Cameron, intend

to be present . . . and to cross the Rubicon in his company?”

“All Clan Cameron will be there,” was the reply, given with a probably

unconscious lift of the head. “And as in consequence of this I shall

be pretty much occupied to-day, and little at home, I would advise

you, if I may, not to go out of sight of the house and policies. You

might——” Ewen Cameron hesitated for a moment.

“I might find myself tempted to abscond, you were going to say?”

struck in his captive . . . and saw at once, from the bleak look which

came into those blue eyes, that his pleasantry did not find favour.

“I should not dream of so insulting you,” replied Ardroy coldly. “I

was merely going to say that it might not be oversafe for you, in that

uniform, if you did.” And as he was evidently quite offended at the

idea that he could be supposed to harbour such a suspicion of his

prisoner, there was nothing for the latter to do but to beg his

pardon, and to declare that he had spoken—as indeed he had—in the

merest jest.

“But perhaps this young mountaineer cannot take a jest,” he thought to

himself when they had parted. “I’ll make no more—at least outwardly.”

But he was not to keep this resolution.

And indeed he had little but occasional glimpses of young Ardroy or

of any of the family that morning. The whole place was in a bustle

of preparation and excitement. Tenants were (Keith surmised from

various indications) being collected and armed; though only single

Highlanders, wild and unintelligible persons, appeared from time to

time in the neighbourhood of the house. Miss Cameron and Miss Grant

seemed to be equally caught up in the swirl, and Mr. Grant was

invisible. The only idle person in this turmoil, the captive

Englishman, sat calmly on the grass plot at a little distance from the

house, with _The History of the Adventures of Mr. Joseph Andrews_ in

his hand, half amused to see the inhabitants of this ant-heap—thus he

thought of them—so busy over what would certainly come to nothing,

like all the other Jacobite attempts.

And yet he reflected that, for all the futility of such preparations,

those who made them were like to pay very dearly for them. Ewen

Cameron would get himself outlawed at the least, and somehow he, whom

Ewen Cameron had defeated yesterday, would be sorry. The young

Highlander had certainly displayed towards his captive foe the most

perfect chivalry and courtesy, and to this latter quality Keith

Windham, who could himself at will display the most perfect rudeness,

was never blind. And yet—a sardonically comforting reflection—a rebel

must find the presence of an English soldier not a little embarrassing

at this juncture.

It was partly a desire to show that he too possessed tact, and partly

pure boredom, which caused Captain Windham, in the latter half of the

afternoon, to disregard the warning given him earlier, and to leave

the neighbourhood of the house. He helped himself to a stout stick on

which to lean in case of necessity, though his ankle was remarkably

better and hardly pained him at all, and started to stroll along the

bank of the loch. Nobody had witnessed his departure. And in the mild,

sometimes obscured sunshine, he followed the path round to the far

side, thinking that could the little lake only be transported from

these repellent mountains and this ugly purple heather into more

civilised and less elevated surroundings, it would not be an ill piece

of water.

Arrived on the farther side, he began idly to follow a track which led

away from the lake and presently started to wind upwards among the

heather. He continued to follow it without much thinking of what he

was doing, until suddenly it brought him round a fold of the mountain

side to a space of almost level ground where, beside a group of pine

trees, stood three low thatched cottages. And there Captain Windham

remained staring, not exactly at the cottages, nor at the score or so

of Highlanders—men, women, and children—in front of these dwellings,

with their backs turned to him, but at the rather puzzling operations

which were going forward on top of the largest croft.

At first Captain Windham thought that the man astride the roof and the

other on the short ladder must be repairing the thatch, until he saw

that, on the contrary, portions of this were being relentlessly torn

off. Then the man on the roof plunged in his arm to the shoulder and

drew forth something round and flat, which he handed to the man on the

ladder, who passed it down. Next came something long that glittered,

then another round object, then an unmistakable musket; and with that

Keith realised what he was witnessing—the bringing forth of arms which

should have been given up at the Disarming Act of 1725, but which had

been concealed and saved for just such an emergency as the present.

Now there came bundling out several broadswords tied together and

another musket. But a man in a bright scarlet coat with blue facings

and long white spatterdashes is altogether too conspicuous a figure in

a mountain landscape, and Keith had not in fact been there more than a

minute before a boy who had turned to pick up a targe saw him, gave a

yell, and pointing, screamed out something in Gaelic. Every face was

instantly turned in the intruder’s direction, and moved by the same

impulse each man snatched up a weapon and came running towards him,

even he on the roof sliding down with haste.

Captain Windham was too proud to turn and flee, nor would it much have

advantaged him; but there he was, unarmed save for a staff, not even

knowing for certain whether these hornets upon whose nest he had

stumbled were Mr. Cameron’s tenants or no, but pretty sure that they

would not understand English, and that he could not therefore convince

them of his perfect innocence. Deeply did he curse his folly in that

moment.

He had at any rate the courage not to attempt to defend himself; on

the contrary, he deliberately threw his stick upon the ground, and held

out his hands to show that they were empty. The foremost Highlander,

who was brandishing one of those unpleasant basket-hilted swords,

hesitated, as Keith had hoped, and shouted something; on which

the rest rushed round, and as many hands as possible laid hold of

Captain Windham’s person. He staggered under the impact, but made no

resistance, for, to his great relief, he had already recognised in the

foremost assailant with the broadsword the scowling visage of Lachlan

MacMartin, and beside him the milder one of his brother Neil, Mr.

Cameron’s piper. Even if they did not understand English, these two

would at least know who he was.

“I am your master’s prisoner,” he called out, wishing the others would

not press so upon him as they clutched his arms. “You had better do me

no harm!”

In Lachlan’s face there was a sort of sullen and unwilling recognition.

He spoke rapidly to his brother, who nodded and gave what was

presumably an order. Reluctantly the clutching hands released their

grip of Keith, their owners merely glowering at him; but they did not

go away, though the circle now opened out a little. A couple of women

had joined the group, and a small child or two; all talked excitedly.

Keith had never thought to feel gratitude towards the wolf-like

Lachlan, but at this moment he could almost have embraced him, since

but for him and Neil his own might well have been the first blood on

those resuscitated claymores.

His preserver now advanced, his hand on his dirk, and addressed the

soldier, rather to his surprise, in English. “You may pe the laird’s

prisoner,” he said between his teeth, “but why did you come up

here?—You came to spy, to spy!” He almost spat the words in the

intruder’s face. “And with spiess, who haf seen what they should

not haf seen, there iss a ferry short way . . . either thiss,” he

unsheathed an inch or two of his dirk, “or the lochan down yonder

with a stone round the neck!”

“I am not a spy,” retorted Captain Windham haughtily. “I knew nothing

of there being cottages here; I was taking a walk, and came upon you

entirely by accident.”

“A walk, when yesterday your foot wass so hurt that you must ride the

laird’s horse!” hissed Lachlan, bringing out all the sibilants in

this not ineffective retort. “All thiss way for pleasure with a foot

that iss hurt! And then you will pe going back to the _saighdearan

dearg_—to the red soldiers—at Kilcumein and pe telling them. . . .

Ach, it will certainly pe petter . . .” And his fingers closed round

the black hilt at his groin; Keith had never seen fingers which more

clearly itched to draw and use a weapon.

But at this point Neil the piper intervened, laying his hand on his

brother’s arm, shaking his head, and speaking earnestly in their

native tongue, and Keith, concluding that a professional musician (if

that term could possibly be extended to one who produced sounds like

this morning’s) would be a man of peace, felt more secure, not knowing

that in a fray the piper habitually gave his pipes to his boy and

fought with the best. But he heartily wished himself back at the house

again; it would have been far better had he taken his host’s warning

to heart instead of making a foolish jest about it.

During the colloquy, however, there approached the group a handsome,

venerable old man whom Keith had not previously noticed. He came

towards them tapping the ground with a long staff, as if of uncertain

sight, and said something first to Lachlan and then to Neil. The piper

appeared to listen with attention, and on that turned to the captive.

“My father iss asking you,” he said, in a manner which suggested that

he was seeking for his words in an unfamiliar tongue, “to permit him

to touch you, and to pe speaking with you. He iss almost blind. He

hass not the English, but I will pe speaking for him.”

“Certainly, if he wishes it,” replied Captain Windham with

resignation, thinking that ‘permission’ to touch him might well have

been asked earlier, and not taken so violently for granted.

Neil took his father’s hand, and led him up to the interview. The

old man, who was obviously not completely blind, peered into the

Englishman’s face, while his hands strayed for a moment or two over

his shoulders and breast. He then addressed a question to his elder

son, who translated it.

“He asks if you wass meeting a _curra_ yesterday?”

“If I had any notion what a _curra_ was,” returned Keith, “I might be

able to satisfy your father’s curiosity. As it is——”

“A _curra_,” explained Neil, struggling, “iss . . . a large bird,

having a long . . . a long . . .”

“It iss called ‘heron’ in the English,” interposed Lachlan. And he

added violently, “_Mallachd ort_! wass you meeting a heron yessterday?”

The Erse sounded like an objurgation (which it was) and the speaker’s

eyes as they glared at Keith had turned to dark coals. It was

evidently a crime in these parts to encounter that bird, though to the

heron’s victim himself it wore rather the aspect of a calamity.

Ignoring this almost frenzied query he replied shortly to the official

interpreter: “Yes, unfortunately I did meet a heron yesterday, which

by frightening my horse led to—my being here to-day.”

Lachlan MacMartin smote his hands together with an exclamation

which seemed to contain as much dismay as anger, but Neil contented

himself with passing on this information to his parent, and after a

short colloquy turned once more to the Englishman. “My father iss

_taibhsear_,” he explained. “That iss, he hass the two sights. He knew

that the heron would pe making Mac—the laird to meet with you.”

“Gad, I could wish it had not!” thought Keith; but judged it more

politic not to give this aspiration utterance.

“And he asks you whether you wass first meeting Mac ’ic Ailein near

watter?”

“If that name denotes Mr. Ewen Cameron,” replied Keith, “I did. Near a

good deal of ‘watter’.”

This was passed on to the seer, involving the repetition of a word

which sounded to Captain Windham like “whisky,” and roused in his mind

a conjecture that the old man was demanding, or about to demand,

that beverage. None, however, was produced, and after thanking the

Englishman, in a very courtly way, through the medium of his son, the

soothsayer departed again, shaking his head and muttering to himself;

and Keith saw him, when he reached the cottages, sit down upon a bench

outside the largest and appear to fall into a reverie.

Directly he was safely there, Lachlan MacMartin reverted with

startling suddenness to his former character and subject of

conversation.

“You haf seen what you should not haf seen, redcoat!” he repeated

fiercely. “Pefore you go away from thiss place you shall be swearing

to keep silence!”

“That I certainly shall not swear to do,” replied Captain Windham

promptly. “I am not accustomed to take an oath at any man’s bidding,

least of all at a rebel’s.”

Again the dark flame shone in the Highlander’s eyes.

“And you think that we will pe letting you go, Sassenach?”

“I think that you will be extremely sorry for the consequences if you

do not,” returned the soldier. “You know quite well that if you lay a

finger upon me you will have to answer for it to your master or chief,

or whatever he is!”

“We are the foster-brothers of Mac ’ic Ailein,” responded Lachlan

slowly. (“What, all of you?” interjected Keith. “I wish him joy of

you!”) “He knows that all we do iss done for him. If we should pe

making a misstake, not knowing hiss will . . . or if you should fall

by chance into the loch, we should pe sorry, but we could not help it

that your foot should pe slipping, for it wass hurt yessterday . . .

and you would nefer go back to Kilcumein to tell the _saighdearan

dearg_ what you haf peen seeing.”

He did not now seem to be threatening, but rather, with a kind of

gloomy satisfaction, thinking out a plausible course of action with

regard to the intruder, and it was a good deal more disquieting to the

latter than his first attitude. So was the expression on the faces of

the other men when Lachlan harangued them volubly in his own language.

His brother Neil alone appeared to be making some remonstrance, but in

the end was evidently convinced, and almost before the unlucky officer

realised what was toward, the whole group had launched themselves upon

him.

Keith Windham fought desperately, but he had no chance at all, having

been surrounded and almost held from the outset, and in a moment he was

borne down by sheer weight of numbers. Buttons came off his uniform,

his wig was torn bodily from his head by some assailant who probably

imagined that he had hold of the Sassenach’s own hair, he was buffeted

and nearly strangled, and lay at last with his face pressed into the

heather, one man kneeling upon his shoulders, while another tied his

hands behind his back, and a third, situated upon his legs, secured

his ankles. Outraged and breathless, the soldier had time for only two

sensations: surprise that no dirk had yet been planted in him, and

wonder whether they really meant to take him down and throw him into

the lake.

The struggle had been conducted almost in silence; but conversation

broke out again now that he was overpowered. Only for a moment,

however; then, as suddenly, it ceased, and the heavy, bony knees on

Captain Windham’s shoulder-blades unexpectedly removed themselves. A

sort of awestruck silence succeeded. With faint thoughts of Druids and

their sacrifices in his mind Keith wondered whether the patriarchal

soothsayer were now approaching to drive a knife with due solemnity

into his back . . . or, just possibly, to denounce his descendants’

violence. But he could not twist himself to look, for the man on his

legs, though apparently smitten motionless, was still squatting there.

And then a voice that Keith knew, vibrating with passion, suddenly

shouted words in Erse whose purport he could guess. The man on his

legs arose precipitately. And next moment Ewen Cameron was kneeling

beside him in the heather, bending over him, a hand on his shoulder.

“Captain Windham, are you hurt? God forgive me, what have they been

doing? _Tied!_” And in a moment he had snatched a little knife out of

his stocking and was cutting Keith’s bonds. “Oh, why did I let you out

of my sight! For God’s sake tell me that you are not injured!”

He sounded in the extreme of anxiety—and well he might be, thought the

indignant Englishman, who made no haste to reply that, if exhausted,

he was as yet unwounded. He made in fact no reply at all, while the

young chieftain, white with agitation and anger, helped him to his

feet. When at last he stood upright, hot and dishevelled, and very

conscious of the fact, Captain Windham said, in no friendly tone:

“You were just in time, I think, Mr. Cameron—that is, if, now that you

are here, your savages will obey you.”

From pale the young man turned red. “I warned you, if you remember,”

he said rather low, and then, leaving Captain Windham to pick up his

hat and wig and to restore some order to his attire, strode towards

the silent and huddled group of his retainers, who had retreated in a

body nearer to the crofts. Angry and humiliated as Keith felt, it was

some consolation to him, as he brushed the pieces of heather off his

uniform, and pulled his wig once more over his own short dark hair, to

observe that, whatever their master was saying to them in the Erse,

it seemed to have a most salutary and withering effect. Even the

redoubtable Lachlan, who hoarsely uttered some remark, presumably an

excuse, was reduced to complete silence, either by the very terse and

vigorous reply which he drew upon himself, or by the threatening

attitude of the speaker.

All this time the prophetic elder had sat at his cottage door

listening, with his head tilted back in the manner of the blind, but

taking no part in the reckoning which was falling upon the offenders,

just as (presumably) he had sat throughout the assault. And having

made short work of the culprits, the rescuer now seemed in haste to

remove the rescued, and came towards him, his eyes still very blue and

fierce.

“If you will allow me, Captain Windham, I will take you back to the

house, away from these savages, as you rightly call them.”

“Thanks, I can return safely enough, no doubt,” replied Keith

indifferently, pulling down his waistcoat. “There are no more

encampments of them, I believe, on the way back.”

“I should prefer to escort you,” returned Ardroy, most acutely vexed,

as was evident. And, since his vexation did not at all displease the

Englishman, he picked up his staff and preceded him in silence off the

plateau.

They had gone some way down the mountain path before Ewen Cameron

spoke again.

“I had no right to accept your sword,” he said, in a voice still

bitter with mortification, “if I could not protect you against my own

followers. I would not have had this happen for a thousand pounds. I

can offer you no apologies that are deep enough for such an outrage.”

“Except for the loss of some buttons, I am not much the worse,”

replied Keith dryly without turning his head.

“But I am,” he heard the Highlander say behind him in a low voice.

Nothing more passed between them until they had arrived at the level

of the loch, but by that time a rather remarkable change had come upon

Keith. Much better and more dignified to make light of the outrage

which he had just suffered than to exaggerate it by sulking over it.

Besides, he was beginning to be sorry for the palpable distress of

that punctilious young man, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, who could not in

very justice be blamed for what had happened.

So he stopped and turned round. “Mr. Cameron,” he said frankly, “I

have no one but myself to thank for the rough handling I received up

yonder. You warned me not to go far afield; and moreover I acted like

a fool in staying there to watch. Will you forgive my ill-temper, and

let me assure you that I shall think no more of the episode except to

obey your warnings more exactly in future.”

Ardroy’s face cleared wonderfully. “You really mean that, sir?”

“Assuredly. I ran my head into the lion’s mouth myself. I shall be

obliged if you will not mention my folly to the ladies; a soldier’s

self-esteem, you know, is easily hurt.” His smile went up a little at

the corner.

A sparkle came into Ewen Cameron’s eyes. “You are generous, Captain

Windham, and I am not deceived by your plea for silence. I am

so ashamed, however, that I welcome it for the sake of my own

self-esteem.”

“But I mean what I say,” returned Keith. (He was quick enough in the

uptake, this young chief of barbarians!) “It was the act of an utter

fool for me, in this uniform, to stand gaping at . . . at what was

going on up there. You know what it was, I presume?” he added, with a

lift of the eyebrows.

“Naturally,” said Ewen without embarrassment. “It was that which

brought me up there—most fortunately. But now,” he went on with a

frown, “now I am not sure that I shall allow those arms to be carried

by men in my tail who have so disgraced themselves and me.—Let us go

on, if you will, for when I have escorted you to the house I shall

return to deal with that question.”

“You seemed,” observed Keith, as they went on once more, “to be

dealing with it pretty satisfactorily just now!” (So he proposed, as

a punishment, to debar the offenders from the pleasures of armed

rebellion!)

“At least, before I consent to their following me on Monday,” said the

dispenser of justice, striding on, “they shall all beg your pardon!”

“Oh, pray excuse them that!” exclaimed Keith, not at all welcoming the

prospect. “I should be horribly embarrassed, I assure you. Moreover, I

can almost sympathise with their zeal—now that there is no prospect of

my being thrown into the lake here with a stone round my neck.”

His captor stopped. “Was that what they were going to do?” he asked in

a horrified tone.

“They spoke of it, since I would not promise to keep silence on what I

had seen. They were quite logical, you know, Mr. Cameron, for what I

saw was certainly not meant for the eyes of an English officer!”

“You were my prisoner—my guest—they had no excuse whatever!” declared

the young man, wrath beginning to seize on him again. “Neil and

Lachlan knew that, if the others did not. And Angus—what was Angus

about not to stop them?”

“Is that the blind veteran who takes such an interest in the natural

history of these parts?”

“What do you mean?” asked his companion.

“Why,” answered Keith, who was after all enjoying a kind of secret

revenge by quizzing him, “that he was particular to enquire, through

his estimable son, your piper, whether I had encountered a heron

before I made your acquaintance yesterday.”

The mention of that fowl appeared for the second time to startle his

host (though until that moment Keith had forgotten its effect upon him

last night). “Ah, my foster-father asked you that?” he murmured, and

looked upon the Englishman with a rather troubled and speculative

gaze. But Keith had found a new subject of interest. “Is the old

gentleman really your foster-father?” he enquired. “But of course he

must be, if his sons are your foster-brothers.”

“I think,” said the foster-son somewhat hastily, “that you can return

safely from here, so, if you will excuse me, Captain Windham, I will

now go back to Slochd nan Eun.”

“To execute judgment,” finished Keith with a smile. “Indeed, I am not

so devoid of rancour as to wish to hinder you. But if you do condemn

your foster-relations to stay at home,” he added rather meaningly,

“you will be doing them a good turn rather than an ill one.”

It seemed doubtful, however, if Ewen Cameron had heard this remark,

for he was already striding lightly and quickly back in the direction

of the mountain path, his kilt swinging about his knees as he went.

* * * * * *

It was an odd coincidence that at supper that evening, after Angus

MacMartin’s name had come up in some talk between Miss Cameron and Mr.

Grant, the former should turn to Captain Windham and ask if he had

seen their _taibhsear_ or seer? Seeing instantly from Ardroy’s face

that he was regretting the introduction of his foster-father’s name

into the conversation, Keith made malicious haste to reply that he had

contrived to get as far as the soothsayer’s dwelling, and that his

reception there had been a memorable experience. Immediately the

ladies asked if Angus had ‘seen’ anything while the visitor was there,

to which Keith, with a glance at his host, replied with great suavity

that such might well have been the case, since he appeared, towards

the end of the visit, to be entirely withdrawn from outward events.

“He left the honours to his interesting sons,” he explained with a

smile, “who entertained me so . . . so wholeheartedly that if Mr.

Cameron had not appeared upon the scene I might be there still.” But

at this point Ewen, with a heightened colour, forcibly changed the

conversation.

CHAPTER IV

In spite of a certain amount of turmoil earlier in the day, almost the

usual Sunday calm lay on the house of Ardroy between five and six that

evening, and in it Alison Grant sat at one of the windows of the long

living-room, her arms on the sill, her cheek on her joined hands. Her

father had gone to Achnacarry, Ewen was she knew not where, her aunt,

she believed, in her bedchamber. It would be better, Alison thought,

if she were in hers, upon her knees.

But she could pray here, too, looking out on this blue and purple

loveliness of distance, and here she might get a passing glimpse of

Ewen, busy though he was, and would not thus be missing any of these

precious last moments of him. The sands were slipping so fast

now . . .

Alison pulled herself up. The sands were indeed running out, but

towards how glorious an hour! Prayed for and wrought for with so much

faith and selfless devotion (as well as with so much crooked

counter-plot and intrigue), it was to strike to-morrow, when his

banner would proclaim to all the winds that the fairy prince of the

hopes of a generation was here at last on Scottish soil. And to-morrow

Ewen would lay his sword at those long-expected feet. Happy Ewen—happy

to be among the faithful, when many were forsworn; happy in that he

was a man and could play a man’s part. For what could a woman do but

hope, and what had she to give but prayers!

Again Alison checked her thoughts, or rather, a new thought came to

her. Why, _she_ gave what no one else in wide Scotland had to

give—Ewen himself!

For a moment she saw herself, as it were, irradiated by the splendour

of that priceless gift; then, with a sudden terror, she knew that her

will was not to a gift, but to a loan. She was only lending Ewen to

the Prince. A gift is gone from one’s hands for ever; a loan comes

back. She made this loan willingly—more than willingly; but as a free

gift, never to be resumed—no, no!

The door in the far corner of the room opened, and Alison swiftly

withdrew the hands that she was pressing over her eyes. Miss Cameron

came in, looking exactly as usual in her Sunday paduasoy, not a hair

out of place beneath her cap, and no sign of agitation or excitement

on her firm-featured, pleasant visage. By only one thing was this

Sunday of last preparations marked off from any other, that she wore

at her waist the capacious black silk pocket in which she kept the

household keys.

“Ah, there you are, child! Your father is not returned, I suppose?

Where is Ewen?”

“I do not know, Aunt Margaret.” Alison’s voice seemed to herself a

little unsteady, so, with some idea of covering this deviation from

the usual she added, “Nor do I know where Captain Windham is got to

either.”

“Captain Windham is down by the loch, my dear; I saw him set out in

that direction. And I have my reasons for thinking he’ll not have gone

farther.” There was an odd tone in Miss Cameron’s voice, and a twinkle

in her eye, as she sat down on the window seat by the girl, plunging

her hand into that capacious pocket of hers.

“’Twas our redcoat that I came to speak to you about. Alison, do you

know what these are?”

She laid on the window-sill between them two buttons covered with gold

thread.

“They look,” said Alison, studying them, “like the buttons on the

lapels of Captain Windham’s uniform. I noticed this morning that some

were missing. How did you come by them, Aunt Margaret?”

“Neil MacMartin brought them to me about half an hour ago. Before that

they were reposing in the heather up at Slochd nan Eun, where their

owner also reposed, very uncomfortably, I fear, yesterday afternoon. I

can’t keep from laughing when I think of it!” declared Miss Cameron.

“And, Alison, are not men the sly creatures! To think that Ewen knew

of this yesterday evening, and said never a word!”

“Knew of what, Aunt Margaret?”

“I will tell you,” said Aunt Margaret, with visible enjoyment of the

prospect. “It seems that yesterday afternoon my fine Captain very

incautiously walked up to Slochd nan Eun by his lane, and arrived

there just as the arms were being taken out of Angus’s thatch. Not

unnaturally the MacMartins and the others thought that he was a

Government spy, so they fell upon him, tied him up, and might have

proceeded to I know not what extremities if Ardroy had not appeared in

the very nick of time.”

“Oh, what a dreadful thing!” said Alison, aghast.

“Exactly Ewen’s view, as you may imagine. He has not yet forgiven the

two MacMartins, whom he holds most to blame. Neil, in the greatest

despair, has just been to beg me to intercede for him and Lachlan, and

seemed to think that the restoration of these buttons, torn off, so I

gathered, in the struggle, would go to prove their penitence.”

“Was Captain Windham at all hurt, do you think?”

“No, I do not think so, though I can quite believe that it was not his

mother’s bosom he was in—you know the Erse saying. Neil admits that

they had him on his face in the heather when they trussed him up, and

that two of them sat upon him. Well, they are paying for it now. As

you know, Ardroy is not in general easily angered, but when he is he

is not easily pacified neither. Neil looks like a whipped dog; ’tis

really comical, and I dare say Lachlan is ready to cut his own throat.

I think you had best do the interceding, my dear; and you can give

Ewen the buttons to return, for we women cannot restore them to

Captain Windham without his knowing that his misadventure is no longer

the secret that he and Ewen hoped it was.”

But Alison left the buttons on the sill as if she dreaded to touch

them. “I wish, oh, I wish that mishap had not befallen Captain

Windham!”

“Never fash yourself about Captain Windham, my lass; I warrant he can

fend for himself. Ewen should not have brought him here at a moment so

inopportune—just what a man would do, without thought of

consequences! At the least he might have locked him up somewhere out

of harm’s way, and not made all this parade of his being a guest and

the like.”

“_I_ think it fine of Ewen to have behaved so,” retorted Alison rather

mutinously.

“Bless you, child,” said Miss Cameron, smiling, “so it is. I’d not

have him a churl. But they must have made a compact, the two deceitful

bodies, not to let us know. And to think that I asked the Captain at

supper last night had he seen our _taibhsear_—do you mind of it? And

he smiling and saying he was well entertained up at Slochd nan Eun!”

“But Ewen did not smile,” amended Alison. “He was displeased; I saw

it, and wondered why.”

“Now that you mention it, I remember I saw him glower a wee. He’s not

so deep as yon Englishman, I’m thinking. All the same, he can keep a

secret. . . . Alison, my bonny lass, do you think he’ll have secrets

from you when you are wed?”

“No,” said Alison, shaking her dark curls with a half-secret smile.

“Or if he has, I’ll know ’tis something I had best be ignorant of.”

“Then you’ll make a dutiful wife, my dear,” pronounced Miss Cameron,

smiling too.

“If ever I am a wife at all!” suddenly came from Alison with a catch

of the breath, and she turned her head away.

Margaret Cameron, who was never known to show much emotion, who even

now, at this last hour before what might prove so tremendous a dawn,

seemed mainly occupied with amusement at Captain Windham’s misfortune,

gazed at that little dark head, so beautifully and proudly set on its

long neck, and a profound change came over her cheerful and practical

face. Thirty years ago, in the Fifteen, she too had stood where Alison

stood now, and had seen her lover go from her down the dark defile.

She had never seen him return. . . . Alison did not know this, and

even Ewen, though he had heard the story, thought that Aunt Margaret

had long ago forgotten her tragedy.

“Oh, my dear, do not say that!”

Struck by the unfamiliar note in the elder woman’s voice, Alison

turned her head quickly, and met the look in those eyes, nearly as

blue as Ewen’s. It was a surprise to her, and yet—how could she have

imagined that Aunt Margaret did not realise what she, Alison, risked

. . . what they both risked!

“I did not mean that,” she exclaimed rather tremulously. “To be sure

Ewen will come back, and we shall be wed some day; but I cannot help

knowing, as he does, how even Lochiel himself has been torn in two by

the Prince’s coming without the aid that was promised. But when Ewen

goes to-morrow he shall never guess how cowardly my heart is.”

Miss Cameron bent forward and kissed her.

“That’s my brave lass! We shall both be as gay as the laverock, I dare

say, till he’s fairly away, and then we can be as hare-hearted as we

please, with no one to see. Hark, there’s the boy’s step! I’ll leave

you, my dear; don’t forget to put in a word for poor Neil.”

‘Till he is fairly away.’ It echoed in the girl’s ears as Miss Cameron

slipped from the room. Why, one could not even imagine what the house

of Ardroy would be like without Ewen!

“Heart’s darling, are you there?” He had come in by the door from the

hall, and now threw himself down beside her on the window seat.

“Hardly a word have I had with you this livelong day! And now I must

ride over to Achnacarry for Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh’s final orders, and

shall not be back till late, I fear me. But all’s ready here, I

think.”

“I wish I were more ready,” thought Alison, devouring him with her

eyes. His bright hair grew down in such an enchanting square on his

wide forehead, and a desire came upon her to pass her hand over some

of its thick waves. “Ah, to see the Prince at last, at last, Ewen,

with one’s own eyes!”

“You’ll see him yourself before long, Alison, I hope, in Edinburgh, or

maybe Perth—or even, before that, at Achnacarry, if he honours it. Who

knows? Meanwhile you can be practising your curtsy, _m’eudail_!”

“You do not know what His Royal Highness will do after the standard is

set up?”

“I’ve not a notion. But I shall contrive to send you word of our

movements, never fear. I suppose that somewhere or other we shall be

obliged to try conclusions with Sir John Cope and the Government

troops.”

The words reminded Alison of the commission just laid upon her. She

took up the buttons from the window-sill and held them out towards

him.

“Ewen, these have just been brought down from Slochd nan Eun.”

Her lover looked at them with a surprise not quite free from

embarrassment. “They must have come off Captain Windham’s uniform,” he

observed non-committally. “I will give them back to him.” And he took

them from her.

“I must tell you that I have just heard how it was that he lost them,”

confessed the girl.

Ewen’s mouth tightened. He laid the buttons on the sill again. “How

came that? I had hoped——”

“Yes, dearest, I know; but the matter came out by reason of Neil’s

bringing the buttons to Aunt Margaret this afternoon as a kind of

peace-offering, it would seem. But, Ewen, what a shocking thing to

have happened! I do not wonder that you were angry.”

By the laird of Ardroy’s looks, he was angry still. Alison trusted

that he would never look at her, on her own account, in that stern

way; and perhaps indeed Ewen realised that he was frowning on the

innocent, for his brow relaxed and he took her hand into his as if in

apology.

“Indeed, Alison, my heart was in my mouth when I came upon the

MacMartins and the rest up there yesterday; for all I knew they had

dirked Captain Windham. It seems they had thought of throwing him into

the loch. He should not have gone so far from the house; I had warned

him against it. But he behaved very well over the affair, and we

agreed not to tell you or Aunt Margaret, so you must neither of you

say a word to him about the matter this evening.”

“But he must have been greatly offended and incensed. It is true that

he was very agreeable at supper, even though Aunt Margaret asked him

had he seen Angus.” She paused, wrinkling her brows. “Ewen, do you

think that he was only feigning?”

“No, I do not think so, although he was very angry at first—and

naturally. Afterwards he made to treat the affair almost as a joke.

But I do not think that in his heart he can have considered it as a

joke. And considering that his person should have been held sacred, it

was a very black disgrace for me, and I did well to be angry. I am

still angry,” he added somewhat unnecessarily, “and I have not yet

resolved whether I shall allow the two MacMartins to accompany me

to-morrow.”

“Not take Neil and Lachlan to Glenfinnan—not take your piper and your

right-hand man!” exclaimed Alison, almost incredulous. “But, Ewen,

dearest, you will break their hearts for ever if you leave them

behind! That punishment is too great! It was surely in ignorance that

they sinned; you yourself said that Captain Windham should not have

gone there, and in that uniform they must naturally have thought——”

“Neil and Lachlan did _not_ sin in ignorance,” interrupted Ewen

sternly. “I had particularly told them that morning what was Captain

Windham’s position here. The others, if you like, had more excuse,

though why Angus did not prevent their setting upon him, as he could

have done, I cannot think. The reason he gave was so——” He broke off,

and pushed about the buttons on the sill for a moment or two, then,

raising his head, said, “I have not yet told you, Alison, how Angus

‘saw’ last month that this fellow Windham and I would meet.”

“Angus ‘saw’ that you would meet!” repeated Alison, wide-eyed. “Oh,

Ewen, why did you not tell me?”

“Because I forgot all about it till last Friday night. Yes, and what

is more, it appears that we are to keep on meeting, confound him!”

“Do you then dislike Captain Windham so much?” asked Alison quickly.

“I do not dislike him at all,” Ewen assured her, “though I confess

that I cannot quite make him out. But I have no desire for the

continual rencontres with him which Angus promises me. And I am sure

that Captain Windham cannot possibly view me with anything but dislike

for capturing him—and now comes yesterday’s affair.—Don’t look so

troubled, my heart!”

“Tell me what Angus said.”

Ewen looked at her a moment as if considering. “But you must not

believe it too implicitly, darling; I do not. Though I admit,” he

added, as though wishing to be quite just, “that the old man’s

predictions have sometimes fulfilled themselves in an extraordinary

way. . . . This one began by something about a heron.”

“That, then, was why you were so much surprised on Friday evening,”

interpolated Alison in a flash. “I mean, when Captain Windham said

that a heron had brought down his horse. I saw it, Ewen. But how——”

“I will tell you from the beginning,” said her betrothed. He got up

and put a knee on the window seat. “It was that day at the end of last

month when Lochiel’s message came about the Prince’s landing—you

remember? Early that morning Lachlan had been very troublesome,

wanting to shoot the heron that lives on the island in the loch,

because his father had been having a vision about one. I forbade him

to do it.—That reminds me, I have not seen the bird of late, but I do

not think that Lachlan dare have disobeyed me.—After I had taken leave

of you that evening, darling, and was just about to set off to

Achnacarry, I met Angus by the Allt Buidhe burn. He had come down from

Slochd nan Eun on purpose to see me, and he told me very solemnly that

I should soon meet with a man whose destiny would in some unknown way

be bound up with mine, and that I should meet him through the agency

of a heron. Angus went on to say, ‘And as the threads are twisted at

your first meeting, foster-son, so will they always shape themselves

at all the rest—a thread of one colour, a thread of another.’ I said

on that, ‘At all the rest, Angus? How many more, then?’ and he thought

a while and answered, ‘I saw you meeting five times. The first time

and the last were by water . . . but always the place changed. Oh, my

son, if only I could know what it means!’ I asked then whether I ought

to avoid this man, and Angus said, ‘You will not be able to avoid him;

the heron by the waterside will bring you to him.’ ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘that

then is why Lachlan wanted to shoot the _curra_ this morning!’ But

Angus shook his head and muttered, ‘A man cannot change the future in

that way. What is to be will be.’

“I thought at the time, Alison,” went on Ewen explanatorily, looking

down at her intent face, “that I should come on this man some day, if

ever I did, when I was out with a fowling-piece, or something of the

sort, and then, to tell truth, I forgot all about the matter in the

stir of the news from Moidart; and thus it never crossed my mind when

I encountered Captain Windham that he could be the man . . . till he

mentioned the heron which startled his horse, and so indirectly—or

directly, if you will—led to my overtaking him by Loch Oich, and our

fight.”

“And is that all that Angus said?” asked Alison breathlessly.

“There was one thing more, I remember, for when, after he had assured

me that I should not be able to avoid this man, I said, ‘He is an

enemy, then?’ Angus replied, ‘That I cannot see. He will do you a

great service, yet he will cause you bitter grief. It is dark.’ You

know how vexatious it is when one with the two sights cannot see any

more. It is like beginning to read a book of which the last pages are

lost.”

“I do not think that I should wish to read any more,” said the girl,

shivering a little, and she too got up from the window seat. “I have

never before met anyone who had the gift so strongly as Angus, and

indeed it is not canny. You are used to it, Ewen, since you have known

him all your life, and I think you do not believe in it very much,

either.”

“No, I do not,” admitted her lover. “But it would not be kind to tell

my foster-father so.”

Alison looked out of the window for a moment, biting her lip hard.

“Ewen, when a _taibhsear_ ‘sees’ any person it is nearly always a

warning of that person’s imminent death!”

Ewen put his arm round her. “No, you are wrong, my dear. A _taibhsear_

has been known to see a man’s future wife—sometimes, indeed his own. I

wonder Angus never ‘saw’ you, sitting by the hearth here in the days

when you were in Paris . . . long days those were for me, _mo

chridhe_! Moreover, in this matter of the heron he ‘saw’ two people,

and neither Captain Windham nor I can be going to die very soon, can

we, if we must meet each other four times more?”

She looked up and met his expression, tender but half quizzical. “No,

that is true.”

“Angus said nothing about death,” went on Ewen reassuringly. “And he

seemed completely puzzled by his vision—or visions. If it were not for

that heron by Loch Oich, I vow I should think that he had dreamed the

whole business.”

“Have you told Captain Windham any of this?” asked Alison.

“Not I. He would only laugh at it, and I am sure, too, that he has no

desire to meet me again, so that I should not be telling him anything

to pleasure him.”

“Do you think,” suggested Alison slowly, “that Angus did not hinder

his sons and the others from attacking Captain Windham because he

thought that he would be better out of the way—on your account?”

Her lover looked down at her with a rather startled expression. “I

never thought of that. . . . But no, I do not believe that was the

reason—it could not have been, unless he was lying over the reason he

gave me.”

“And what was that?”

“It was outrageous enough. He said that there was no cause for

interference, because he knew that the _saighdear dearg_ and I had yet

several times to meet, so he would take no harm! What do you think of

that? Had he not been an old man, and nearly blind, and my

foster-father to boot, I declare that I could have shaken him when I

went back to Slochd nan Eun and upbraided him and was given that for

justification. It might very well have been Captain Windham’s wraith

that I was to tryst with!” He glanced at the clock. “I must go,

darling.”

“What will become of Captain Windham to-morrow?” asked Alison with a

tiny frown.

“I do not know; it is a question I have to ask Lochiel.”

“One thing more, Ewen; did not Angus, after he had seen Captain

Windham in the flesh yesterday, as I suppose he did—did he not tell

you any more about him and . . . and the future?”

“Not a word. No, as I say, the last pages of the book are torn out

. . . but then it is so with every book in which our lives are written.”

He had both his arms round her now, and Alison hid her eyes against

his breast, for he was so tall that even the top of her head was

scarcely level with his chin.

“Why do you say that, Ewen? Oh, Ewen, why do you say that?”

“What ails you, heart’s darling?” he asked, looking down at that dark

head tenderly. “It is true. You’re not thinking, surely, that at the

end of the book I can care for you any less, little white love? That’s

impossible . . . and I think it’s impossible that I should care for

you more, either,” he added, and put a kiss on the soft hair.

Alison clung to him, saying nothing, mindful of her proud promise to

Aunt Margaret, but shaken with the knowledge of the red close of many

a life across whose pages the name of Stuart had been written.

Devotion to that name and cause was the religion in which she had been

reared; but the claims of religion can sometimes make the heart quail

. . . and Ewen was so splendid, so real and so dear! She forced a

smile and raised her head; her eyes were quite dry. “I must not keep

you from Lochiel; but when you return, Ewen, will you not tell your

foster-brothers that you have remitted their punishment?”

“For your sake, Alison?”

“No, for his who is waiting for them! Is he not needing every sword

that we can bring him?”

Ewen smiled down at her appreciatively. “You find clever arguments,

miss! I never said that they should not join me later.”

“As ghosts? You may find yourselves trysting with wraiths, as you

spoke of doing a while ago! Are they not capable of drowning

themselves in the loch, particularly Lachlan, if you put that shame

upon them, Ewen?”

“Yes,” said Ewen after a moment’s silence, “I’ll not deny that

Lachlan, at least, might throw himself into Loch na h-Iolaire. I

suppose that I must allow them to come with me, and if you see them

before my return, you can tell them so, rose of my heart.”

* * * * * *

The room was empty once more, almost as empty as it would be

to-morrow. And, since there was no one to see, Alison put her head

down upon her arms on the window-sill.

When she raised it again after some moments a small object rolled off

the sill and fell tinkling to the floor—one of Captain Windham’s

unfortunate buttons, which Ewen had forgotten after all to take with

him. As Alison stooped to recover it the thought of its owner came

sharply and forbiddingly into her mind, accompanied by all that she

had just heard about him. Ewen’s destiny bound up with his . . . and

he, yesterday, disgracefully handled by Ewen’s followers! Surely,

however he had passed it off, he must retain a grudge about that, and

it might be that in the future he would seize an opportunity of

repaying the outrage. Alison wished for a moment that she were not

Highland, and that belief in second sight did not run so in her blood.

She could not shake from her mind the conviction that for old Angus to

have seen the doubles of Ewen and the English officer meant the death

of one or both of them within the year. It was true that the

prediction had not seemed to trouble Ewen much, but he was a man, and

had his head full of Glenfinnan at present. Yet there was Captain

Windham, with nothing to do but to brood over the injury. Already, as

Ewen had felt, he might well have a dislike to his captor. And did it

not seem as though he had a horrid gift for dissimulation if, so soon

afterwards, he could pretend to find amusement in the mortifying thing

which had happened to him? What sort of a man was he really, this

stranger who was to cause her Ewen bitter grief?

Alison jumped to her feet and stood with clasped hands. “I’ll go along

the loch side, as though I were taking a walk, and if he is still

there I’ll engage him in talk, and perhaps I can find out a little

about him.” For in the house she could not so easily get speech with

him alone, and to-morrow he would surely be gone altogether. Yes, she

would do that; Captain Windham would never guess that she had come on

purpose. She slipped the buttons into her pocket and left the room.

CHAPTER V

It was not difficult to find Captain Windham by the loch, for the

delicate veils of birch foliage made no effective screen for his

strong scarlet. Alison saw him, therefore, before he was aware of her

presence. He was sitting a yard or two from the edge of Loch na

h-Iolaire, on the stump of a felled pine, with his arms folded on his

breast, staring at the water. Was he thinking of yesterday—meditating

some revenge? She would never know, because she dared not refer, even

indirectly, to that unlucky contretemps. The buttons were in her

pocket only for safe keeping.

Alison came very slowly along the ribbon of track through the heather,

her eyes fixed on the soldier’s unconscious figure. Ewen’s destiny in

_his_ hands! No, Angus had not said that exactly. Nor had Angus said

that he was an enemy; on the contrary, he was to render Ewen a great

service. . . . Technical enemy of course he was. She had his profile

now, clear against a reddish pine-trunk; he looked rather sad. He was

an enigma, neither friend nor enemy, and she would find out nothing,

do no good . . . and wished she had not come.

Then the best was to turn and go back again. No, it was too late for

that now. At that very moment Captain Windham must have heard her

step, for he turned his head, sprang up, and, uncovering, came towards

her between the pines.

“Pray do not let me drive Miss Grant away,” he said civilly.

“I . . . I fear I disturb you, sir,” said Miss Grant, really

discomposed.

“Disturb me! But I was not asleep, I assure you, and in breaking into

my meditations you may have been doing me a service.”

He smiled a little as he said it, but Alison looked at him warily,

wondering what he meant by that remark. Here they were, alone

together, and neither could see what was uppermost in the other’s

mind. _He_ did not know that strange thing prophesied of him, linking

him to an enemy, nor could she in the least read what were his

feelings with regard to Ewen, although it was a matter which concerned

her so vitally. But, notwithstanding that she had a moment ago turned

away like a coward from this interview, now she resolved to pursue it.

Surely her wits could point out some road by which she might arrive at

Captain Windham’s real sentiments?

Quite close to her was another convenient pine-stump, so she sank down

upon it murmuring something about resting for a moment. Captain

Windham stood beside her, his hands behind his back and his head bent,

and before she had settled upon her own line of attack startled her by

saying slowly, and even a trifle hesitatingly, that he had for the

last hour been greatly wishing for the privilege of a few minutes’

conversation with her.

Considerably surprised at this reversal of parts, Alison glanced up at

him. Was this remark a prelude to compliments or gallantry of some

kind? No; Captain Windham’s manner quite disposed of that idea. Yet he

said again, gravely, “I desire to ask a favour of you, Miss Grant.”

“Pray ask it, sir,” replied Alison, just a little stiffly.

There was a moment’s pause. “I believe that Mr. Cameron—Ardroy, I

suppose I should say—has ridden off to see his Chief, has he not?”

said the soldier.

“Yes,” said Alison, still less encouragingly.

“And by this time to-morrow——” Captain Windham left the sentence

unfinished, and, to her surprise, walked away from her with bent head

and stood at a little distance carefully pushing two or three fallen

pine-cones together with his foot. Finally he stooped, picked one up,

and came back, twirling it in his fingers.

“Miss Grant,” he said, studying it with apparent absorption, “I wish

that I could make Ardroy some return for his generous treatment of me.

This is not a mere figure of speech; I am in complete earnest. But the

only return that I can make he would never take at my hands.” He

raised his eyes and looked at her musingly. “What I wonder is, whether

he would take it at yours.”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked Alison, lifting her head a trifle

haughtily. Surely he was not going to offer Ewen money! She must

prevent that at all costs, or Heaven knew what might happen!

Captain Windham threw away the fir-cone. “Will you believe, Miss

Grant, that in what I am going to say I speak as a friend might

(though I dare not presume to call myself one) and that I have but one

aim in speaking—Mr. Cameron’s good and yours?”

Alison met his eyes, and they convinced her of his sincerity. She had

scarcely time to be amazed. “Yes, I do believe it,” she said in a

softened tone. “Please say what you wish, Captain Windham.”

“Then let me ask you,” said the Englishman earnestly, “whether you and

Ardroy realise on what a hopeless adventure he is embarking? Is it

possible that, on the strength of having captured two wretched

companies of raw recruits—for indeed they were no more than that—the

clans of these parts think that they will be able to defy the whole

military force of the Crown? Yes, Miss Grant, it is advice that I

should like to give Mr. Cameron, if he would only take it. Cannot you

use your interest with him? Forgive me if I trespass on delicate

ground, but . . . this is to be your home together, is it not? Think

again before you let him stake it on so hazardous a throw! You know

what happens to the property of a declared rebel. And he stakes more

than his property, Miss Grant!”

His voice was very grave. Alison, who had heard him through, answered

firmly, “Yes, I know that.” But the lovely colour was gone from her

cheeks, and her hands were holding each other tightly.

“It is not too late, even now,” urged her companion. “If I choose to

suppress the fact that I was brought here as Mr. Cameron’s prisoner,

who is to gainsay my assertion that I came as a guest? Only keep him

back from this crazy rendezvous to-morrow, which can but herald

disaster, and he may be able——”

“Keep him back!” exclaimed Alison. She had got up from her tree-stump.

“Do you suppose that I could? Do you suppose that if I could, I

would?” Her voice trembled a little.

“But, Miss Grant, consider! If this young man, this Prince of yours,

had come with an army——”

“Then it would have been safe to declare for him!” broke in Alison,

and her dark eyes flashed. “Oh, if that is the English way of

thinking, it is not the Highland! Because he comes alone, and trusts

himself to us, is not that the best of reasons why we should follow

him who has the right, Captain Windham, and who may yet prove to have

the might also?”

There was a short silence between them. On the other side of the loch

a curlew uttered its plaintive, liquid cry. Captain Windham drew

himself up a little.

“If you feel thus about the matter, Miss Grant,” he said rather dryly,

“there is no more to be said. I see that you will not take my

offering. The best I can wish you, then, is that the affair may burn

itself out as quickly as possible, for the longer it lasts the more

victims there are likely to be . . . afterwards. And I would give

much, believe me, to know that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy will not be among

them.”

Alison held out her hand impulsively. And she had been thinking that

he was brooding on revenge! “I thank you for those words, sir,” she

said with great sweetness, “because I believe that you mean them. But,

though I shall not easily forget your kindness, it is—forgive

me—useless to discuss the matter further.”

Captain Windham kissed her hand in silence, and offered her his arm

back to the house, if she were returning thither. Alison took it

readily enough, and as they left the loch, conversing on indifferent

topics, she had time to taste the surprise and relief which had come

to her there. If Fate’s chosen instrument—supposing he were really

that—were so well disposed towards Ewen, how could he in the future be

used against him?

And yet, later in the evening, waiting for Ewen’s return, she found

that, unreasonably perhaps, she disliked Captain Windham’s presumption

that she could, if she tried, influence her lover to betray his

convictions even more than the supposition that she could be induced

to try. She felt that the soldier understood neither Highlanders nor

Jacobites. But for his kindly and even generous intentions she had

nothing but gratitude.

* * * * * *

As for Keith Windham, whose meditations by Loch na h-Iolaire had moved

him to an effort which surprised him, he told himself that he had

never expected any other result. They were all blinded and besotted,

these Jacobites. He wondered whether Miss Grant would tell her

betrothed of his attempt. With Ardroy himself he naturally should not

think of expostulating; to do so would be mere waste of breath.

There was no Ardroy at supper, though it appeared that he was expected

back at any moment, and Keith shortly afterwards excused himself and

withdrew to his own bedchamber, having no wish to be an intruder on

the lovers’ last hours together, rebels though they were. But it was

too early to go to bed, so once more he pulled a couple of books at

random from the shelf on the wall, and settled down by the window to

read. One of them he opened before he realised what it was, and found

himself staring at ‘Most heartily do we beseech Thee with Thy favour

to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord King——’ but ‘James’ had

been neatly pasted over the ‘George’.

Captain Windham smiled. He held in his hand the Book of Common Prayer

as used and amended by the nonjuring Episcopalian Jacobites, and saw

with his own eyes the treason to which his ears might have listened

earlier in the day. For though, on rising, he had forgotten that it

was Sunday, this was a fact of which he had not long been suffered to

remain ignorant, since after breakfast Miss Cameron had said to him in

matter-of-fact tones—they were alone for the moment: “I doubt you

will wish to attend Morning Prayer with us, Captain Windham, even if

you be an Episcopalian, like most of the English, for I must not

disguise from you that we pray, not for King George, but for King

James.”

“‘Morning Prayer,’” Keith had stammered. “Is—do you—I had thought

that you were all Presbyterians hereabouts . . . or Papists,” he

added, suddenly remembering the old woman on Friday.

“Ah, not at all,” replied Miss Cameron composedly. “The MacDonalds of

the mainland and the most of the Frasers indeed are Papists, but we

Camerons are Episcopalians, and so are our neighbours, the Stewarts of

Appin. But we can get to kirk but rarely, and to-day in especial,

being, as you will understand, somewhat throng, we shall be obliged to

worship at home.”

“And who——”

“Why, my nephew the laird, naturally,” replied Miss Cameron. “Though

as Mr. Grant is with us, ’tis possible he may read the service

to-day.”

“Leaving your nephew free to preach, no doubt?” suggested Keith,

trying to control a twitch of the lip.

“Now you are laughing at us, sir,” observed Miss Cameron shrewdly, but

with perfect good humour. “No, Ardroy does not preach. But I have the

habit of reading a sermon to myself of a Sunday afternoon, and if you

scoff any more ’tis likely the same exercise would benefit you, and

I’ll be happy to lend you a volume of some English divine—Bishop

Jeremy Taylor, for instance.”

Keith bowed and gravely assured her that if she saw fit to do this he

would duly read a homily. But he had gone out into the garden smiling

to himself. That model young man—he could not be more than five- or

six-and-twenty—reading the Church service every Sunday to his

household! He thought of the young men of his acquaintance in the army

or in the fashionable world of London, the careless, loose-living

subalterns, the young beaux of White’s. Ye gods, what ribald laughter

would have gone up at the tale! . . . Yes, but not one of those

potential mockers could have beaten Ardroy in stature or looks or at

swordplay. Keith would not forget Loch Oich side in a hurry.

But he had not attended Morning Prayer.

Now he was rather wishing that he had done so, for he supposed that he

would never again have the chance of seeing a young man who could

fight in that style acting as chaplain. But perhaps Mr. Grant had

superseded him; Keith had not enquired. At any rate Ewen Cameron was

not engaged on particularly prayerful business at this moment, over at

his Chief’s house, nor would he be on his knees to-morrow. Afterwards

. . . well, it was likely that his relatives would have need to pray

for _him_!

He turned over the Prayer Book idly, and it opened next at the feast

of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the words of the Gospel leapt at

him: ‘Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or

father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake

. . .’

Though not much of a churchgoer himself, Captain Windham was shocked

at the analogy which occurred to him, and closing the Prayer Book

hastily, fell to wondering what was going to be done with him

to-morrow; also, whose hand had retrieved and laid upon his

dressing-table the two missing buttons from his uniform which he had

found there a short while ago.

It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the beat of hoofs. They

stopped in front of the porch, but he did not look out. Someone

dismounted, then Keith heard Miss Grant’s voice, with her heart in it:

“Ewen, you are come at last; it has been a long evening!”

“And will be a short night, Alison,” came the half-exultant reply.

“We march at daybreak for Glenfinnan.” And from the sudden silence

Keith guessed that the girl was in her lover’s arms. He moved away

from the window and began to pace up and down. So there was to be no

holding back. Ah, what a pity, what a pity!

Half an hour later he was back in his old place reading, but with a

lighted candle at his elbow now, when there was a knock, and Ardroy

himself came in, a big branched candlestick in his hand.

“You are not abed, Captain Windham! I must apologise, none the less,

for so late a visit.”

There was a kind of suppressed elation about him, and his eyes were as

blue as the sea.

“Your Highland nights are so light,” returned Keith, as he rose to his

feet, “that it is hard to believe it late.” Why should he, who cared

for no human being, feel regret that this young man was going to

destruction?

“My excuse,” went on Ewen, setting down the light he carried, “is that

I leave this house again in a few hours, and must speak with you first

on a matter that concerns you.”

“You will be setting out for—the rendezvous of which you told me?”

“Yes. And before I go——”

“Mr. Cameron,” broke in the Englishman, “you gave me a warning

yesterday to which I should have done well to listen. I suppose it is

too much to hope that, at this eleventh hour, you will listen to one

from me?”

As he said it he knew that he was a fool for his pains; that his

words, uttered on that astonishing impulse, so contrary to his

intention, were as useless as the little puff of air which at that

moment entered by the open window and set the candles a-quiver. And

over the bending flames the Highlander, looking very tall, gazed at

him straight and unyieldingly.

“You are too kind, Captain Windham. But if the matter of your warning

be what I suppose, you must forgive me for saying that you would only

be wasting your time.” His tone was courteous but very cold.

Keith shrugged his shoulders. After all, if a man _would_ rush on his

doom it was his own affair. “My time is far from valuable at present,”

he replied flippantly, “but yours no doubt is precious, Mr. Cameron. On

what matter did you wish to speak to me?”

“I have come to tell you from my Chief, Lochiel, that you are free

from to-morrow—on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“That you engage not to bear arms against the Prince for the remainder

of the campaign. Lochiel will accept an assurance given to me.”

“‘For the remainder of the campaign’!” exclaimed Keith rather

indignantly. “An impossible condition, on my soul!” He gave a short

laugh. “It is true that your ‘campaign’ is not like to be of long

duration!”

Ewen ignored the sneer. “You cannot tell, sir,” he replied gravely.

“But those are the terms which I am to offer you. Captain Scott has

accepted them, and has to-day gone to Fort William to have his wound

cared for.”

“Precisely,” retorted Keith. “Captain Scott is wounded; I am not.”

There was still indignation in his voice; nevertheless he was thinking

that if he accepted the offer he would be able to leave the Highlands

and return to Flanders and real warfare. It was a temptation. But some

deep-rooted soldierly instinct revolted.

He shook his head. “My sword is the King’s, and I cannot enter into an

indefinite engagement not to use it against his enemies. Indeed it is

fully time that I should ask you, Mr. Cameron, to restore me the

parole of honour which I gave you. I should prefer henceforward to be

your prisoner upon ordinary terms.”

But at this his gaoler seemed taken aback. “I fear that is impossible

at present, sir,” he replied with some hesitation. “If I left you

behind here there would be no one to guard you. As you will not accept

your freedom on the condition which is offered you, I have no choice

but to take you with me to-morrow—still on parole, if you please,” he

added, looking his captive straight in the face.

“I have requested you to give me back my parole, Mr. Cameron!”

“And I have already said that I cannot do so, Captain Windham!”

Once more they were facing each other across the candle-flames. Keith

began to feel annoyance.

“Am I then to go ranging the mountains with you for ever? You will

find me a great nuisance, Mr. Cameron.” (Mr. Cameron looked at that

moment as if he shared this opinion.) “But perhaps this is your way of

forcing Lochiel’s offer on me, for, by Gad, that is what it comes to!”

“No, no,” said Ewen hastily, and with a frown. “I had no such

intention. I will consult Lochiel again about the matter to-morrow,

and——”

“Can’t you do anything on your own responsibility, Mr. Cameron of

Ardroy? Must you always consult your Chief?”

He had goaded him at last. Ardroy’s head went up. “Had you not a

commanding officer in your regiment, Captain Windham?” he enquired

haughtily.

“Touché!” said Keith, with good humour. (It was a mutual hit, though.)

He liked to see his civilised young barbarian on the high horse. “But

suppose, Mr. Cameron, that I do not choose to wait so long, and tell

you frankly that, if you will not restore my parole to me, I shall

myself withdraw it from midnight to-night?”

“In that case,” said the barbarian with great promptitude, “I shall

put two of my gillies in here with you, lock the door and sleep across

it myself. . . . Do you tell me that you withdraw it?”

There was a second or two’s silence while Keith envisaged himself thus

spending the remainder of the night. It was on the tip of his tongue

to enquire whether the amiable Lachlan would be one of his guards, but

he suppressed the query. “No,” he said with a little grimace, “you may

keep my parole and I will keep my privacy. Let us hope that your

‘commanding officer’s’ wisdom will be able to cut the knot to-morrow. I

am to be ready, then, to accompany you at daybreak?”

“If you please,” said Ardroy stiffly. “I am sorry that I can do

nothing else. Good night.” He took up the candlestick and stalked out.

Captain Keith Windham remained staring for a moment at the closed door

and then began to smile rather ruefully. “A droll captivity, ’pon my

honour! Had I known that I was to be trailed about in this fashion my

attempt at warning might have been less disinterested than it was. But

I shall not make another.”

CHAPTER VI

Four days later Captain Windham was sitting at evening in a dark

little hut on the shores of Loch Eil, studying a pocket-book by the

light of a small lantern hung on the wattled wall behind him. A pile

of heather was all his seat; outside it was pouring with rain, but he,

unlike almost every one else, was at least under cover and secure, as

he had not been lately, from the attentions of the rapacious Highland

midges.

It was Thursday, the twenty-second of August, and since Monday he had

gone with Clan Cameron wherever it went. First of all Ardroy and his

contingent had rendezvoused with the main body of the clan at the very

place where Keith Windham now found himself again, Kinlochiel, at the

upper end of Loch Eil. Here, on that eventful Monday, Keith had had

his first meeting with the courteous and polished gentleman whom Clan

Cameron followed, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, nineteenth of the name.

And Lochiel had appeared so much distressed at the idea of the English

officer’s continual conveyance with them under guard, even possibly in

bonds, for they had no place in which they could conveniently leave

him behind, that Keith had been prevailed upon to extend the parole

which he had tried to take back from Ardroy, and to regard it as given

for the space of one week, dating from the day and hour of his capture

in the Great Glen. When that week was up, his gaolers seemed to think

that they would be able to make other arrangements about his custody.

After the rendezvous the clan had proceeded westwards, in the

direction of the coast, along a difficult road between close-pressed

craggy mountains, where the grey rock pushed in a myriad places

through its sparse covering, and came at last in the afternoon to the

trysting place at Glenfinnan. Though he was treated with every

civility, and rode in comfort on a horse of Ardroy’s, it had been a

mortifying journey for Captain Windham. Between the ranks of Camerons

marched sulkily the captured recruits of the Royals, without their

arms—like himself—and even Captain Scott’s white charger formed part

of the procession, to be offered to the ‘Prince’. As well, thought the

Englishman, be the prisoner of wandering Arabs.

So, scornful but half interested too, Keith Windham had been present

at a scene which, a week ago, he could little have imagined himself

witnessing, when, on the stretch of level ground at the head of Loch

Shiel, among that wild and lonely scenery, a thousand Highland throats

acclaimed the fair-haired young man standing below the folds of his

banner, and the very air seemed to flash with the glitter of their

drawn blades. It was very romantical and absurd, of course, besides

being rank rebellion; but there was no denying that these deluded and

shaggy mountaineers were in earnest, and Lochiel too, who was neither

shaggy nor—so it seemed to the observer—deluded in quite the same

sense . . . and certainly not absurd.

None observing or hindering him during the following days, Captain

Windham had taken the opportunity of keeping a fragmentary journal in

his pocket-book, and it was these notes which, for want of anything

better to do, he was now reading over in the little hut in the wet

twilight.

‘What an Army! ’tis purely laughable!’ he had written on August 20th.

‘The Men are fine, tall Fellows enough, particularly the Camerons—but

their Weapons! I have seen Muskets with broken Locks, Muskets with

broken Stocks, Muskets without Ramrods, and Men without Muskets at

all. There can’t be more than a Score of Saddlehorses all told, and

the Draught Horses are quite insufficient for Transport over such a

Road. Moreover the so-call’d “Army” is as yet compos’d of two Clans

only, the Camerons and some Part of the Macdonalds, its Number being,

I suppose, about thirteen hundred Men.

‘The Pretender’s Son I must admit to be a very personable young Man

indeed, with the _Bel Air_; they all appear craz’d about him. My own

young Achilles still very well-bred and agreeable, like his Chief. I

never lookt to see so much native Polish as Lochiel exhibits.

Achilles, if I mistake not, pretty well adores him. There is also a

younger Brother of the Chief’s, whom they call Doctor Archibald; with

him also my Warrior seems on very friendly Terms.’

Captain Windham turned over to the next two days’ records, which were

briefer, and brought him up to the present date.

‘August the 21st. Set out at last from that curst Spot, Glenfinnan.

But, after an Advance of one Mile, the Road was found to be so bad,

and the Horses so few, that the Rebels were oblig’d to leave twelve

out of their Score of Swivel Guns behind, and spent some Hours burying

’em in a Bog. As their total March to-day, to a Place call’d

Kinlocheil, was no more than four Miles, it looks as though ’twould be

some Weeks before the Breechless reach Civilisation.

‘August the 22nd. At Kinlocheil all Day. Prodigious Rain. Much-needed

Attempts seem to be going forward to organise the Transport, Wagons

and Carts of all Sorts being collected. Have scarce seen E.C. all

day.’

But he had hardly come to these last words, when a tall, wet figure

appeared without warning in the low doorway, and the diarist restored

his notebook somewhat hastily to his pocket. Ardroy stooped his head

to enter, taking off his bonnet and swinging it to remove the

raindrops. The dampness of the rest of his attire appeared to give him

no concern.

“Good evening, Mr. Cameron! Have you been burying any more cannon?”

enquired the soldier pleasantly.

Ardroy, reddening slightly, made no reply beyond returning the ‘Good

evening’, but hung up his bonnet on a nail and began to unfasten the

shoulder-brooch of his plaid. There was not a very great deal of

satisfaction for Captain Windham to be got out of baiting this ‘young

Achilles’ of his, because Achilles kept so tight a hold upon his

temper and his tongue. Or was it that he was naturally impassive?

Hardly, for Keith was sure that he felt the points of the darts which

he contrived from time to time to plant in him. Perhaps Ardroy thought

that the best way to meet his captive’s malice was to appear unaware

of it; and indeed the archer himself had to confess that this course

rather baffled him. He followed up his first shaft by another.

“You must admit that you should not have brought me here if you did

not wish me to learn your military dispositions—if such I am to call

that measure!”

And if the Highlander went on pretending that the unpinning of his

plaid was engaging his whole attention Keith would feel that he had

drawn blood. He knew that his own conduct verged on the puerile, but

the pleasure of pursuing it was too strong.

The big brooch, however, was undone at last, and Ewen said rather

dryly: “I am glad that your spirits are not suffering from the

weather, Captain Windham.”

“On the contrary,” said his prisoner cheerfully, leaning back against

the wall of the hut, his hands behind his head, “I am entertaining

myself by trying to recall any other great commander who began his

campaign by burying most of his artillery in a swamp; but I have

failed. Yet, by Gad, the plan might work a revolution in warfare—in

fact ’twould end it altogether if it were carried out to its logical

conclusion. Armies would take the field only to bury their muskets—and

perhaps,” he added maliciously, “that _will_ be your next step. I

protest that some of them would not take much harm by the interment!”

Ewen swung off his plaid. “Your mirth at our lack of equipment is very

natural,” he replied with complete equanimity. “But perhaps our ill

provision may not be widely known to our enemies. And is it not a fact

within your own military experience, Captain Windham,” he went on,

looking him in the face, “that it is what one supposes an enemy’s

forces to be rather than what they actually are which sometimes turns

the scale?”

It was the Englishman who coloured this time. In its absence of

specific reference to the mishap at High Bridge the retort was just

sufficiently veiled to enable him, had he chosen, to affect

unconsciousness of its sting. But he was too proud to do this.

“I deserved that,” he admitted, scrambling to his feet with the words.

“I am not such a dolt as to be unaware to what you allude. That you

feel obliged to remind me of last Friday’s disgrace proves that my own

remarks were not in the best of taste—and I apologise for them.”

But his tormentor’s apology appeared to embarrass Ewen Cameron much

more than his thrusts. “I am sorry I said that, Captain Windham!” he

exclaimed, with a vivacity which rather astonished the other. “I ought

not to have taunted you with a calamity for which you were not to

blame. That was in worse taste still.”

“Egad, Mr. Cameron, you are too punctilious,” said Keith carelessly.

“But if you are of that mind—I don’t say that I am—we may fairly cry

quits.”

“For after all,” pursued Ewen, throwing down his plaid, “since you are

not witnessing our preparations of your own free will, I suppose you

are at liberty to make what observations you please upon them.”

“You seem bent upon making allowances for me!” returned Keith with a

smile. “However, I do not complain of that; and if Fate should ever

reverse our positions, and give you, for instance, into my hands, I

hope I may be able to show the same generosity.”

Ardroy, who was now unbuckling his broadsword, stopped and gazed at

him rather intently in the feeble lantern-light, feeble because it

still had to contend with a measure of wet daylight. “Why, do you then

_anticipate_ our meeting again, Captain Windham?” he asked after a

moment.

“I anticipate nothing, Mr. Cameron. I am no wizard to foretell the

future. Yet, but for the fact that we could not meet save as enemies,

I vow ’twould give me pleasure to think that we might one day

encounter each other again.” But, feeling somehow that the young man

standing there looking at him took this for a mere _façon de parler_,

he added, with a return to his bantering tone, “You can have no notion

how much this tour—albeit a trifle too reminiscent of a Roman

triumph—has been alleviated by having so agreeable a cicerone. Though

indeed in the last twenty-four hours my glimpses of you have been

few—too few.”

So expressed, his sentiments had of course small chance of being taken

for sincere. The Highlander, indeed, for all reply gave a little shrug

that was almost like a Frenchman’s, spread his plaid upon the bare

earth floor and laid his broadsword beside it.

“Surely you are not going to sleep in that plaid!” exclaimed Keith,

stirred out of his levity. “Why, ’tis drenched! Take my cloak, I have

no mind to sleep yet, and shall not need it.”

But Ewen, without stiffness, declined, saying that a wet plaid was of

no consequence, and indeed but kept one the warmer. Some, he added,

and the Englishman gasped at the information, wrung them out at night

in water for that reason. All he would accept was some handfuls of

heather for a pillow, and then, lying down, his sword convenient to

his hand, he wrapped himself in the folds of damp tartan and in five

minutes was fast asleep.

But Keith, as he had said, was not sleepy; and after a while, feeling

restless, he strolled to the doorway—door the hut had none. When he

got there he was aware of a rigid figure, muffled in a plaid, standing

in the rain, just out of the direct line of vision—the inevitable

Lachlan watching over his master’s slumbers. He turned his head, and

Keith could see a contraction pass over his dark features. But the

English officer was not to be intimidated by a scowl from studying, if

he wished, the sodden, cloud-enfolded landscape, and the sheets of

rain driving in the twilight over the waters of Loch Eil, though it

was not a cheerful prospect.

What was going to happen to him when his parole expired to-morrow? At

the far end of Loch Eil Loch Linnhe joined it at right angles, and on

Loch Linnhe was Fort William, with its loyal garrison. To-morrow the

Highland force would proceed along Loch Eil, and every step would

bring him nearer to his friends. . . .

He left the doorway after a few moments, and looked down at the

sleeper on the floor, his head sunk in the bundle of heather and his

arm lying across his broadsword. “The embraces of the goddess of ague

seem to be agreeable,” he thought. “I shall be sorry to say farewell

to-morrow, my friend—deuce take me if I quite know why—but I hardly

think you will!”

Then at last he went and lay down on his heap of heather, and listened

to the sound of the rain, always, since he was a boy, connected with

the worst memories of his life. There was the dismal day of his

father’s funeral; he had been but five then, yet he remembered it

perfectly: rain, rain on the nodding plumes of the great black

carriage which had taken his father away; the day some years later on

which his childish mind first realised that his adored mother cared

nothing for him—rain, a soft mist of it. And the night in London, four

years past now, the night that he had discovered what Lydia

Shelmerdine really was. Against the closely-curtained windows of her

boudoir it could be heard to dash in fury (for there was a great wind

that evening) every time that there came a pause in her high,

frightened, lying speech, which ran on the more that he stood there

saying so little. The rose had slipped loose from her close-gathered

powdered hair, her gauze and ivory fan lay snapped at her feet . . .

and the rain sluiced pitilessly against the windows.

Into that tempest Keith Windham had presently gone out, and, once away

from the scented room, had known nothing of its fury, though it

drenched him to the skin; and he had forced his way all dripping into

the presence of the man who had seduced her . . . no, the man whom she

had seduced . . . and had told him to his face that he was welcome to

his conquest, that he did not propose to dispute it with him, nor even to

demand satisfaction. The lady was not worth fighting about; “not worth

the risking of a man’s life—_even of yours_!” There had been

witnesses, vastly surprised witnesses, of conduct so unusual. But he

thought his way of dealing with the situation more effective than the

ordinary; and perhaps it was. He never saw either of the two who had

betrayed him again.

* * * * * *

Riding behind his young Achilles next afternoon Keith Windham kept

looking at Loch Eil, now shining and placid, the seaweed of its level

shore orange in the sun, and the great mountain miles away over Fort

William mirrored, upside down, as clear as the original. If only he

could reach Fort William! But Ardroy, to whom his word of honour still

bound him, would certainly see to it that at the expiry of his parole

this evening he was secured in some other way. “I dare say he will

make it as little irksome for me as he can,” thought Keith, looking at

the tall, easy figure sitting the horse just ahead of him, on whose

gay tartan and ribbon-tied auburn hair the westering sun was shining

full. “He’s an uncommon good fellow . . . and we shall never see each

other again, I suppose.” And again he thought, “Not that he will

care—and why the devil should I?”

Then the stream of men and conveyances began to leave the loch side,

making towards Mr. John Cameron’s house of Fassefern, standing where

Glen Suilag made a breach into the mountains; though Lochiel’s burgess

brother, who would not join the Prince, had carried his prudence to

the length of absenting himself from his property lest he should be

open to the charge of having entertained that compromising guest. It

was not until they came to the gate in their turn that Ardroy slewed

himself round in his saddle to speak to the captive, and said that he

would do what he could for him in the way of accommodation, if he did

not object to waiting a little. So Keith gave up his horse to one of

Ewen’s gillies, and, working his way through the press, waited under a

tree and revolved plans. But in truth he could make none until he knew

how he was to be secured.

Sooner than he had expected his warden reappeared and, taking him in

at a side entry, conducted him to the very top of the humming house.

“I thought this little room might serve for us,” he said, opening the

door of a small, half-furnished garret, and Keith saw that their mails

were already there. “I do not know how many others may be thrust in

here, but there is at least one bed.” And so there was, a sort of

pallet. “You had best establish your claim to it at once, Captain

Windham, or, better still, I will do it for you.” And, mindful as ever

of his prisoner’s comfort, he unfastened his plaid and tossed it on to

the mattress. “I will come and fetch you to supper; I suppose there

will be some.”

Keith could not help looking after his departing figure with a smile

which held both amusement and liking. He could not, however, afford to

let sensibility interfere with what was in his mind now. Whatever were

the reason, Ardroy seemed to have completely forgotten that in—Keith

consulted his watch—in another twenty minutes his captive’s parole

would expire, and he would be free to take himself off . . . if he

could. Or was it that he had not mentioned the coming change of

conditions from some feeling of delicacy, because it would involve

setting a guard?

The Englishman sat down upon the pallet and considered his chances.

They depended almost entirely upon whether in twenty minutes’ time

there was a Highlander posted at the door of this room. But Ardroy had

spoken of fetching him to supper. Heaven send then that supper was

delayed! Perhaps he could creep out of the garret and conceal himself

elsewhere until he found an opportunity of getting clear away later

in the evening. Yet there was no special advantage in waiting for

nightfall (even if Ardroy’s forgetfulness extended so far) because

the nights were apt to be so disconcertingly light. No, the great

difficulty at any hour was his uniform. . . .

And here he found himself looking at the roll from Ewen Cameron’s

saddle, lying on the solitary half-broken chair.

But Keith Windham was much too proud a man not to have a strict regard

for his pledged word. He could hardly prevent the entrance of a plan

of escape into a brain which was, as yet, on parole, but he would not

take the smallest step to put it into execution before the appointed

hour should strike. To pass the time he would scribble a note to

explain his conduct; and, wondering the while whether he should not

have to destroy it even before he had finished it, he tore out a leaf

from his pocket-book and began:

“DEAR MR. CAMERON,—

“To justify my unadvertis’d Departure I am fain to put you in Mind

that I gave my Parole of Honour for the Space of a Se’nnight from

the Day and Hour of my Capture by you in the Evening of last

Friday. In ten Minutes more that Period will have expir’d, and I

trust you will not think it any Infraction of Military Honour

that, without having previously recall’d that Fact to your Memory,

I intend at half after six to attempt my Freedom.

“I shall always retain the most cordial Remembrance of your

Hospitality, and though the Pilgrimage of the last few Days has

been somewhat prolong’d, it has enabled me to be present upon a

most interesting Occasion.

“Adieu, and forgive me for supposing that when you are more

accustom’d to a military Life, you will not repeat the Oversight

by which I am hoping to profit,

“Your most obedient, humble Servant,

“KEITH WINDHAM, _Captain_.”

When he had finished this effusion, of which the last paragraph, it

cannot be denied, afforded him a special pleasure, he still waited,

watch in hand. At half-past six exactly he rose from the pallet and,

feeling remarkably like a footpad, opened Ardroy’s modest baggage with

hasty fingers. It proved to contain a clean shirt, a pair of

stockings, a few odds and ends and—a kilt. The plunderer held this up

in some dismay, for he would very greatly have preferred trews, such

as Ardroy was wearing at present, but it was this nether garment or

his own, and in a remarkably short space of time he was surveying his

bare knees with equal disgust and misgiving. No knees that he had seen

this week under tartan were as white as that! Happily the garret was

dusty, and therefore his legs, if not respectably tanned, could at

least look dirty. He thought at first of retaining his uniform coat,

which he fancied could be fairly well hidden by Ardroy’s plaid—how he

blessed him for leaving it behind—but the skirts were a little too

long, and the blue cuffs with their galons too conspicuous, and so he

decided to go coatless. Thereupon he began experiments with the

plaid—what a devil of a lot of it there was! He wished he had a bonnet

to pull forward on his brows . . . but one could not expect everything

to be provided. The want, however, reminded him of his incongruous

wig, and he took this off and placed it, with his discarded uniform,

under the mattress. And so there he was, clad in a costume he would as

soon have assumed as the trappings of a Red Indian—and clad very

insecurely too, he feared, for Ardroy’s kilt was too big for him, and

he could not fasten it any tighter.

Still no sign of any person coming. Keith looked doubtfully at his

host’s rifled baggage. It was his duty to regain his liberty by any

lawful means, but he had certainly acted the part of a pickpocket. The

only compensation in his power was to pay for the clothes he had

taken, since those he had left behind were no adequate exchange. He

pulled out his purse, having small idea of the worth of the purloined

garments, and still less of how Ardroy would view the payment; he

suspected that the Highlander might not relish it, but for his own

peace of mind he felt constrained to make it. And so he wrapped three

guineas in his farewell letter and laid the letter on the chair. Then

he softly opened the garret door, went to the head of the stairs, and

listened.

The immediate neighbourhood of the little room was deserted, and the

sounds from below suggested that the bustle which existed in Fassefern

House that evening was more likely to help than to hinder a pretended

Cameron who desired to slip out unnoticed. Captain Windham settled the

plaid more to his satisfaction and began with an unconcerned air to

descend the stairs. But he was clutching nervously at the top of the

philabeg, and his legs felt abominably cold.

* * * * * *

Some three-quarters of an hour later Donald Cameron of Lochiel and

Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch, he whose clansmen had held High

Bridge, were talking together outside the front of Fassefern House.

About an hour previously it had been arranged that the heavy baggage

was to go forward that night along Loch Eil side with a strong convoy

of Camerons; a large escort was required because at Corpach they would

have to run the gauntlet of the neighbourhood of Fort William on the

other side of the water—a danger which the Prince and the rest of the

little force would avoid next day by taking a route through Glen

Suilag impossible to the baggage train.

“And I am sending my young cousin Ardroy in command of it,” concluded

Lochiel, “though the news was something of the suddenest to him. But

he will be ready; he is a very punctual person, is Ewen.”

And they went on to speak of other matters: of Macleod of Macleod’s

refusal to observe his solemn engagement to join the Prince (even if

he came alone), which was still more resented than the withdrawal of

Sir Alexander MacDonald of the Isles; and of what Sir John Cope would

do, and where he would elect to give them battle. For that the English

general would take his alarmed way up to Inverness without daring to

face them had not occurred to the most sanguine.

Lochiel, indeed, was looking very grave. Keith Windham’s flash of

insight had been correct; he was not deluded. His was the case of a

man who was risking everything—life, fortune, lands, the future of his

young family—against his better judgment because, more scrupulous of

his plighted word than the Chief of Macleod or MacDonald of Sleat, he

felt himself too deeply engaged to draw back without loss of honour.

Yet, unlike Macleod’s, his engagement only pledged his support

in the case that the Prince came with French assistance—and he

had come without it. The fate of his whole clan lay on Lochiel’s

shoulders—more, the fate of every man in the rising, for if he had

held back the spark would have been quenched at the outset for lack of

fuel. That knowledge was a heavy burden to be laid on a man who, far

from being a freebooting chief, had striven all his life for the

betterment of his people.

“Yes,” he was saying for the second time, “if we can reach and hold

the pass over the Corryarrick before Cope——”

At that moment there was a rapid step behind the two men, Lochiel

heard his own name uttered in sharp accents, and, turning quickly,

beheld the young commander of the baggage convoy in a state of high

discomposure.

“My dear Ewen, what is wrong?”

“He’s gone!” And so agitated was Ardroy’s tone, so black his brow,

that Lochiel’s own colour changed. “Who—not the Prince!”

“The English officer—my prisoner . . . he’s escaped! His parole

expired at half-past six this evening, and I, fool that I was, had

forgot it over this business of the escort. He’ll go straight to Fort

William with information of our numbers and our arms. . . . Oh, I

deserve you should dismiss me, Lochiel! He’s been away near an hour, I

suppose. Shall I ride after him? . . . No, I cannot, unless you give

the convoy to someone else—and truly I think I am not fit——”

Lochiel broke in, laying a hand on his arm. “’Tis not worth while

pursuing him, my dear Ewen, nor any very great loss to be rid of him.

I doubt not, too, that they have already at Fort William all the

information that Captain Windham can give. But how, with that uniform,

did he get away?”

The enraged young man ground his teeth. “He was not wearing his

uniform. He stole some clothes from me—a philabeg and my plaid. And

he left me a damned impertinent letter . . . and these.” He unclosed a

hand and held out three gold coins. “Isn’t that the final insult, that

he must leave so much more than the things were worth, as though to——”

He appeared unable to finish the sentence. “If ever I meet him

again——” Back went his arm, and Captain Windham’s guineas hurtled

violently into the shrubbery of Fassefern House.

II

FLOOD-TIDE

“To wanton me, to wanton me,

Ken ye what maist would wanton me?

To see King James at Edinburgh Cross,

Wi’ fifty thousand foot and horse,

And the usurper forced to flee,

Oh this is what maist would wanton me.”

—_Jacobite Song_.

CHAPTER I

The dusk of early October had fallen on the city of Edinburgh, that

stately city, which for some three weeks now had been experiencing a

situation as odd as any in its varied and turbulent history. For

Prince Charles and his Highlanders held the town, but not the Castle,

secure on its lofty and impregnable rock; this they could neither

storm, owing to its position, nor, from lack of artillery, batter

down, while King George’s military representatives in the Castle were,

for their part, unable to regain control of the city below them. The

stalemate thus established was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of

unconscious comedy which had reigned throughout these weeks, beginning

with the ludicrous indecisions and terrors of the city fathers on the

news of the Highland advance, and the casual method by which the city

had suffered itself to be captured, or rather walked into, by Lochiel

and his men. For the opening of the Netherbow Port very early on the

morning of the 17th of September, just as the Highlanders outside were

preparing to withdraw disappointed, was due to nothing more momentous

than the exit of a hackney carriage on its way to its stable in the

Canongate—though it is true that it was the carriage which had just

brought back the discomfited envoys sent to interview the Prince at

Gray’s Mill.

Yesterday only had come to an end the latest (and not entirely

humorous) episode, of some days’ duration, when, the Prince having

‘blockaded’ the Castle, in other words, having cut off daily supplies,

the garrison had retaliated by firing on the town, killing some

innocent inhabitants, striking terror into them all, and making it

very undesirable to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Castle in the

company of a Highlander. Violent representations on the part of the

city to the Prince, embodying ‘the most hideous complaints against the

garrison’, had brought this uncomfortable state of affairs to an end

by the raising of the ‘blockade’—itself originated, so the story went,

by the discovery of smuggled information in a pat of butter destined

for the valetudinarian General Guest, for whom milk and eggs were

permitted to pass daily into the Castle. Yet the old gentleman’s

treacherous butter was only one of the many whimsical touches of the

goddess Thalia, who had devised, during these weeks of occupation,

such ingenious surprises as the descent of a soldier from the Castle

by means of a rope into Livingston’s Yard, where he set a house on

fire, and returned in triumph, by the same method, with a couple of

captured Jacobite muskets; the discomfiture, by a sudden illumination

from above, of three Camerons sent experimentally to scale the Castle

rock under cover of darkness, and—perhaps the most genuinely comic of

all—the solemn paying out to the cashier and directors of the Royal

Bank of Scotland, within the very walls of the Castle, and in exchange

for Prince Charles’s notes, of the ready money which had been taken

there for safety, but the lack of which inconvenienced the Edinburgh

shopkeepers as much as anybody. This transaction had taken place,

under the white flag, during the blockade itself.

But to-night, the guns being silent, and General Joshua Guest once more

in possession of his invalid diet, the lately terrified citizens in

the high, crammed houses with their unsavoury approaches were

preparing to sleep without fear of bombardment next day by their own

defenders. Those outposts of the invading foe, which always kept a

wary eye upon the Castle and its approaches—and which had not passed

through a very enviable time the last few days—the Highland guard at

the Weighhouse, the West Bow, and elsewhere, had received their

night relief, and Mr. Patrick Crichton, saddler and ironmonger, was

writing in his diary further caustic and originally spelt remarks

anent these ‘scownderalls’, ‘scurlewheelers’ and ‘hillskipers’. Inside

the walls all was quiet.

But at the other end of the town Holyrood House was lit up, for there

was dancing to-night in the long gallery under the eyes of that

unprepossessing series of early Scottish kings due to the brush of an

ill-inspired Dutchman . . . and under a pair of much more sparkling

ones. For the Prince was gay to-night, as he was not always; and

though, following his usual custom, he himself did not dance, it was

plain that the growing accessions to his cause during the last few

days had raised his spirits. For, besides all those who had joined him

soon after Glenfinnan—Stewarts of Appin, MacDonalds of Glengarry,

Grants of Glenmoriston—two days ago had come in fierce old Gordon of

Glenbucket with four hundred men, and the day before that young Lord

Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie’s son, with six hundred, and Farquharson of

Balmoral with two hundred, and his kinsman of Monaltrie with more. And

others were coming. Whatever the future might hold, he was here as by

a miracle in the palace of his ancestors, having defeated in a quarter

of an hour the general who had slipped out of his path in August and

returned by sea to the drubbing which awaited him among the morasses

and the cornstubble of Prestonpans.

So there, at the end of the gallery nearest to his own apartments, in

a costume half satin, half tartan, stood the living embodiment of

Scotland’s ancient dynasty, and drew to himself from time to time the

gaze of every lady in the room. But it was to those of his own sex

that he chiefly talked.

At the other end of the gallery, which looked out on to the garden and

the chapel, Alison Grant, very fine in her hoop and powder, her

flowered brocade of blue and silver, with a scarf of silken tartan and

a white autumn rose on her breast, was talking with animation to three

young men, one of whom, in a French uniform, bore a strong resemblance

to her, and was in fact her young brother Hector, just come over from

France. The others were distant kinsmen, Grants of Glenmoriston and

Shewglie respectively. Right in the corner, on a gilded chair, sat Mr.

Grant in a not very new coat (for it was more fitting that Alison

should go braw than he). His hands rested on his cane, and his lined

face, half shrewd and half childlike, wrinkled into a smile as he saw

the likelihood that neither young Glenmoriston nor young Shewglie, who

seemed to be disputing in a friendly way for the honour of the next

dance, would obtain it, since someone else was making his way between

the knots of talkers to this corner. To judge by the glances cast at

him as he passed, it appeared that Alison was not the only lady there

to think that a certain tall cadet of Clan Cameron, a captain in

Lochiel’s regiment and one of the Prince’s aides-de-camp, who wore

powder for the nonce and amber satin instead of tartan, was the match

of any other gentleman in the room—except, of course, of him with the

star on his breast.

Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the new-comer the briefest glance

now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away

again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took

themselves off.

“Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,” said her father

from his corner.

“Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,” observed

Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck,

where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice,

and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their

powder, were beginning to show their true colour. “Like the rest of

the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a

Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to

convert me.”

At that Alison turned round, laughing.

“Well, sir,” she said, looking him up and down, “your costume, I vow,

is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan

upon you, you might be an Englishman!”

“Or a Frenchman,” suggested her father from his corner.

But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. “No;

Frenchmen are all little men!” Yet, having lived so much in France,

she must have known better.

“No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,” agreed Mr. Grant. “And he

has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the

French air.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ewen, bowing, “since I suppose I am to take

that as a compliment.”

“There are some tall fellows enough in my regiment,” declared Hector

Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. “For my part, I’ve no

ambition to attain the height of a pine tree. Alison, is it customary

in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?”

“Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the

kinship,” responded Ewen for his betrothed. “Not, therefore, in this

case, Eachain!”

“Proprietary airs already, I see,” retorted the young soldier, a smile

in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. “_Eh bien_, if I may not

have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not

your young misses.” And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand,

carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.

And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and

silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of

Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by

the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on

rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a

reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how

handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know

this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control.

Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an

exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.

The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in

a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great

blue blossom. Then she took his hand and they went aside.

“Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no?

What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?” asked

Ewen.

“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end

of the apartment, “the Prince is no longer here!”

“Is he not?” responded Ewen calmly. “I had not observed.”

“And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!” cried Alison, and took

her fan out of his hand.

“I was looking at you, _mo chridhe_,” said her lover in his deep,

gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.

“But where can His Royal Highness have got to?”

“My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch

us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another of his

aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety.

Archie!”

Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his

kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than

Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen

had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore

his Chief.

“Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a

Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of

the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed

his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.”

But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of

the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So

Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away

like a fair ship.

“Taken to task so soon!” said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a

married man himself, with several children. “No doubt if my Jean were

here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had

withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.”

Neither did Ewen now. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Donald will not be

here to-night at all?”

“Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.”

“He’s not ill, Archie?”

“No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.” And giving his

young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.

Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner.

Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned

to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the

gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.

“Captain Cameron,” said he, coming closer and speaking still lower,

though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so,

“Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you

will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his

bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal

Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the

ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to

his absence. Do you understand?”

Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There

was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which

he did not relish, and, in common with many of the Highland chiefs,

he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the

Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.

“This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,” he observed. “A

short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.”

“I suppose, sir,” retorted Strickland tartly, “that you scarcely

consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health

than he is himself?”

“No,” returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, “but I

do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from

His Royal Highness himself, and not from any . . . intermediary.”

Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. “You are not very polite, Captain

Cameron,” he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a

warmer retort. “I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the

honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to

execute them?”

“No, since I have not refused,” said Ewen with brevity, and he turned

upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. “Not yet—you are

not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.”

And Ewen stopped. “The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of

an hour’s time!” he exclaimed. “Then indeed ’tis a very strange

seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.”

“For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!” said Strickland in an agitated

whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. “For God’s sake show some

discretion—moderate your voice!” And he murmured something about a

delicate task and a wrong choice which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions

the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be

guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was

expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very

little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of

nervousness.

“Pray let go my arm, sir,” he said, and, the Englishman not at once

complying, added meaningly, “if you do not wish me to be still more

indiscreet!” On which Mr. Strickland hastily removed his grasp, and

Ewen turned and began to make his way down the room, careless whether

Strickland were following or no, since if that gentleman’s desire for

secrecy were sincere he dared not make an open protest among the

dancers.

As he went Ewen very much regretted Lochiel’s absence to-night, and

also the indisposition of Mr. Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s

secretary, who had delicate health. Mr. Strickland must be aware of

both those facts. . . . And if Strickland were in this business,

whatever it might be, it was fairly certain that Colonel O’Sullivan,

the Irish Quartermaster-General, was in it also. For a second or so

the young man hesitated, and glanced about for Dr. Cameron, but he was

nowhere to be seen now. Then he himself would try to get to the bottom

of what was going on; and as when his mind was made up an earthquake

would scarcely have turned him from his path, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy

made straight for the Prince’s bedchamber with that intention.

The drawing-room leading directly from the picture gallery had about a

dozen couples in it; the ante-room which gave at right angles from

this was fortunately empty, although the door between was open. The

investigator went quietly through, closing this, marched across the

ante-room and knocked at the Prince’s door.

“_Avanti!_” cried a voice, and Ewen went into the bedchamber which had

once been the ill-fated Darnley’s. The Prince was sitting on the other

side of the gilded and embroidery-hung bed, with his back to the door,

engaged, it seemed, in the absence of Morrison, his valet, in pulling

on his own boots. A black cloak and plain three-cornered hat lay upon

the gold and silver coverlet.

“Is that you, O’Sullivan?” he asked without turning his head. “I shall

be ready in a moment.”

Ewen thought, “I was right; O’Sullivan is in it! . . . Your Royal

Highness, . . .” he said aloud.

At that the Prince looked quickly behind him, then, still seated on

the bed, turned half round, leaning on one hand. “My orders, Captain

Cameron, were for you to post yourself at the outer door. There has

evidently been some mistake, either on your part or on Mr.

Strickland’s.”

“On mine then, may it please Your Highness,” admitted Ewen coolly. “As

the order puzzled me somewhat, I have ventured to ask that I may

receive it from Your Royal Highness’s own mouth.”

The mouth in question betrayed annoyance, and the Prince arose from

his position on the bed and faced his aide-de-camp across it. “_Mon

Dieu_, I thought it was plain enough! You will have the goodness to

station yourself outside the farther door and to let no one attempt to

see me. I am indisposed.”

“And the quarter of an hour’s interval of which Mr. Strickland spoke,

sir?”

“That is of no moment now. You can take up your place at once, Captain

Cameron.” And with a gesture of dismissal the Prince turned his back

and walked across the room towards the curtained window. It was thus

plainly to be seen that he had his boots on.

He was not then expecting a visit; he was going to pay one! Hence the

sentinel before the outer door, that his absence might not be known.

Ewen looked at the cloak on the bed, thought of the dark Edinburgh

streets, the hundred and one narrow little entries, the chance of a

scuffle, of an encounter with some unexpected patrol from the Castle,

and took the plunge.

“Your Royal Highness is going out—at this hour?”

The Prince spun round. “Who told you that I was going out? And if I

were, what possible affair is it of yours, sir?”

“Only that, as your aide-de-camp, it is my great privilege to watch

over your Royal Highness’s person,” answered Ewen respectfully but

firmly. “And if you are going out into the streets of Edinburgh at

night without a guard——”

Charles Edward came nearer. His brown eyes, striking in so

fair-complexioned a young man, sparkled with anger. “Captain Cameron,

when I appointed you my aide-de-camp, I did not think that I was

hampering myself with a s——” He bit off the short, pregnant word, that

aide-de-camp’s suddenly paling face evidently recalling to him

whither he was going. But he instantly started off again on the same

road. “_Dieu me damne!_” he said irritably, “am I to have your clan

always at my elbow? Lochiel may have walked first into Edinburgh, but

he was not the first to declare for me. He sent his brother to beg me

to go back again! I think you Camerons would do well to remem——” Again

he broke off, for there had come a knock at the door.

But Ewen, white to the very lips, had put his hand behind him and

turned the key. “Will your Royal Highness kindly give your orders to

some other man?” he asked, in a voice which he did not succeed in

keeping steady. “I’ll not endure to hear either my Chief or myself

insulted, no, not though it be by my future King!”

The Prince was brought up short. His aide-de-camp might have taken

upon himself a good deal more than his position warranted, but to

offend a chieftain of Clan Cameron at this juncture was madness.

Charles was not yet a slave to the petulant temper which from his

boyhood had given anxiety to those about him, and which in later

unhappy years was to work so much disaster, and his great personal

charm was still undimmed.

“Wait a little!” he called through the door, and then looked with

appeal in his beautiful eyes at the tall figure in front of it, rigid

with the stillness of a consuming anger. “Ardroy, forgive me for a

moment of irritation! I scarce knew what I was saying. You cannot

think that there is any thought in my breast for my good Lochiel but

gratitude—all the greater gratitude that he knew and weighed the risk

he ran and yet drew that true sword of his! And as for you, how did I

insult you?”

“I think,” said Ewen, still very pale and haughty, and using to the

full the physical advantage which he had—not very many had it—of being

able to look down on his Prince, “I think that your Royal Highness was

near calling me . . . something that no gentleman can possibly call

another.”

“Why, then, I could not have been near it—since I hope I am a

gentleman!” The Prince smiled his vanquishing smile. “And to prove

that you are imagining vain things, my dear Ardroy, I will tell you on

what errand I am bound to-night, and you shall accompany me, if you

still insist upon your right to watch over my royal person.”

Ewen was not vanquished. “Your Royal Highness is too good,” he

answered, bowing, “but I should not dream of claiming that right any

longer, and I will withdraw.”

“I always heard that you Highlanders were unforgiving,” lamented the

Prince, between jest and earnest. (Devoted though they were, they were

certainly not easy to manage.) “Come, Ardroy, you are much of an age

with myself, I imagine—do _you_ never say in heat what you designed

not—and regret the moment after?”

Their eyes met, the warm Southern brown and the blue.

“Yes, my Prince,” said Ewen suddenly. “Give me what orders you will,

and they shall be obeyed.”

“I am forgiven then?” asked the Prince quickly, and he held out his

hand as though to clasp his aide-de-camp’s. But Ewen bent his knee

and put his lips to it.

During this touching scene of reconciliation it was evident from

various discreet but not too patient taps upon the door that the

excluded person on the other side still desired admittance.

“Open the door, _mon ami_,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking

it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too

pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his

arm.

“I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He

stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a

stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General

and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the

recent battle.

“Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a

spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me,

O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be a _partie carrée_.”

“As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.

“And in that case,” went on his Royal Highness, “he had best know

whither we are bound. We are going, my dear Ardroy, to pay a visit to

a lady.”

Ewen was astonished, for he had seen enough since their coming to

Edinburgh to make him conclude that the Prince was—perhaps

fortunately—very cold where women were concerned, no matter how much

incense they burnt before him. Then disgust succeeded to astonishment:

was this the time for intrigues of that nature? But the latter

emotion, at least, was very transitory, for the Prince went on almost

at once: “’Tis the Jacobite widow of a Whig Lord of Session—an old

lady, but no doubt charming, and certainly loyal—who dwells at the

corner of the West Bow and the Grassmarket.”

“So near the Castle!” broke from Ewen in spite of himself.

“_Donc_, the last place in which I shall be looked for! Moreover,”

said the young Prince gaily, “I am borrowing Murray’s name, since

Lady Easterhall is his kinswoman, and is expecting a visit from

him—though not, I’m bound to say, to-night. You look blank, Captain

Cameron” (and Ewen had no doubt he did). “See then, read the old

lady’s letter to Murray.”

Ewen took the paper which the Prince drew from his pocket, and read

the following, written in a slightly tremulous hand:

‘MY DEAR JOHN,—

‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service

that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who

has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en

have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you

there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him

that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a

pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the

Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely

stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be

gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow

his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not

dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack

with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny

Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing

Proclamations.

‘Your loving Great-aunt,

‘ANNA EASTERHALL.’

This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at

Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to

the royal hand in silence.

“Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay

his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the

bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have

the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can

see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion

might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield

to me sooner than to Murray.”

“But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to

come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected

Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to

the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.

“Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland

Scot is too canny.”

“But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”

“Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”

“But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your

Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one

above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well

be a Whig gentleman or——”

“My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his

aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but

so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house

to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the

house itself is singular also.”

At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and

O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic

silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In

response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the

Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with

them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”

“He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he

comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this

escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden

secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he

had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not

procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as

less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so”—he

threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I

learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.

But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy,

you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go

to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”

“And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s ante-chamber door?”

enquired Strickland in an injured voice.

“The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the

post, Strickland? In that case you can lend _your_ cloak to Captain

Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but

jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy,

if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my

great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”

CHAPTER II

The three men followed him in silence down the narrow, twisting stair,

Ewen bringing up the rear, and wondering why disapproval made one feel

so old. And, after O’Sullivan had given the word of the day and passed

them out of Holyrood House, they were soon walking briskly, not up the

Canongate itself, but up the slope parallel to it, the ‘back of the

Canongate’, the Prince in front with the Irishman, Ewen behind with

Strickland, both the latter very silent. Flurries of the October wind

plucked at their cloaks as they went in the semi-darkness, sometimes

swooping at them from the open grassy spaces of the King’s Park on

their left, at others appearing to originate mysteriously in the tall

line of houses of the Canongate with their intervening gardens on the

right. They met nobody until they came to the Cowgate Port, and,

O’Sullivan again giving the word to the guard, were admitted within

the town walls and the nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper.

In the Cowgate there were still a few folk abroad, and a couple of

drunkards, emerging unexpectedly from a close, all but knocked into

the Prince. As he moved quickly aside to avoid collision, a man

passing in the opposite direction was obliged to step into the gutter.

It was quite natural that this man should turn his head to see the

reason for being thus incommoded, but unfortunate that the Prince’s

cloak should at that instant slip from its position. Ewen could only

hope that the passer-by had not recognised him; there was at least

nothing to indicate that he had. He went on his way without a pause,

and the four adventurers resumed theirs.

As they emerged into the Grassmarket the great mass of the Castle

Rock, half distinguishable against the sky, and crowned with a few

lights, lifted itself as if in menace; but a few steps farther and it

was blocked from view by the houses on the other side of that wide

open space. Lights still burned in some of these, but everything was

quiet.

“That is the house,” said the Prince in a low voice, but it was not

easy to know at which he was pointing across the Grassmarket, since

they all adjoined each other. “The entrance, however, is neither here

nor in the West Bow, but up a close leading out of the Grassmarket, so

Murray says.”

Holding their fluttering cloaks about them they crossed the

Grassmarket. Away to their right, when they were over, wound the curve

of the West Bow. At the mouth of the close which the Prince indicated

Ewen, seeing that O’Sullivan seemed to be going to allow his master to

walk first up the dark passage, strode forward, and without apology

placed himself in front, and so preceded them all up the alley, his

hand on his sword. He liked this place not at all.

In a moment he felt a twitch on his cloak from behind. “This will be

the door of the house,” said the Prince’s voice. “See if you can

summon someone. They keep uncommonly early hours hereabouts; I trust

the household is not already abed.”

But Ewen, tirling the risp on the door in the gloom, welcomed this

suggestion with delight, since, if it were so, the Prince would be

obliged to go home again. And for some little time it did appear as if

his hope were to be fulfilled, for no one came in answer to his

summons. He peered up the close; it seemed to him possible that its

upper end debouched on the Castle Hill itself. It was madness to have

come here.

The Prince himself then seized the ring and rasped it impatiently up

and down, and very soon Ewen’s heart sank again as he heard bolts

being withdrawn inside. An old serving-man opened the door a little

way and put his head out.

“Will Lady Easterhall receive her kinsman, Mr. Murray of Broughton,

and his friends?” asked Mr. Murray’s impersonator.

The ancient servitor opened the door a little wider. “Ou, ay, Mr.

Murray o’ Broughton,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Mr. Murray o’

Broughton,” he repeated, in an owl-like manner which hinted at recent

refreshment. “An’ Mr. Murray’s frien’s,” he added, with another yawn

but no motion to admit the visitors. “Hoo mony o’ ye wull there be

then—is yon anither?” For footsteps had been coming up the close, and

at the words a man passed the group, walking quickly. He did not

glance at them, and it was too dark in the alley to see faces; but

Ewen felt an uncomfortable suspicion that it was the same man who had

passed them in the Cowgate and had looked at the Prince. But no,

surely this man was shorter; moreover he had betrayed no interest in

them.

“Come, man, conduct us to Lady Easterhall,” said O’Sullivan sharply.

“Or is she abed?”

“Nay, her leddyship’s taking a hand at the cartes or playing at the

dambrod wi’ Miss Isobel. Come ben then, sirs. Which o’ ye wull be Mr.

Murray?”

But nobody answered him. They followed him towards the staircase, up

which he began laboriously to toil. “Forbye her leddyship’s no’

expectin’ Mr. Murray till the morn,” they heard him mutter to himself,

but soon he did little save cough as he panted and stumbled upwards,

pausing once to announce that whiles he had a sair hoast.

“Take heart, my Nestor,” said the Prince in Ewen’s ear, as they

arrived at the first floor. “It may be difficult to get into this

house, but I have heard that it is easy to get out of it.”

Before he could explain himself the old man had opened the door of a

large room, economically and most insufficiently lit by the flickering

firelight and a couple of candles on a small table near the hearth, at

which sat an old lady and a young playing draughts. There was no one

else in the room.

“My leddy, here’s yer leddyship’s kinsman, Mr. Murray o’ Broughton,

and a wheen frien’s tae veesit ye. Wull I bring some refreshment?”

From the island of light the old lady looked up surprised. “Ye

veesit ower late, nephew,” she said in a little, cracked, but

authoritative voice, in the Scots common even to persons of breeding.

“Nane the less ye are welcome. But did ye no get my letter the day?

Saunders, light the sconces and bring wine.” And, as one or two

candles on the walls sprang to life and the Prince took a few steps

forward, she leant from her easy chair. “Eh, John, ye’ve made a finer

figure of a man than aince I thocht ye like to do! But hae ye the

toothache that ye are sae happed up? Come and present your friends,

and I’ll make ye acquainted with Miss Isobel Cochran, your aunt

Margaret’s niece. Bestir yersel’ now wi’ the candles, Saunders—dinna

don’er, man!”

The Prince removed his cloak from the lower part of his face. “Madam,”

he said, bowing, “I must crave your pardon for having used your

great-nephew’s name as a passport. I am not Mr. Murray, and—though I

hope indeed that you will not be so cruel—I await only your word to

have your good Saunders show us the door again.”

The old lady peered still farther into the only half-dispelled

dimness. “Presairve us—wha’s gotten intil the hoose?” she exclaimed.

“Wha is’t . . . I canna see . . .”

But the girl was on her feet, the colour rushing into her face.

“Great-aunt, great-aunt, ’tis the Prince himself!”

* * * * * *

Even Ewen’s disapproval was hardly proof against the scene that

followed. Old Lady Easterhall rose tremulously on her ebony stick, her

face working almost painfully, and attempted to kneel, which the

Prince of course would not allow; while Miss Cochran, from pale that

she was become, had the colour restored to her cheeks by the salute

which he set on her hand as she rose from the deepest curtsy of her

life. In a short time Saunders, babbling joyfully, had lit every

sconce in the room, till the candle-light swam and glittered on the

well-polished furniture and the half-seen satins of the visitors’

coats, seeming to concentrate itself upon the winking star of St.

Andrew which—most ill-advisedly, thought the aide-de-camp—still

adorned the Royal breast. And when chairs had been set, and wine

brought, then at last, in a warm atmosphere of loyalty and emotion,

the Prince tactfully explained his errand.

Lady Easterhall shook her becapped head. “Ah, I jaloused ’twas not to

see an auld woman that your Royal Highness came here! But Craigmains

is no’ come yet; he wasna to reach the toun till noon the morn. I

thocht I had writ that in my letter to my nephew. Sae your Royal

Highness has come here for naething.”

The Prince’s face had indeed fallen, but he recovered himself quickly.

“Do not say that, madam. Have I not gained the pleasure of your

acquaintance, and of Miss Cochran’s, not to speak of drinking the best

claret I have tasted since I came to Edinburgh? So let us pledge the

missing guest, gentlemen, and the real Murray shall deal with him

to-morrow.”

On which, lifting his glass, he drank again, and Colonel O’Sullivan

and Mr. Strickland followed his example. But Ewen did not; he had

risen, and now remained standing behind the Prince’s chair, as one

awaiting the signal to depart. Now that he had learnt the uselessness

of his escapade His Highness would no doubt speedily withdraw. But

that young gentleman showed no sign of such an intention. On the

contrary, he began in an animated manner to question Lady Easterhall

on her recollections of the Fifteen, while Miss Cochran’s hand played

nervously with the neglected draughtsmen on the little table, though

her eyes, wide and glamour-stricken, never left the unbidden guest.

She at least, even if she knew it not, was uneasy.

And after a few minutes the Prince became aware of his aide-de-camp’s

attitude. He turned his head.

“What a plague ails you, Captain Cameron, standing there like a

grenadier! Sit down, man, and do not so insult our hostess’s excellent

vintage.”

“I had rather, with Your Highness’s and Lady Easterhall’s leave,”

replied Captain Cameron, “post myself in some part of the house whence

I can get a view of the approach to it. Does not the close run up

towards the Castle Hill, madam?”

“You are very nervous, sir,” commented O’Sullivan, half-sneeringly.

“Why should the nearness of the Castle trouble Lady Easterhall, since

his Royal Highness’s presence cannot possibly be known there? And of

what use is the guard at the Weighhouse—your own clansmen, too—if they

cannot prevent the garrison from coming out?”

But Lady Easterhall herself seemed of Ewen’s opinion. “The young

gentleman is verra richt,” she declared. “He shall keep watch if he’s

minded tae, though, as ye say, sir, the Castle’s little likely to

trouble my hoose. Isobel, gang ye with Captain Cameron and show him

the best windy for the purpose. Though even if they should send a

picket here,” she added smiling, “His Royal Highness and all could be

oot of the hoose before they could win entrance. There’s a secret

stair, gentlemen, leads frae this verra room doun under the hoose to a

bit door in the West Bow, and the entry to’t lies ahint yon screwtore

at the side of the chimley, sae ye may be easy.”

All eyes turned towards the spot indicated, where, not far from

the hearth, an ebony writing-table with inlay of metal and

tortoiseshell—evidently a French importation—stood against the

panelling. “A secret stair!” exclaimed the Prince, and, in a lower

tone, “_ma foi_, rumour was right!—You hear, Ardroy? So now you need

not deprive us of your society . . . nor of Miss Cochran’s.”

“Miss Cochran’s I need not in any case take from your Royal Highness,”

responded Ewen, preparing to leave the room, “for I doubt not I can

find a suitable look out without troubling her. But, even with the

secret stair, I think it would be better to post a sentry.” A laugh

from O’Sullivan followed him as he closed the door, and stirred his

simmering wrath against the Quartermaster-General and Strickland to a

still higher temperature. That they should without remonstrance allow

the Prince to remain here, under the very shadow of the Castle, for no

more valid object than to drink Lady Easterhall’s claret—and, of

course, to give her pleasure by the honour done to her—was monstrous!

It was true that it needed a certain amount of skill and courage to

make a dash from the Castle, on account of the Highland guards in its

neighbourhood, but it was dark, and he was still uneasy about the man

who had passed them in the close.

The landing and stairway were ill lit, and he hesitated; he had better

summon Saunders, perhaps. Then the door behind him opened and shut, a

rather timid voice said, “Captain Cameron!” and turning, he beheld

Miss Isobel Cochran with a lighted candle in her hand.

“I came, sir, because I thought you would need this.” She held it out

none too steadily. “Oh, sir, you are the only one right of all of us!

The Prince should not bide longer; it is too dangerous.”

“So I think,” said Ewen, looking down at her gravely. “I thank you,

Miss Cochran.” He took the light from her. “Could you not persuade

Lady Easterhall to hasten his departure?”

“Hardly,” answered the girl regretfully. “You can see what it means to

her to have the Prince under her roof. . . . If you will go along that

passage, sir, you will find a window out of which you can see some way

up the close. . . . Stay, I will show you, since I am here.”

She slipped along the passage in front of him, and he followed with

the candlestick.

“There,” said Miss Cochran, “this window.” She unlatched it, Ewen

setting down the light at some distance. He saw the girl put her head

out . . . and then draw back, her hand over her mouth as though to

stifle a scream. “Too late, too late already! Look, look!”

Ewen leaned out. Down the dark alley, already echoing to the quick

tramp of feet, a file of soldiers were advancing two by two, an

officer leading. He drew in his head.

“Go back at once and warn the Prince, madam. I will stay a moment to

watch. Blow out the light, if you please; I do not want them to see

me.”

Obeying him, the girl fled, while Ewen, crouching by the open window,

held his breath as the heavy, hasty footsteps drew nearer and nearer,

and he was looking down at last on three-cornered hats and tilted

bayonets. There were fully a score of soldiers, and they _were_

stopping at Lady Easterhall’s entrance; he saw the officer raise a

lantern to make sure of the door. Waiting no longer, he ran back along

the passage and pelted down the stairs. “Saunders, Saunders!”

Fortunately the old man heard him at once and emerged from some lair

of his own on the ground-floor. “What’s to do, sir?”

“There are soldiers from the Castle at the door. Don’t admit them, on

your life! They are after . . . ‘Mr. Murray’. Is the door stout?”

“No’ by-ordinar’ stout. Dod, they’ll be for coming in; nae doot o’

that!” For a sword-hilt, it might have been, was clamouring on the

door. “If I’m no’ tae open, they’ll ding the door doun!”

“Let them,” commanded Ewen. “’Twill take some time to do it. And

remember, you know nothing at all about her ladyship’s visitors!”

He ran up again, thanking Heaven with all his heart for the secret

passage and its exit in a spot where the redcoats would never dare to

show their faces—since there was a Highland post in the West Bow also.

Three minutes, perhaps, had elapsed since the first discovery and Miss

Cochran’s return to the drawing-room; Ewen hoped, therefore, as he

burst into that apartment, to find no one but the ladies remaining. To

his dismay, however, they were all there, in a group against the wall

on the right of the hearth. The writing-table had been pushed aside,

Strickland was holding a candle close to a panel, and O’Sullivan

seemed to be struggling with something in the carving of this. Lady

Easterhall, looking incredibly old, was clinging to her great-niece,

and the eyes of both were fixed agonisedly on the Irishman and his

efforts. The Prince, though he too was watching O’Sullivan narrowly,

appeared the most unconcerned of the five.

“Ah, Ardroy, it seems you were justified of your nervousness, then,”

he observed coolly. “And the spring of the panel is unfortunately

stiff. It is long, evidently,” he added in a lower tone, “since a

lover left this house by that road!”

“The soldiers are at the door,” said Ewen in a stifled voice. His

heart felt like hot lead within him; was all to end thus, so foolishly

and so soon? The dull sound of battering came up from below.

“Let Miss Cochran try,” suggested the Prince. “I think it is rather

skill than strength which is needed.” And O’Sullivan relinquished his

place to the girl. He was very pale, and Strickland had obvious

difficulty in keeping the candle upright.

“Isobel, Isobel, can ye no’ stir it?” exclaimed Lady Easterhall,

wringing her old hands.

The girl’s slender fingers were striving with the boss of carved

woodwork which concealed the spring. “O God!” she whispered, and shut

her eyes. “Is there no other possible hiding-place——” Ewen was

beginning in desperation when, with a loud grinding noise, the panel

ran back, revealing a dark wall and the first few steps of a winding

stair which plunged steeply downwards.

“Quick!” said O’Sullivan, seizing Strickland by the arm. “You first,

to light the stair. Now, your Highness!” The Prince stepped through

the aperture and O’Sullivan himself followed. But Ewen lingered a

moment on the threshold of safety.

“Madam,” he said earnestly to the shaken old lady, “if I may advise,

do not you or Miss Cochran stay a moment longer in this room! To be in

your bedchambers retiring for the night, when the soldiers succeed in

forcing an entrance, as I fear they will, is the best answer you can

make to the charge of entertaining the Prince. Do not, I beg of you,

be found here—for he has still to get clear of the house!”

“Ye’re richt,” said Lady Easterhall. The frozen terror had left her

face now. “’Tis you hae had the wits all along, young sir! In wi’ ye!

Noo, Isobel, pit tae the door—and then let’s rin for it!”

Behind Ewen came grinding and a snap, and he was left in almost

complete darkness to find his way as best he could down the stair.

Somewhere below he heard echoing steps and cautious voices, so the

Prince and his companions were still in the house. There must, indeed,

be a passage as well as a stair if one was to emerge into the West Bow

right on the other side of it. For him there was no hurry; it was just

as well to play rear-guard. He started leisurely to descend, feeling

his way by the newel, and hoping that he would never again go through

another five minutes like the last.

He had certainly not accomplished more than a dozen steps of the

descent when he stopped and stiffened, his heart jumping into his

throat. There had suddenly floated down from above an ominous

dragging, rasping sound which he had heard too recently not to

recognise. It was the panel sliding open again! Had the soldiers found

it already? It seemed almost impossible.

Tugging at his sword, Ewen half leapt, half stumbled, up the dark

twisting stair again, and was met by an oblong of light, barred across

its lower half by the replaced writing-table. But, as he was instantly

aware, the room, though still brilliantly lit—for there had been no

time to extinguish the sconces—was empty, and silent save for the

sounds of furious battering which came up from below through its

closed door. It was clear what had happened. The spring of the secret

entrance, damaged perhaps, had failed to catch, and after the hurried

departure of the two ladies it had released the panel again . . . and

so the first thing to attract the notice of anyone entering the room

would be that yawning gap in the wall.

Ewen sprang at the sliding door and tried to push it to again, but on

its smooth inner surface there was nothing by which to get sufficient

purchase. Closed it must be, at whatever cost, and on whichever side

of it he was left. He thrust aside the escritoire, stepped out into

the room, and pressed the boss which concealed the spring. The panel

obediently returned . . . to within half an inch of its place. By

getting hold of a projecting line of carving with his nails, Ewen

feverishly contrived to push it completely home, but was instantly

aware that it would no longer engage itself securely in whatever

mechanism usually kept it fast there—in short that, having first

refused to open, it now refused to shut. And if the Prince were not

yet clear of the passage down below, if the fastenings of the door

into the West Bow, for instance, were rusty from disuse, as well they

might be, he would yet be taken.

There was a final crash from below; the door was undoubtedly down and

the invaders in the house. If only the existence of the sliding panel

could be concealed for a few moments longer! To stand before it sword

in hand (as was Ewen’s impulse) were only to advertise its presence.

He looked round in desperation. Perhaps the corner of the escritoire,

pressed well against the line of carving, would eliminate that

betraying crack in the woodwork? Yes, the escritoire was sufficiently

heavy to keep the panel in place, and, provided that it was not itself

moved away from its position, all might yet be well . . . though not

for him, who must now throw himself to the wolves to keep the secret

inviolate.

To ensure that the writing-table stayed as he had put it he must be

near it, and have a reasonable excuse, too, for his position. The most

natural was the best; so, throwing off his hat and cloak, he pulled up

a chair, sat down—unfortunately this necessitated his having his back

to the door—and, seizing a sheet of paper and a quill, began hastily

to write a letter. His heart might be beating faster than usual, but

his hand, as he saw with pleasure, was quite steady.

“My dear Aunt Margaret,—I told you in my last Letter of the Victory

gain’d——” They were coming up the stairs now, and at the noise of

their approach he realised how unnatural it would look to be found

writing a letter in the midst of such a disturbance as had been going

on below. He let his head sink forward on his arm as if he were

overcome by sleep; and so was sitting when a second or two later the

door was flung violently open, heavy feet came tumbling in, and there

was a triumphant shout of “Here’s one o’ them, sir.”

Ewen judged it time to wake. He lifted his head and turned in his

chair with a start; and then sprang to his feet in simulated

astonishment. “_Soldiers!_ What are you doing here?”

There were a sergeant and three men of Lascelles’ regiment in Lady

Easterhall’s drawing-room, and the sergeant advanced resolutely

towards the tall gentleman in amber satin. “’Tis for us to ask that of

you, sir.” Then he stopped, his face lighting up with a sort of

incredulous joy. “Lord, it’s him himself!” he exclaimed. “Call the

officer quick, one of ye! Bide where ye are, sir,” he said with a

mixture of triumph and respect. “If ye don’t stir ye’ll not be

harmed.”

Ewen saw that the man took him for the Prince—a mistake well worth

encouraging if possible, though it was not very likely that an officer

from the Castle would make the same mistake. In any case he had no

intention of stirring from his place; as it was he imagined that the

crack of the panel was widening behind his back, and dared not turn

his head to look. What would be the end of this? Edinburgh Castle and

captivity, at the best; perhaps a fate even less agreeable.

Ah, here was the officer pushing eagerly through the soldiers round

the doorway. One glance at the figure in front of the escritoire and

that eagerness was wiped away.

“That is not the Prince, you fool!” he said to the sergeant. “What was

he doing when you came in—did he offer any resistance?”

Through the sergeant’s reply that the gentleman was sitting at the

table and seemed to be asleep, Ewen was striving not to manifest a

surprise which, this time, was perfectly genuine. For, however he had

become part of the marooned garrison of Edinburgh Castle, his captor

was no officer of Lascelles’ regiment from that fortress; he was

Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots.

CHAPTER III

But Ewen’s own powder, satin and lace were, apparently, as good as a

disguise to him, for it was quite clear that Captain Windham had not

recognised in this fine gentleman the tartan-clad victor of Loch Oich

side, nor even his seven days’ host—no, even though he was now looking

at his capture more directly, and saying, with military abruptness,

“You are my prisoner, sir!”

Ewen drew himself up. “By what right, if you please?” he demanded. “By

what right indeed do you break at all into a private house? The Lord

Provost shall know of this to-morrow,” he went on, with a sudden idea

of passing himself off as an ordinary peaceful burgess. “The Lord

Provost shall know of it, and will require an explanation from General

Guest.”

Alas, his voice, at any rate, was not unfamiliar, like his hair and

costume. Captain Windham suddenly strode forward, gave an exclamation,

and recoiled a little. “What! It is _you_, Ardroy! Then I know

that the Pretender’s son is in this house, for you are one of his

aides-de-camp! Sergeant, leave a couple of men here, and search the

next floor with the others; I will follow in a moment.”

“Is that your pretext for breaking into an old lady’s house at this

hour of night?” asked Ewen with a fine show of indignation, as the

sergeant withdrew. “Surely you know the way to Holyrood House, Captain

Windham—though in truth it may not be so easy to force an entrance

there!”

In spite of his anxiety he was able to view with pleasure Captain

Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech.

“Mr. Cameron,” said the soldier, with a steely light in his eyes, “I

am not to be played with like this! The Pretender’s son, with three

companions, was seen to enter this house a short while——”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” broke in Ewen, “but it was _I_

who entered with three companions. As you see, I have just been

mistaken anew for the Prince. My three friends have left—yes, those

are their wineglasses on the table—Lady Easterhall has retired, and

I was beginning to write a letter when I fell into the doze which your

noisy and illegal entry has cut short.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Keith starkly, though at the mention of

the letter his eyes had strayed for a second to the escritoire—and

Ewen immediately wished he had not called attention to it. “Nor do I

believe that our informant mistook you for the Pretender’s son; tall

though he is, you are much taller. He is somewhere hidden in this

house.”

“Tall . . . taller . . .” observed Ewen meditatively. “Ah, yes, I was

forgetting your opportunities of observation at Glenfinnan. I suppose

you were able to tell them his exact height at Fort William after you

had so craftily given me the slip.”

This effort at provoking an argument about the ethics of that action

was unsuccessful, though he could see that his late prisoner did not

relish the expression which he had applied to it. But Captain Windham

merely repeated, with more emphasis, “He is somewhere hidden in this

house!”

“If so, then perhaps you will have the good fortune to find and

recognise him,” said Ewen with an air of levity. “Or if not His Royal

Highness, one of the other two, perhaps.”

“I have no doubt I shall,” replied Keith shortly. “Meanwhile—your

sword, if you please, Mr. Cameron!”

This object Ewen had not the slightest intention of surrendering. But

any kind of parley with the enemy gained time, which was the important

matter. So, after a long look at the floor, as though seeking counsel

there, he put his hand to the hilt, and very slowly drew the

small-sword from its velvet sheath. But, once the blade was out, his

fingers retained their grip.

“After all, I find that I dislike making you an unconditional gift of

it,” he announced coolly, while the candle light played menacingly up

and down the steel. “But I cannot prevent your _taking_ it, Captain

Windham—if you think it worth the trouble.” And with his free hand he

tucked his lace ruffle out of the way.

But, as he had expected—half hoped, yet half feared, for at bottom he

was pining for a fight—the Prince’s pursuer did not wish to engage

either himself or his men in personal conflict while part of the house

still remained unexplored. “I’ll deal with you later, Mr. Cameron,” he

replied curtly, and turned to the soldiers. “See that the prisoner

does not move from that spot, men. I am going to fasten the door.” He

went out and, sure enough, could be heard to bolt the door on the

outside.

Ewen smiled to himself to think how little he desired to quit his

self-chosen position. “You’ll not object to my sitting down, I hope?”

he observed politely to his two guardians, and, turning round the

chair from which he had risen—casting, too, a quick glance at the

panel behind him, still in place—he sat down, facing his gaolers, his

sword across his knees. Though they had no orders to that effect, he

thought it just possible that they might attempt to disarm him, but

they showed no sign of such a desire, standing stiffly by the door

with their muskets and screwed bayonets, and glancing nervously at him

out of the corners of their eyes, mere young north-country English

lads, overawed by his dress and his air. Had they not been there,

however, he could have decamped through the secret door, and what a

charming surprise that would have been for Captain Windham when he

returned—Fassefern House the other way round! But on second thoughts

Ewen was obliged to admit to himself that this withdrawal would not

have been feasible in any case, because he could not close the panel

from the inside.

Meanwhile Captain Windham, in pursuit of a prey already (please God!)

out of the snare, was presumably searching Lady Easterhall’s

bedchamber, and, a still more delicate matter, Miss Cochran’s. Ewen

could not suppose that the task would be to his liking, and the

thought of his opponent’s embarrassment afforded him much pleasure, as

he sat there with one silk-stockinged leg crossed over the other. His

ill-temper had gone. Too young a man to have at all enjoyed the rôle

of disapproving critic forced upon him this evening, with his two

elders covertly sneering at his prudence, and even the Prince amused

at him, he was more than relieved to be free of his ungrateful part.

Events had most amply justified his attitude, and now, with rising

spirits, he was free to try what his wits—and perhaps, in the end,

his arm—could accomplish against Captain Windham and his myrmidons. It

was true that, short of getting himself killed outright, he did not

see much prospect of escaping imprisonment in the Castle, but at any

rate he might first have the satisfaction of a good fight—though it

was to be regretted that he had not his broadsword instead of this

slender court weapon. Still, to get the chance of using it against

what he knew to be overwhelming odds was better than having to submit

to being told that he had an old head on young shoulders!

Sooner than he had expected he heard returning feet, and now Captain

Windham and he would really come to grips! It was by this time, he

guessed, some twenty minutes since the Prince had slipped down the

stair, and, provided that there had been no difficulty about exit, he

must be almost back at Holyrood House by this time. But one could not

be sure of that. And in any case Ewen had no mind to have the way he

took discovered. Here, at last, was an opportunity of repaying to

Captain Windham the discomfiture which he had caused him last August

over his expired parole, perhaps even of wiping out, somehow, the

insult of the money which he had left behind. The young man waited

with rather pleasurable anticipations.

And Captain Windham came in this time, as Ewen knew he would, with an

overcast brow and a set mouth. He was followed in silence by the

sergeant and five men, so that the room now contained nine soldiers in

all.

“Ah, I was afraid that you would have no luck,” observed Ewen

sympathetically. He was still sitting very much at his ease, despite

his drawn sword. “A pity that you would not believe me. However, you

have wasted time.”

Keith Windham shot a quick, annoyed, questioning glance at him,

but made no reply. His gaze ran rapidly round Lady Easterhall’s

drawing-room, but there was in it no article of furniture large enough

to afford a hiding-place to a man, and no other visible door. He

turned to the two soldiers whom he had left there. “Has the prisoner

made any suspicious movement?”

“He has not moved from yonder chair,” he was assured in a strong

Lancashire accent.

“And yet this is the room they were in,” muttered the Englishman to

himself, looking at the disordered chairs and the used wineglasses.

After frowning for a moment he started to tap the panelling on his

side of the room, a proceeding which made Ewen uneasy. Had they heard

up at the Castle of the existence of a secret passage somewhere in

this house? It was unpleasantly possible. But when Captain Windham

came to the three windows giving on to the Grassmarket he naturally

desisted. And the farther side of the room—that where Ewen and his

writing-table were situated—faced, obviously, down the close by which

the soldiers had entered, so (if the Highlander followed his reasoning

correctly) Captain Windham concluded that there was no room there for

a hiding-place, and did not trouble to sound the wall.

Ewen, however, judged it time to rise from his chair. “I told you,

Captain Windham, that my friends had gone,” he remarked, brushing some

fallen powder off his coat. “Will you not now take your own departure,

and allow an old lady to resume the rest which I suppose you have just

further disturbed?”

He saw with satisfaction that the invader (who was, after all, a

gentleman) did not like that thrust. However, the latter returned it

by responding dryly: “You can render that departure both speedier and

quieter, Mr. Cameron, by surrendering yourself without resistance.”

“And why, pray, should I be more accommodating than you were last

August?” enquired Ewen with some pertinence.

Keith Windham coloured. “To bring back the memory of that day, sir, is

to remind me that you then put me under a deep obligation, and to make

my present task the more odious. But I must carry it out. Your sword,

if you please!”

Ewen shrugged his shoulders in the way Miss Cameron condemned as

outlandish. “I had no intention, sir, of reminding you of an

obligation which I assure you I had never regarded as one. But why

_should_ I render your task, as you call it, more pleasant? And why

make a task of it at all? The Prince, as you see, is not here, and

Generals Guest and Preston will find me a very disappointing

substitute.”

Keith Windham came nearer and dropped his voice. His face looked

genuinely troubled. “I wish, Ardroy, for your own sake, that you would

let me take you unharmed! Take you I must; you are a chieftain and the

Prince’s aide-de-camp, as I happen to know. It is the fortune of war,

as it was last August, when our positions were reversed. So, for the

sake of the courtesy and hospitality which I then received from you——”

“My sorrow!” burst out Ewen. “Must my past good conduct, as you are

pleased to consider it, lead to my undoing now? . . . And I very much

doubt whether our positions _are_ reversed, and whether any further

disturbance—and you have made not a little already—do not bring the

guard from the West Bow about your ears. If I might give advice in my

turn, it would be to get back to the Castle while yet you can!”

“Thank you,” said Keith with extreme dryness; “we will. Sergeant, have

your men secure the prisoner.”

He stood back a little. Ewen had already decided in the event of a

fight to abandon his post by the writing-table, where, on one side at

least, he could be taken in flank, and where any shifting of the table

itself, highly probable in a struggle, would cause the panel to reveal

its secret. (Not that that would greatly matter now.) Immediately the

Englishman stepped back, therefore, he darted across the room and

ensconced himself in the corner by the nearest window, hastily

wrapping his cloak, which he had snatched up for the purpose, round

his left arm. His eyes sparkled; he was going to have his fight!

“I am ready,” he remarked cheerfully, seeing the much slower

preparations of his assailants. “Is it to be a charge with the

bayonet, or are you going to use the butt, my friends?”

“You’ll not use either!” said Keith sharply to his men. “I do not wish

this gentleman injured.”

“Then make him put up his sword, sir,” retorted the sergeant in

justifiable indignation. “Else it’s ourselves will be injured, I’m

thinking!”

Ewen was about to endorse this opinion when a familiar and most

welcome sound came to him through the closed window behind him. No

mistaking that strain; and that the soldiers should hear it too he

turned a little and dashed his elbow, protected by the curtain,

through the nearest pane of glass. In it flowed, wailing and menacing,

the Cameron rant: ‘Sons of the dogs, come hither, come hither and you

shall have flesh . . .’

“I think you had best call off your men altogether, Captain Windham,

if they are to save their own skins!” And in the uneasy silence which

he had procured Ewen added, with some exultation, “It is my own clan,

the Camerons; they are coming down the West Bow into the Grassmarket.

There will not be much left of you, my good fellows, if you so much as

scratch me!” And, seeing the effect of his words, he tugged aside the

curtain, flung open the partly shattered casement, and called out in

Gaelic to the line of kilted figures just emerging from the West Bow.

The long yell of the slogan answered him as he swung quickly back on

guard. But there was no need of his sword. Prestonpans had taught the

Castle garrison exaggerated terror of those who uttered such cries.

The soldiers, the sergeant included, were already huddling towards the

door, and Keith Windham was not in time to get between them and the

exit. He stamped his foot in fury.

“Do your duty, you dirty cowards!” he shouted, pointing at the figure

by the window. But a second heartshaking yell came up from the

Grassmarket: ‘_Chlanna nan con, thigibh an so, thigibh an so . . ._’

Perfectly deaf to their officer’s objurgations, the English soldiers

were occupied only with the question of which should be first from the

room. Keith seized the last fugitive by the collar, but the only

result of this appeal to force was that the man, who was very

powerful, shook him off, thrust him back with small regard for his

rank, and banged the door behind himself. Captain Windham, livid,

threw himself upon the handle to pluck it open again—but the knob

merely turned in his hand. The violent slam had evidently shot to the

bolt on the outside. Hunter and quarry—only now it was hard to know

which was which—were equally prisoners.

Ewen, over at the window, laughed aloud; he could not help it. “You

seem always to be unfortunate in your men, Captain Windham,” he

remarked, and, shaking the cloak off his left arm, slid his blade back

into the scabbard. “I fear it is I who shall have to ask you for

_your_ sword. Would you prefer to give it up to me before the guard

arrives?”

He got it . . . but not in the fashion which he had expected. Keith,

quite beside himself with mortification and rage, had already whipped

out his weapon while Ewen, with bent head, was sheathing his own, and

now, really blind to the fact that the Highlander was for the moment

defenceless and off his guard, Captain Windham sprang furiously at him

without warning of any sort. Ewen had no chance to draw again, no

space to spring aside, no time for anything but to catch wildly at the

blade in the hope of diverting it. At the cost of a badly cut right

hand he succeeded in saving himself from being spitted, and the

deflected point, sliding through his clutching fingers, went by his

hip into the panelling where, both men loosing their hold at the same

moment, the weapon stuck for the fraction of a second, and then fell

ringing to the floor.

Horrified and sobered, Keith had sprung back; Ewen, after a first

instinctive movement to catch him by the throat, had checked himself,

and, clasping his bleeding hand tightly with the other, leant back

against the wall and looked at him with a mixture of sternness and

enquiry. His breath was coming rather quickly, but, compared with his

assailant, he was the image of calm.

“My God!” stammered the Englishman, as white as a sheet. “I never saw

. . .” He indicated Ardroy’s sheathed sword. “I might have killed you.

. . .” He took a long breath and drew a hand across his eyes. Still

looking at him curiously his victim fished out his lace-bordered

handkerchief and began to wrap it round his palm, a very inadequate

precaution, for in a moment the cambric was crimson.

In another Keith was at his side. “How deeply is it cut? Let me . . .”

And he pulled out his own more solid handkerchief.

“I don’t know,” answered Ewen composedly, putting back his Mechlin

ruffle, which had slipped down again. “Pretty deeply, it seems.” He

surrendered his hand. “Thanks; over mine then—tie it tighter still.”

“Good God, I might have killed you!” said Keith again under his breath

as he bandaged and knotted. “I . . . I lost my temper, but, as

Heaven’s my witness, I thought you had your sword out.”

“Why, so I had, a moment earlier,” replied Ewen. “You did not intend

murder, then?”

“I deserve that you should think so,” murmured the soldier, still very

much shaken. “Perhaps as it is I have disabled you for life.”

Ewen had nearly retorted, “Why should that trouble you?” but he was so

much astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone that he

merely stared at his bent head as he tied the last knot.

“These handkerchiefs are not enough,” said Keith suddenly,

relinquishing the wounded hand. He pushed aside the little brass

gorget at his neck, untied and unwound his own lace cravat, and bound

that over all. Then he stood back.

“You will soon get attention now, Ardroy. Keep your hand up, so. . . .

There is my sword.” He made a jerky movement towards the floor, and

walking abruptly away to the hearth, stood there with his back turned.

For a moment or two Ewen also stood quite still where he was, looking

at that back. That Captain Windham was ashamed of his attack on a

practically unarmed man he could understand; he would have had

precisely the same scruples in his place, and he would certainly have

felt the same rage and humiliation had he been deserted by his

followers in so disgraceful a manner (though he could not imagine

Highlanders ever acting so). And, observing the dejection revealed in

Captain Windham’s attitude, where he stood with bowed head and folded

arms by the dying fire, and the complete absence in him of any of that

mocking irony with which he himself had more than once made

acquaintance at Ardroy, Ewen began to feel less vindictive about the

incident of the guineas. Captain Windham, being an Englishman, did not

understand Highland pride, and had probably never intended any insult

at all. And now, with this sudden turning of the tables, he was again

a prisoner, made in rather an absurd and ignominious fashion. Ewen

could find it in his heart to be sorry for him. And what would be the

advantage of yet another prisoner? The officers taken at Gladsmuir had

had to be paroled and sent away. . . .

He picked up the fallen sword, faintly smeared with red along its

edges, and went over to the hearth.

“Captain Windham!”

The scarlet-clad figure turned. “Your Camerons are very tardy!” he

said with a bitter intonation. “Or are those yells all we are to know

of them?” It was indeed sufficiently surprising that the rescuers had

not entered the house some minutes ago, particularly as the door was

broken open.

Ewen listened. “I think that they are possibly chasing . . . a

retreating enemy. But in any case”—he held out Keith’s sword—“I cannot

stomach taking advantage of your being left in the lurch by those

rascals. Put on your sword again, and I’ll convey you safely out of

the house.”

A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I

am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your

protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would

be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of

mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”

Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even

mention the objectionable guineas. “I cannot hold this sword much

longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the

caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go

alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon

be here!”

Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held

out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the

hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.

Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That,

then——” he began at last, thickly.

“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road.

It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to

trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he

went and picked it up—“’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a

candle to light you down.”

To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the

baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his

teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! He _was_ here this evening,

then, in this very room!”

“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen

soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and

betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”

“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath,

reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so

nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly

in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to

the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a

sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly

outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so

pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming

will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to

the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”

“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we

have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his

eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the

stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering

upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the

Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in

Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in

another minute!”

He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the

spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second

or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room

fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.

CHAPTER IV

Walking home with her father next day up the crowded Canongate after

rain, Miss Alison Grant suddenly became aware of a tall Highland

officer striding up the street some way ahead. From the occasional

glimpses of him, which were all that she was able to obtain in the

moving throng, it seemed to be her betrothed; but, if so, he was

carrying his right arm in a sling. This was disturbing. Moreover Ewen,

if it were he—and at any rate the officer was a Cameron—was walking at

such a pace that Alison and her parent would never overtake him,

unless indeed he were on his way to visit them where they lodged in

Hyndford’s Close, a little beyond the Netherbow.

“Papa,” whispered Alison, “let us walk quicker; yonder’s Ewen, unless

I am much mistaken, on his way to wait upon us, and he must not find

us from home.”

They quickened their pace, without much visible effect, when lo! their

quarry was brought to a standstill by two gentlemen coming downwards

who encountered and stopped him.

“Now let us go more slowly, sir,” suggested Alison, dragging at her

father’s arm. To which Mr. Grant, complying, said, “My dear, to be

alternately a greyhound and a snail is hard upon a man of my years,

nor do I understand why you should be stalking Ardroy in this

fashion.”

“Ewen _is_ rather like a stag,” thought Alison; “he carries his head

like one.—Papa,” she explained, “I want to know—I _must_ know—why he

wears his arm in a sling! Look, now that he has turned a little you

can see it plainly. And, you remember, he disappeared so strangely

last night.”

And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who

made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped

petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his

bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive

glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a

second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions,

went on her way with dignity.

But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow

entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look

back down the Canongate.

“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had

befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’.

You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought.

What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”

“Well, my dear, here he is, so he can tell us—that is, if he is

disposed to do so,” observed Mr. Grant. “Good day, Ardroy; were you

coming in-bye?”

“I intended it, later on,” replied Ewen with more truth than tact,

“but——”

“But now you see that you behove to at this moment,” finished Alison

with determination, looking very significantly at his arm; and Ewen,

without another word, went obediently up the close with them, secretly

admired from above by a well-known Whig lady who happened to be at her

window, and who remarked to her maid that the Jacobite Miss lodging

overhead had a braw lover, for all he was a wild Hielandman.

And presently the wild Hielandman was standing in the middle of Mr.

Grant’s parlour, and the Jacobite Miss was declaring that she could

shake him, so little could she get out of him. “They say you can ask

anything of a Cameron save butter,” she said indignantly, “but it’s

clear that there are other things too you’ll never get from them!”

Ewen smiled down at her, screwing up his eyes in the way she loved. He

was a little pale, for the pain of his cut hand had kept him wakeful,

but he was not ill-pleased with life this afternoon.

“Yes, other people’s secrets, to wit,” he said teasingly; and then,

feigning to catch himself up, “My sorrow, have I not the unlucky

tongue to mention that word in a woman’s hearing! What I have told

you, _m’eudail_, is the truth; I had an encounter last night with some

of the Castle garrison, and my hand, as I say, was hurt—scratched, that

is, as I warrant you have sometimes scratched yourself with a needle

or a bodkin.”

“The needle’s never been threaded whose scratch required as much

bandaging as _that_!” retorted Alison, with her eyes on the muffled

member in the sling. “And what was yon I heard as I passed about a

disturbance in the Grassmarket?”

“Has she not the ears of a hare?” observed Ewen to Mr. Grant. “’Tis

true, there was a disturbance in the Grassmarket.”

“If that is so, then I’ll learn more of it before the day’s out,”

deduced Alison with satisfaction. “And you, sir, that ought to know

better, brawling in the town at such an hour! I thought the Prince had

summoned you last night. Not that I remarked your absence from the

ball,” she added. “I was quite unaware of it, I assure you, in the

society of my cousins of Glenmoriston.”

Ewen looked across at Mr. Grant and smiled. “My dear,” protested the

old gentleman, “an encounter with the Castle garrison can scarce be

called brawling. We are, it may be said, at war with them.”

“But are they not all as mild as milk up there now that the Prince has

lifted the blockade?” enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met

any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces

there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”

“Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never

fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”

“Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas

you provoked the disturbance!”

Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense

there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you

give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you

appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet

from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as

he moved it.

“Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right

to know!”

Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”

“Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come, _Eoghain mhóir_, if

there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing

it for all the world to see!”

“That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you

can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a

spring beneath.”

“Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of

the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was

a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen, _he_ gave you

this?”

“I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”

“For . . . on account of what happened last night?”

Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me

down so turbulent as you do.”

There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was

because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the

ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I

will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”

* * * * * *

But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or

less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his

sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the

Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing

down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard

rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this

composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was

constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant

battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently

startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid

enough.

“And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed

breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”

“For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should

run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling

more comfortably.

“For the second time?”

“I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”

“Surely ’twas not . . . _Captain Windham_ . . . here in Edinburgh?”

“It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it

must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor

man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing

me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not

lay that to his charge, Alison.”

“And so you _have_ met again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened

on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was

neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy

that you let him go?”

And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean

forgot about it. _Dhé!_ It begins to fulfil itself then!”

Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in

Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had

mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would

never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having

waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the

fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure

himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the

old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is

possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.

But up at the Castle the days went a great deal more slowly,

particularly for Captain Keith Windham, who had little to do but to

pace the battlements and look down, as he was doing this morning, when

October was almost sped, on that unrivalled vista of which he was now

heartily sick, and remember all the mortifications, professional as

well as personal, which he had suffered there since the end of August,

when he had made his way thither from Fort William with the news of

the Highland advance. For after the startling tidings of Cope’s

avoidance of the rebels, leaving the road open before them to

Edinburgh, Keith, secure but chafing, had endured the spectacle of

vain attempts by the frightened citizens to repair and man the walls,

and to raise a body of volunteers (almost immediately disbanded lest

their lives should be endangered), and the sight of two regiments of

His Majesty’s dragoons in full flight along the Lang Dykes with no man

pursuing. Finally, to complete and symbolise the great scandal and

shock of Cope’s lightning defeat, he had with his own eyes seen,

struck defiantly into the outer gate of the Castle, the dirk of the

single Jacobite officer who on that occasion had chased a party of

terrified troopers thither like rabbits to their burrow.

On top of all this had come his own personal humiliation and

disappointment, and of this Ewen Cameron and no other had been the

cause. The soldiers of Lascelles’ regiment who had so shamefully

deserted the officer in charge of them had been severely punished, but

this did little to heal the very sore place in Captain Windham’s

memory. Sometimes it was only anger which coloured his recollections

of that scene in Lady Easterhall’s house, sometimes it was shame.

Sometimes he wondered if he had not permanently injured Ardroy, and

though, as a loyal subject of King George, he ought no doubt to have

been glad of the possibility, in view of how the hurt had been

inflicted and of the Highlander’s subsequent behaviour, the idea

filled him with a feeling far removed from satisfaction. And even

worse might easily have come of his onslaught. Keith was inclined to

shudder still when he thought of that contingency, and not merely

because, with Ewen dead or dying on the floor, he himself would have

received short shrift from the Camerons when they broke in.

How nearly he had succeeded in capturing the Prince he supposed he

would never know, but there was no doubt that it was Ardroy who had

destroyed whatever chance he might have had. Chosen as Keith had been

to lead the flying raid that evening because he was the only officer

in the Castle who had seen Charles Edward Stuart face to face, he

could then have blessed Fate for having sent him to Glenfinnan. Thus,

he had reflected as they marched stealthily down the close, does

profit come out of the unpleasant. Already he saw his name in every

news sheet as the captor of the Pretender’s son. . . . Alas, he had

merely come anew into collision with the same stubborn and generous

character, and once again, though their positions this time had seemed

to be reversed, he had had the worst of it. And on this occasion the

Highlander had shown him a new and unsuspected side of himself, for it

was Ardroy who had played with _him_, sitting so coolly in front of

that table on which hung the secret. God! if he had only guessed!

And so Keith had come back empty-handed, with the knowledge that but

for Ardroy’s quixotry he would not have come back at all. Huddled in

his enemy’s own cloak (for its real ownership, luckily for his peace

of mind, he never discovered), pushed ignominiously to safety down the

very passage by which his quarry had eluded him, he had been ever

since weighed down by a debt which was wellnigh a grievance. There

were times when he almost regretted that he had not remained and been

made prisoner . . . and always times when he asked himself why Ewen

Cameron had acted as he did. He was sure that he himself would not

have been so foolish. The days of chivalry were over; one did not go

about in this century behaving like the knights in the old romances.

An enemy was an enemy—at least to a professional soldier—and it was

one’s business to treat him as such.

The cursed part of it was that people who were insane enough to behave

as Ardroy had behaved somehow attained a position of superiority which

was distinctly galling. And galling also was it to realise, as Keith

Windham suddenly did at this moment, how much time he spent in

speculating what that curious young man might be doing down there in

the city spread out like a map. . . . Strange that he had not at first

recognised him that night—extraordinarily handsome Ardroy had looked,

and devilish cool he had kept, too, in a tight place! . . . Fool that

he was, he was at it again. Keith turned from the battlements, glad of

a diversion, for he had become aware of the approach of a wheeled

chair, which he knew to contain the aged but spirited form of General

Preston.

General George Preston, deputy-governor of Edinburgh Castle since

1715, to whom, old and infirm though he was, it was likely that his

Hanoverian Majesty owed it that that fortress had not been surrendered

to the invaders, was a veteran of Marlborough’s wars, bearing in fact

souvenirs of Ramillies which had ever since affected his health and

his prospects of promotion. He was eighty-six years of age, even older

than General Guest (now, since Cope’s flight, commander-in-chief); but

whereas that warrior had scarcely left his quarters since he had

removed for safety into the Castle, Preston, during the more strenuous

days of the ‘blockade’, had caused himself to be wheeled round in a

chair every two hours to supervise and encourage. Since Colonel Philip

Windham, Keith’s father, had also fought under Marlborough, Keith had

on one occasion asked the old soldier some questions about the great

Duke’s battles, and found Preston very ready to hold forth on them,

and in particular on that bloody fight of Malplaquet, where he had

commanded the Cameronian regiment. And Keith remembered suddenly that

the Scottish friend of his father’s after whom he himself was named

had met his death at Malplaquet, and spoke to the old soldier about

that misty John Keith of whom he knew so little.

“Aye,” said the General, a Perthshire man himself, “I wondered that ye

should bear a Scots name in front of an English, Captain Windham. I

suppose yon Keith will have been in a Scottish regiment, but I don’t

mind of him. ’Tis thirty-six years syne, ye ken—a lang time, more than

your hale lifetime, young man.”

So John Keith, who had fallen on a Flanders battlefield nearly forty

years before, became more misty than ever. But Captain Windham’s

pre-natal connection with a Scot of Malplaquet had interested old

Preston in him, and he announced an intention of reporting on the zeal

and vigilance which the officer of the Royals had displayed in the

defence of the Castle.

From his chair the old General beckoned to that officer now, and sent

his servant out of hearing.

“Captain Windham, a word in your ear!” And, as Keith stooped, he said

gleefully, “’Tis a good word, if ever there was one. I’ve every reason

to believe that Edinburgh will be free of these Highland pests the

morn!”

Keith gave an exclamation. “They are evacuating the city, sir?”

The veteran chuckled. “They intend marching for England, whence I pray

not a man of ’em will return alive. The news has just come in by a

sure hand, but I had jaloused it already. In a day or two ye’ll not

see a plaid between Greyfriars and the Nor’ Loch!”

* * * * * *

General Preston’s sure hand had carried perfectly correct tidings.

Against the wishes and the instincts of the Chiefs, Prince Charles was

about to march into England, believing that he would thus rally to his

standard those cautious English Jacobites on whose promised support he

built such large hopes, and many others too, who had made no promises,

but who would surely declare for him when he appeared in person to

lead them against their alien ruler.

And early on the morning of the first of November Ewen took his

farewell of Alison in Hyndford’s Close. Lochiel’s regiment, like the

bulk of the army, was already assembled at Dalkeith; for since

Prestonpans the Prince had never quartered troops in the city to any

great extent, and he himself was already gone. But Ewen, in order to

be with his own men in this strange country to which they were bound,

had resigned his position as aide-de-camp, and remained behind in

order to bring away the Cameron guard, who would presently march out

of Edinburgh with colours flying and the pipes playing.

But here there was no martial display, only a knowledge that this, and

not the farewell at Ardroy in August, was the real parting. Ewen was

setting off to-day for something much more portentous than a mere

rendezvous—armed invasion. Yet some unspoken instinct made them both

try to be very matter-of-fact, especially Alison.

“Here is a sprig of oak for your bonnet, Ewen—you’ll be wearing your

clan badge now, I’m thinking. I picked it yesterday.” And she fastened

beside the eagle’s feathers a little bunch of sere leaves. “And see, I

have made you a new cockade . . . I doubt you’ll get your clothes

mended properly. England’s a dour place, I’m sure. Oh, I wish you were

not crossing the Border!”

“Nothing venture, nothing win,” replied Ewen tritely, looking down at

his bonnet, about which her fingers were busy. “I doubt, for my part,

that those oakleaves will bide long on their stalks, Alison, but you

may be sure I’ll wear them as long as they do. And the cockade—’tis a

very fine one, my dear—I’ll bring back to you somehow. Or maybe you’ll

get your first sight of it again in London!”

“I wonder will you meet Captain Windham anywhere in England?” said

Alison.

“How that fellow runs in your head, my darling! I vow I shall soon be

jealous of him. And I marching away and leaving him here in the

Castle—for I suppose he is there still. Make him my compliments if you

should meet him before setting out for Ardroy,” said Ewen, smiling.

For to Ardroy were his betrothed and her father retiring in a day or

two.

“Ewen,” said the girl seriously, taking him by the swordbelt that

crossed his breast, “will you not tell me something? Was there ever a

danger that, from the injury Captain Windham did you, you might never

have had the full use of your hand again?”

“Why, what put that notion into your head?”

“A word you let fall once, and an expression on Dr. Cameron’s face one

day when I mentioned the hurt to him.”

“For a day or two Archie did think it might be so,” conceded her lover

rather unwillingly. “And I feared it myself for longer than that, and

was in a fine fright about it, as you may imagine.—But, Alison,” he

added quickly, as, exclaiming, “Oh, my poor darling!” she laid her

head against him, “you are not to cast that up against Captain

Windham. It was I that took hold of his blade, as I told you, and I am

sure that he never meant——”

“No, no,” cried Alison, lifting her head, “you mistake me. No, I am

glad of what you tell me, because that hurt he did you is perhaps the

fulfilment of the ‘bitter grief’ which Angus said that he should

cause you . . . only happily it is averted,” she added, taking his

right hand and looking earnestly at the two red, puckered seams across

palm and fingers. “For that _would_ have caused you bitter grief,

Ewen, my darling.” She covered the scars with her own soft little

hands, held the captive hand to her breast, and went on, eagerly

pursuing her exegesis. “Indeed, if for a time you believed that you

would be disabled always—how dare you have kept that from me?—he has

already caused you great grief . . . and so, that part is over, and

now he will only do you a service!”

But Ewen, laughing and touched, caught her to him with his other arm.

“The best service Captain Windham can do is never to let me see his

face again, or I may remember how angry I was with him when I found

his letter and his guineas that night at Fassefern. Nor do I think

he’ll want to see mine, for in his soul he was not best pleased, I’ll

undertake, at being so lightly let off the other evening and shown

down the very secret stair he could not find.—But now, _mo chridhe_,

do not let us talk of the tiresome fellow any more. . . .”

And five minutes later, when Hector Grant in his French uniform

appeared at the door, they had forgotten everything except that they

were parting.

“Come, Ardroy, you’ll be left behind,” he called gaily. “Dry your

tears, Alison, and let him go; we’ve eight good miles to cover.”

“I was not greeting, never think it,” said Alison as she was released.

“But oh, I’m wishing sore I could come with you two!”

“Indeed, I wish you could,” said Hector. “For I doubt the English

ladies cannot dance the reel.”

Alison looked from her brother to her lover and back again. She might

not have been crying, but there was little gaiety in her. “There’ll be

more than dancing over the Border, Hector!”

“There’ll be better than dancing, you mean, my lass,” said Hector

Grant, and his left hand fell meaningly on his sword-hilt. “I suppose

I may take a kiss of her, Ardroy?”

III

THE EBB

“Then all went to wreck.”

—_The Lyon in Mourning_.

CHAPTER I

There was a bitter wind sweeping across the Beauly Firth, and

Inverness on the farther shore lay shivering under a leaden sky. The

Kessock ferryman had to tug at his oars, although he carried but one

passenger, a gaunt, broad-shouldered young man, fully armed, who sat

looking across at the little town with rather harassed blue eyes.

Four months—four months and a week over—for to-day was the seventh of

March—since, full of hope and determination, the Prince’s army had set

out on the road to England. Of what avail those hopes? England had not

risen for the Stuarts, had not stirred. And yet, just when it seemed

that, if the invaders had put their fortunes to the touch and pushed

on, they might have gained a kingdom, they found themselves turning

their backs on their goal and trailing home again over the Border.

Little more than forty days had been spent on the other side, and,

save for the rear-guard action near Penrith, the sword had not left

its sheath there. The invasion had been a failure.

Yet, in spite of weariness and heartburnings, the little army had at

least recrossed Esk in safety—except those of it so mistakenly left to

garrison Carlisle—and many were not sorry to be back on Scottish soil.

But to have retreated once more after beating Hawley at Falkirk in

January, even though the bad weather had hindered pursuit and

prevented a more decisive victory, to have left Stirling, after

failing to take it, in such haste and disorder that the withdrawal had

been more like a rout, what name best befitted that strategy? For

gradually all the Lowlands had been occupied in their rear, and there

was a slow tide setting northwards after them which one day might be

slow no longer.

The Prince, maddened at the decision to withdraw north, which was

against his every instinct, had been told that the daily desertions

were so great as to leave no choice, that the only course was to

master the forts in the north, keep together a force until the spring,

and then increase it to fighting strength. But had the desertions been

so extensive? It was hard to judge, yet, from his own experience,

Ardroy would not have said so. Still, there were other difficulties,

other divisions; there was the preponderating influence of the Irish

favourites, who always had the Prince’s ear because they always fell

in with his opinions; there was the growing ill-feeling between him

and his able but hot-tempered general-in-chief, so acute that Ewen

had with his own ears heard Charles Edward charge Lord George Murray

behind his back with treachery. Yet Lochiel had been for withdrawal,

and whatever Lochiel did was right in Ewen’s eyes. He was wondering

to-day whether the Chief were still of the same opinion; he had not

seen him for over a fortnight.

The ferryman’s voice broke in on his passenger’s reflections. “’Tis

all much changed in Inverness now, sir, and for the better.”

Evidently, like most of the inhabitants, he was Jacobite at heart. “To

think that only two weeks agone I ferried Lord Loudoun and the Lord

President and the Chief of Macleod over in this very boat, and all

their troops crossing helter-skelter too, to get away from the Prince.

. . . You’ll be yourself, perhaps, from chasing after Lord Loudoun

yonder?” he added tentatively.

“Yes,” answered Ewen, his eyes still fixed on Inverness, “I am from

Lord Cromarty’s force.”

The reason why the Earl of Loudoun, commanding the district for the

Government, had evacuated Inverness without a battle, was really due

to the somewhat ludicrous failure of his attempt to seize the person

of the Prince when, in mid-February, the latter was the guest of Lady

Mackintosh at Moy Hall. Conceiving the idea of surprising him there,

the Earl had set out secretly at night with a force of fifteen hundred

men for that purpose. But timely warning having been sent from

Inverness, the Prince slipped out of Moy Hall, and the whole of Lord

Loudoun’s force was thrown into confusion, and a part of it into

headlong flight, by the ruse of Donald Fraser, the Moy blacksmith, and

four of Lady Mackintosh’s Highland servants, who, by firing off their

pieces in the dark and calling to imaginary regiments to come up,

re-enacted the comedy of High Bridge on an even more piquant scale.

Not only was the Earl obliged to return ignominiously to Inverness,

but the desertions from his Highland companies consequent upon this

affair were so great that he thought it better to await Cumberland’s

advance among the Whig clans of Ross and Cromarty, to which he and his

force accordingly retired; and Prince Charles’s army had entered

Inverness without a blow.

The water lapped the sides of the ferryboat impatiently. The sky

looked full of snow, and nearly as dark as on the day of Falkirk,

while the wind was even colder than Ewen remembered it as they had

plodded over Shap Fell in the December retreat from England. In

Cæsar’s time, as he used to read in his boyhood, armies went into

winter quarters. But all _their_ marching and fighting had been done

in the severest season of the year, in autumn and winter; and who knew

what awaited them in the not less cruel rigours of a Highland spring?

For Cumberland, he knew, had been at Aberdeen since the end of

February.

Ewen frowned, and his thoughts went back to the somewhat comic warfare

from which he had just been recalled. For when Lord Cromarty had been

sent with a Jacobite force over the Moray Firth after Lord Loudoun,

the latter, retreating farther north into Sutherland, established

himself at Dornoch on the other side of the deep-winding firth of that

name, which Cromarty, having no boats, could not cross. But directly

Cromarty attempted to go round by the head of the firth Lord Loudoun

sent his men across by ferry to Tain, on the Ross-shire side, once

more; and when Lord Cromarty returned to Ross, Lord Loudoun recalled

his followers to Dornoch. And thus a vexatious and absurd game of

catch as catch can had been going on, and might go on for ever unless

the Prince could send another detachment to hold Tain. No, Ewen was

not sorry that Lochiel had recalled him.

He pulled his bonnet with the draggled eagle’s feathers and the soiled

cockade farther down on his brows, and wrapped his plaid round him,

for they were now in the icy middle of the firth. The ferryman babbled

on, telling him for the most part things he knew already; how, for

instance, when the Prince had had the castle here blown up after its

surrender, an unfortunate French engineer had been blown up with it.

It was useless to ask the man what he really wanted to know, how Miss

Alison Grant did over there in Inverness, Alison on whom he had not

set eyes since Hector and he had said farewell to her last All Hallows

in Edinburgh. It was a question whether they three would ever meet

again, for Hector had been one of the officers left behind as part of

the ill-fated garrison of Carlisle, and since the thirtieth of

December he had been a prisoner in English hands. How Alison was

bearing this ill news Ewen could only guess; it was all the heavier

for her too, because her father was in France, having been despatched

thither on a mission by the Prince directly after Falkirk.

Ewen knew that Alison and his aunt had come to Inverness in the hopes

of seeing him, immediately on the news of the town’s surrender to the

Highland army on February 18, but as it was before their arrival that

Ewen himself had been sent off with Lord Cromarty’s composite force,

the meeting had not taken place. Miss Cameron, as a letter had since

told him, had thought it best on that to return to Ardroy, but,

feeling sure that sooner or later Ewen’s duties would bring him to

Inverness, she had left Alison there in the care of Lady Ogilvy, whose

husband, with his regiment, was on the other side of the Spey. And now

Lochiel had recalled Ewen—but only to accompany him on another

enterprise. Of his approaching return Ewen had told Alison in a letter

which he had despatched yesterday by Lachlan, but he had not told her

how brief his stay would be, nor had he broached the project which was

in his own mind—the determination which had been growing there since

the retreat northward.

But, as he thought of what that was, the harassed look went out of his

eyes, and he became deafer than ever to the ferryman’s chatter.

* * * * * *

At the guardhouse by the bridge over the Ness Ewen stopped to enquire

where Lady Ogilvy was to be found, for he was not sure of her lodging,

and as he was talking to the officer there he heard a youthful voice

behind him asking exactly the same question in Gaelic.

Ewen turned quickly, for he knew that voice. There in the entry stood

a half-shy, half-excited boy of fifteen, who had never been in a town

before—young Angus, Neil MacMartin’s eldest son. His face lit up, and

he darted forward. “Letters, Mac ’ic Ailein!” And out of an old

sporran too big for him he produced two, none the better for their

sojourn in that receptacle.

With a smile and a kind word his master took them. One was from Miss

Cameron to himself, the other, addressed to Miss Alison Grant at

Ardroy, in an unknown and foreign-seeming hand, had been redirected by

his aunt to Inverness. He put them both in his pocket, gave the lad

money to procure himself food and lodging and a new pair of brogues to

go home in, told him where to find his father and not to return to

Ardroy without seeing him again, and himself set off in haste for Lady

Ogilvy’s lodging.

But Angus _Og_, footsore and hungry though he was, seeing his young

chieftain quite unaccompanied, pattered at a little distance behind him

with all the air of a bodyguard, his head full of wild plans for

joining his father and uncle in this place of many houses instead of

returning to Slochd nan Eun. If they were in Mac ’ic Ailein’s tail,

why not he?

Young Lady Ogilvy lodged in one of the larger houses at the lower end

of Kirk Street, and as Ewen passed the many-paned projecting window on

the ground floor he caught sight of a blue ribbon confining dark

curls. After that he was not much conscious of being admitted, or of

anything until he found its wearer in his arms.

“Oh, my darling! . . . You were expecting me—Lachlan brought you my

letter?”

Alison nodded, holding very fast to him, her eyes closed like one

surrendered to ecstasy. Much as they had to say to one another, for a

time neither said it; it was enough merely to be together again after

the months of strain and waiting and endurance and disillusioned

hopes. But when they had had their fill of looking at each other they

began to talk.

“I knew that you would come back to Inverness,” said Alison happily.

They were both sitting on the window seat now. And she added, with all

her old gaiety, “If Lochiel would permit so forward an act, I would

kiss him for having recalled you from Lord Cromarty’s force.”

“But he has not recalled me in order to stay in Inverness, darling—at

least not for more than a couple of days. He and Keppoch are shortly

going with reinforcements to the siege of Fort William, and I go too.”

All the peace and content was dashed out of Alison’s face. “Oh, Ewen

. . . and I thought you would be staying here!” She bit her lip and the

tears came into her eyes.

Her hand was in Ewen’s, and he sat a moment silent, looking down with

some intentness at his ring upon it. “But we shall have two days

together, _m’eudail_. And . . . do you not think that those two days

are long enough . . . that the time has come . . . to change this ring

of my mother’s for another?”

The colour ran over Alison’s face and her hand made a movement as if to

withdraw itself. “Oh, my dear,” she said rather breathlessly, “not

when my father is absent—not till he comes back! And not when . . .

when one does not know what will befall next!”

“But, my heart,” said Ewen quietly, “that is just why I want to make

you my wife. Do you not see that? Why, you should have been mine these

six months. I have waited even longer than I had thought to wait, and

God knows that was long enough.” And as Alison said nothing, but

looked down, twisting her ring, he went on, suppressing a little sigh,

“There are many reasons why we should be wed without further loss of

time, and these two days that we have now seem designed for that. Our

marriage could easily be arranged in the time; Mr. Hay, the Episcopal

minister of Inverness is, I believe, in the town; Lochiel would take

your father’s place. And I could carry you back to Ardroy, as its

mistress, when we start for Fort William . . . Alison, dear love, say

Yes!”

He was very gentle as he pleaded, for she seemed oddly reluctant,

considering that they had been formally contracted since last July,

and should indeed have been married in the autumn. She even mentioned

Hector and his perilous situation, rather tentatively, as a reason for

delay; but Ewen told her that her brother’s prospects were ten times

better than those of most who wore the white cockade, for he held a

French commission, and could not be treated otherwise than as a

prisoner-of-war. And finally Alison said that she would ask Lady

Ogilvy’s opinion.

Ewen tried not to be hurt. Since he had not the mistaken conviction of

some young men that he knew all about women, even Alison’s feelings

were sometimes a mystery to him. He longed to say, “_I_ have not a

French commission, Alison,” and leave her to draw a conclusion which

might get the better of her hesitancy, but it would have been cruel.

And as he looked at her in perplexity he remembered a commission of

another kind, and put his hand into his pocket.

“When I saw you, Alison, everything else went out of my head. But here

is a letter I should have given you ere this; forgive me. It was sent

to you at Ardroy, and Aunt Marget despatched one of the MacMartin lads

hither with it; and meeting me by the bridge just now he gave it to me

for you. It is from France, I think.”

“I do not know the hand,” said Alison, studying the superscription,

and finally breaking the seal. Ewen looked out of the window; but he

did not see any of the passers-by.

Suddenly there was an exclamation from the girl beside him on the

window seat. He turned; her face was drained of colour.

“My father . . . Ewen, Ewen, I must go at once—he is very ill . . .

dying, they think. Oh, read!”

Horrified, Ewen read a hasty French letter, already more than two

weeks old, which said that M. Grant, on the point of leaving France

again, had been taken seriously ill at Havre-de-Grâce; the writer,

apparently a recent French acquaintance of his, appealed to Mlle Grant

to sail for France at once, if she wanted to see her father alive—not

that the state of M. Grant at the moment was desperate, but because

the doctor held out small hope of ultimate recovery.

Alison had sprung to her feet, and clasping and unclasping her hands

was walking up and down the room.

“Ewen, Ewen, what if I am not in time! My dearest, dearest father, ill

and quite alone over there—no Hector anywhere near him now! I must go

at once. I heard Lady Ogilvy say that there was a French vessel in

port here due to sail for France in a day or two; I could go in that.

Perhaps the captain could be persuaded to sail earlier . . .”

In contrast to her restlessness, Ewen was standing quite still by the

window.

“Ewen,” she began again, “help me! Will you make enquiries of the

captain of the ship? I think she is for St. Maloes, but that would

serve; I could post on into Normandy. Will you find out the captain

now—this afternoon? . . . Ewen, what ails you?”

For her lover was gazing at her with an expression which was quite new

to her.

“I am deeply sorry to hear this ill news of Mr. Grant,” he said in a

low voice, and seemed to find a difficulty in speaking, “—more sorry

than I have words for. But, Alison, what of _me_?”

“You would not wish to keep me back, surely?”

“What do you think?” asked the young man rather grimly. “But I will

not—no, it would not be right. I will let you go, but only as my wife.

You’ll marry me to-morrow, Alison!”

There was no pleading about him now. He moved a step or two nearer,

having to keep a tight hold on himself neither to frighten her nor to

let slip a word against this other claim which, much as he respected

it, was coming in once more to sweep her away from him, when he had

waited so long. Whatever might be read on his face, his actions were

perfectly gentle.

And Alison came to him, the tears running down her cheeks, and put her

two hands in his. “Yes, Ewen, I am ready. Heart’s darling, I wish it,

too; you must not think I am unwilling. . . . And you said that you

would carry me off by force if I were,” she added, laughing a little

hysterically, as he folded her once again in his arms.

* * * * * *

So next day they were married in the little Episcopal meeting-house of

Inverness. Only a very few people were present, but the Prince was

among them: not the lighthearted adventurer of the escapade in

Edinburgh in which the bridegroom had played so belauded a part, but a

young man who looked what the last three months had made him, soured

and distrustful. Yet he gave them a glimpse of his old charming smile

after the ceremony, when he kissed the bride and wished them both

happiness.

“I would I were venerable enough to give you my blessing, my friends,”

he said, “since ’tis all I have to give; but I think I am somewhat the

junior of your husband, Lady Ardroy; and in any case how could I

bestow my benediction upon a bridegroom who has the bad taste to be so

much taller than his future King!”

“But you know that I am at your feet, my Prince,” said Ewen, smiling,

and he kissed once more the hand which he had kissed that night at

Holyrood.

Last of all Lochiel, grave and gentle, who had given Alison away,

kissed her too, and said, “Ewen is a very fortunate man, my dear; but

I think you are to be congratulated also.”

For their brief wedded life a little house which Mr. Grant had hired

the previous summer had been hastily prepared; it was bare almost to

penury, a tent for a night or two, meet shelter for those who must

part so soon. And Ewen had no gift ready for his bride—save one. When

they came home he put on her middle finger the ring which the Prince

had given him in Edinburgh.

Next day was theirs to play at housekeeping, and they were a great

deal more gay over it than Jeanie Wishart, Alison’s woman, who went

about her work perpetually murmuring, “Puir young things!” In the

afternoon, since the March sun had come out to look at them, they

wandered among the Islands and gazed down at Ness, hurrying past,

broad and clear and shallow, to the firth. That evening they had

thought to spend alone by their own fireside; yet nothing would serve

Lady Ogilvy save to give a supper for the new-married pair, and Lady

Ardroy, in a rose-coloured gown, was toasted by not a few who would

never drink a pledge again; and all the Jacobite songs were sung . . .

but not, somehow, that only too appropriate, ‘Oh, this is my departing

time, for here nae longer maun I stay,’ with which gatherings were

wont to conclude.

Yet Ewen and Alison sat by their fire after all, sat there until the

last peat crumbled, and it began to grow cold; but Alison, as once

before, was warm in the Cameron tartan, for Ewen had wrapped it round

her knees over her pretty gown. He sat at her feet, looking very long

and large, the firelight, while it lasted, playing on the shining

golden brown of his hair, accentuating too the faint hollow in his

cheek, the slight suggestion of a line between the brows which the

last two months had set there.

“Ewen, I want to tell you something.” Alison hesitated and a tinge of

colour stole over her face. “Do you know, _m’eudail_, that you talk in

your sleep?”

He looked up at her surprised. “Do I? No, dearest, I did not know. Did

I talk much—to disturb you?”

She shook her head. Ewen seemed to turn over this information for a

moment. “I believe,” he said thoughtfully, “that as a boy I used to do

it sometimes, so Aunt Margaret said, but I thought that I had outgrown

it. What did I talk of—you, sweetheart, I’ll warrant?”

“No,” said Alison, smiling down upon him. “Not a word of your wife.

You seemed to think that you were speaking to someone of whom she may

well be jealous; and what is more, when I spoke to you, thinking for a

moment that you were awake, you answered quite sensibly.”

“Jealous!” exclaimed Ewen, turning his clear, candid gaze full upon

her. “My little white love, there’s no one in this world of whom you

have occasion to be jealous, nor ever has been. Do not pretend to be

ignorant of where my heart is kept!” He took her clasped hands, opened

them gently, and kissed the palms. “The space is small,” he said,

looking critically at it, “but, such as the heart is, all of it lies

_there_.”

Alison enveloped him in a warm, sweet smile, and slid the hands round

his neck. “All? No; there’s a corner you have kept for someone else,

and in it you have set up a little shrine, as the Papists do, for your

saint—for Lochiel. But I am not jealous,” she added very softly. “I

understand.”

Ewen gave her a look, put his own hands over those clasped round his

neck, and dropped his head on to her knee in silence. After a while

she put her cheek against the thick, warm waves of his hair. Joy and

apprehension had so clasped hands about Alison Cameron this day that

it was hard to know which was the stronger.

But in the night she knew. The icy fingers of foreboding seemed

gripped about her heart. Not even Ewen’s quiet, unhurried breathing

beside her, not even the touch of his hand, over which her fingers

stole in search of comfort, could reassure her; his nearness but made

the pain the sharper. Oh, to have him hers only to lose him so soon!

But her father—alone, dying, over the seas! She reached out and lit a

candle, that she might look once more at the husband she was leaving

for her father’s sake, for God knew whether she should ever see him

asleep beside her again. It was not the seas alone which were about to

sunder them. . . .

Ewen was sleeping so soundly, too, so quietly; and he looked as young

and untroubled as the boy she had known five years ago in Paris. There

was no sign on his face, in its rather austere repose, of the trouble

which had forced its way through his unconscious lips last night.

Alison had not told him by the fire, that on their bridal night he had

uttered protests, bewildered questionings, against that double retreat

in which he had shared. ‘Must we go back, Lochiel—must we go back?’

She gazed at him a long time, until for tears she could see him no

longer, and, blowing out the light, lay and sobbed under her breath.

She thought she should die of her unhappiness; she almost wished that

she might; yet she sobbed quietly lest she should wake Ewen to

unhappiness also. But quite suddenly, though he had not stirred, she

heard his voice in the darkness; and then she was in his arms, and he

was comforting her in their own Highland tongue, with all its soft

endearments and little words of love. And there at last she fell

asleep.

But Ewen stayed awake until the grudging March daylight crept into the

little room where he lay wide-eyed, with Alison’s dark curls on his

heart, and within it a chilly sword that turned and turned. He would

never hold her thus again; he was sure of it.

* * * * * *

The morning was very cold, and when he took Alison to the French brig

a little snow was falling; the gang-plank was slippery too with rime.

He carried her bodily over it, and down to the cabin which she would

share with Jean Wishart.

There under the low beams Alison’s courage broke at last. Clinging to

him convulsively she said, in a voice that was not hers, that he must

come with her; that she could not go without him—she could not! He

must come too, and then he would be safe . . .

Ewen turned even paler than she. “My darling, my heart’s darling, you

don’t mean that!”

Alison swayed; her eyes closed. Alarmed, he put her on a seat against

the bulkhead, and, kneeling by her, began to chafe her hands. Soon

they clenched in his, and she opened her eyes, dark pools of sorrow,

and said firmly through colourless lips, “No, no, I did not mean it! I

know that you cannot come. Will you . . . can you forget what I said,

Ewen?”

“It is forgotten. It was not you who spoke,” he answered, trying to

keep his own voice steady as he knelt there, holding her hands very

tightly. There was a trampling sound on deck; how long had they for

all the thousand, thousand things that remained to say? There was

no time to say even one. He bent his head and pressed his lips

passionately upon the hands he held. Anguish though it was to lose

her, it was better that she should go. For since he had urged her to

marry him that he might take her back to Ardroy he saw with different

eyes. The future looked blacker than he had realised; away in Ross

he had not known of the desperate want of money, even of food,

the gradually thinning ranks. He knew of these now, and saw even

Cumberland’s delay at Aberdeen in a sinister light, as if the

Hanoverian commander knew that the fates were working on his side and

that there was no need for haste. . . .

Above him Alison’s voice said suddenly, “Ewen . . . Ewen, why do you

not say, ‘Stay then in Scotland with me—do not go to France

yourself!’?”

He was startled; had she read his thoughts? “Why, my darling,” he

answered as readily as he could, “because your father needs you so

sorely.”

Her voice sank still lower. “There is another reason, too—do not deny

it! You think that I am safer away!”

And Ewen did not answer.

“And you gave me this ring—the Prince’s ring—not only as a wedding

gift, but because you feared that one day . . . soon . . . it might be

taken from you!”

After a pause he said, “Partly, perhaps.”

“Then . . . I cannot leave you, even for my father,” said Alison, and

sprang up. “I must stay in Scotland, beside you. I am your wife. Take

me back to the quay, Ewen—tell Mrs. Wishart . . .”

But Ewen, on his feet too, caught her in his arms. “No, darling, no!

Think of your father, whom you may never see again. And, love of my

heart”—he tried to make his voice light—“you cannot come besieging

Fort William with me! When we have beaten Cumberland, as we beat Cope

and Hawley, I will come to France and fetch you home to Ardroy.”

“When we have beaten Cumberland.” Alison looked up into her husband’s

eyes with a most insistent question in her own. But he did not answer

the question, though he knew very well what it was, for he said

gently, “How can one see into the future, darling? One can only . . .

do one’s duty.”

Even as he uttered that rigorous word there came a knock at the cabin

door, and a gruff French voice announced that they would be casting

off in another minute or two, and that if Monsieur wished to land he

must be quick.

So the sword slid down between them. Ewen’s grasp tightened.

“Alison, white love, rose of my heart, we are one for ever now! You

will know, I think, what befalls me.”

Her face was hidden on his breast, so close that he could not even

kiss it. “Darling, darling, let me go . . .” he whispered. But it was

rather a question, he felt, whether he could ever unloose his own

clasp and cast his heart from him. And men were running about shouting

overhead; the hawser was coming inboard . . .

Suddenly Alison lifted her face, and it was almost transfigured. “Yes,

I shall know . . . for I think you will come back to me, God keeping

you.” She took her arms from his shoulders; he bent to her lips for

the kiss that first turned his heart to water and then ran through it

like wine, loosed his hold of her, and walked straight out of the

cabin without another word or look. With the same unchecked movement

he crossed the gang-plank from the deck, as if he could not trust

himself to remain the moment or so longer that it would take the

sailors to cast off the second hawser.

But on the quay he turned, wishing they would be quick, and make it

impossible for him to leap on board again, though the plank was now

withdrawn, and be carried off with Alison. And at last, after an

eternity which was all too short, the end of the rope splashed into

the water. More sails went up; the distance began to widen. Alison was

going from him.

He stood there motionless, long after the brig had left the shore,

watching her move to the waters of the firth. The sparse snowflakes

whirled relentlessly against him, but they melted as soon as they came

to rest, as brief in their stay as his two days’ happiness.

* * * * * *

From the quay Ewen went straight to Lochiel’s head-quarters and

reported himself for duty. Two hours later his body was marching out

of Inverness in the van of the Cameron reinforcements. Where his soul

was he hardly knew.

CHAPTER II

To rid the Great Glen of both its obnoxious English forts was an

enterprise which highly commended itself to those clans whom they

chiefly incommoded, the Camerons and the Glengarry and Keppoch

MacDonalds. There had been jubilation among these when, on March 5,

Fort Augustus had surrendered after two days’ siege, and what

artillery the besiegers possessed was free to be turned against Fort

William.

But Fort William, between Inverlochy Castle and the little town of

Maryburgh, was not so accommodating as its fellow. For one thing, it

was in a better position to defend itself, since sloops of war could

come up Loch Linnhe to revictual it, even though the Highlanders held

the narrows at Corran. It had a garrison of five hundred men, both

regulars and Argyll militia, plenty of guns, and, after the middle of

March, that zealous officer Captain Carolina Scott to assist

Major-General Campbell in the defence. Already, by the time that Ewen

arrived with Lochiel and the reinforcements, there had been some

severe skirmishes, and the Highlanders had fought an engagement with

the soldiers from the fort and the sailors from the _Baltimore_ and

_Serpent_ sloops, in which the latter succeeded in landing and

destroying the ferry-house and several small villages on the Ardgour

side. On this the Camerons ensconced themselves at Corpach, where Loch

Linnhe bends to its junction with Loch Eil, and there beat off an

armed flotilla of boats with such success that the _Baltimore_ was

ordered thither to open fire and cover a landing. But the Highlanders’

position was so good that the bombardment made no impression, and

Captain How had to withdraw baffled.

Ewen was with these adventurers at Corpach, enjoying himself and

finding in conflict an anodyne for his thoughts; it made the blood run

pleasantly and enabled him to forget Alison for an hour or so. But the

ordinary business of the siege was less stimulating, since he had

nothing to do with the artillery under Stapleton and Grant and their

Franco-Irish gunners, and the only chance of hand-to-hand fighting lay

in repelling the constant raids of the garrison and trying to protect

the unfortunate dwellers in the countryside who suffered by them. He

seemed to himself to live in a series of disconnected scenes,

sometimes here in Lochaber, where Ben Nevis, thickly capped with snow,

looked down impartially on assailants and defenders alike, sometimes

back in Inverness, going through every moment of those short two days

with Alison. But no one who did not observe him constantly and closely

could have guessed this. Lochiel, who knew him well and did observe

him closely, gave him as much to do as possible.

But it was certainly not Lochiel who enjoined on him the feat which

brought his share in the siege to an abrupt end.

* * * * * *

It was a fine morning in the latter half of March, blown through with

a gusty wind. Brigadier Stapleton, having got some mortars into

position on one of the little eminences about half a mile from the

fort, had started to shell it from that point, and the fort was

replying. Since its fire was directed towards destroying the hostile

batteries, there was no great danger from it to those not serving the

guns, and the Highlanders had no doubt grown a little careless, which

might account for the fact that near the crest of another hillock,

about a quarter of a mile away from Stapleton’s mortars and the

same distance as they from Fort William, Lochiel and Keppoch were

standing unconcernedly in the midst of a little group of Camerons and

MacDonalds. Below them, on the slope looking towards the fort, a

half-ruined stone wall hinted at a bygone attempt at cultivation or

enclosure. The two chiefs were interested in some rather suspicious

activities on board the _Baltimore_ sloop, visible at anchor in the

loch beyond the counterscarp and bastions of the fort.

“I vow it seems like another raid preparing,” said Alexander

MacDonald. “Do you look, Lochiel.”

He passed the Cameron his spyglass. Ewen, who was sitting comfortably

in the heather at a few yards’ distance, nearer the battery, rested

his elbows on his knees and shaded his eyes the better to see also,

his brain at these words busy with a vision of a possibly gratified

desire for what he considered real fighting.

Suddenly, as it were with half an eye, he became aware of something

unusual in the fort, where, a mere eight hundred yards away, movements

were perfectly visible. Surely the defenders had altered the position

of one of their six-pounders . . . could they be intending . . .

Lochiel standing there with the glass to his eye looking at the sloop

was fully exposed to their view . . .

In a second Ewen was on his feet, shouting a warning, but as he sprang

came the flash and the roar. “God!” he cried in agony, and with

another bound was up on the crest of the hillock, his arms wide. Could

one man’s body suffice?

There was a crash as the shot pitched into the ruined wall on the

slope below, breaking and scattering the big rough stones in all

directions. Ewen never saw what struck him, but at the moment of

impact, which seemed to drive his soul from his body, he had just time

to think, “It is for _him_! Alison, forgive me . . .” Then he went

into darkness.

When he came out of it again he found himself lying on the farther

slope in the midst of a group of people, with his head on someone’s

arm, and hands unfastening his coat. A voice said, “No, the head wound

is only slight; ’tis here on the breast that the large stone must have

struck him.”

Ewen tried to get his own voice. It was difficult, and the world

heaved. “Is . . . Lochiel safe?”

Archibald Cameron, kneeling beside him, looked up for a second. “He is

holding you at this moment, dear lad. No—lie still!” He went on with

his examination.

But Ewen disobediently turned his swimming head a little, and saw that

he was indeed in Lochiel’s hold, so Lochiel must be unharmed. Why then

had he his other hand over his eyes? Puzzled but content, he shut his

own again.

When next he thought much about his surroundings he was lying in the

same place, wrapped in a plaid, with Lachlan squatting near, gazing at

him with anguished eyes. Over the level top of Ben Nevis clouds, as

white as the snow which crowned it, were hurrying against the blue. It

came back to Ewen that he had heard Archie say that he was greatly

bruised, but that no bones seemed broken, and no internal injury, he

hoped, inflicted; so, after speaking a word or two of reassurance to

his foster-brother, he relapsed into his state of happy content, with

pain every time he drew a breath and a violent headache. But Lochiel

was safe.

Presently he felt his hand taken, and there was Lochiel himself

kneeling by him, and Lachlan on the other side removing himself

respectfully to a distance.

“Ewen, Ewen,” said the well-beloved voice, with trouble in it, “you

should not have done it!”

Ewen gave him a radiant smile. He felt neither penitence nor any need

for it.

“I saw . . . what was going to happen,” he observed.

“I do not think that anything would have reached me. No one was struck

but you, who deliberately threw yourself in the way of the fragments,

and one of Keppoch’s gillies, slightly. If you had been killed on my

behalf——” Lochiel left the sentence unfinished, and glanced down at

the cuff of his coat; there was a stain on it.

Ewen’s eyes had followed his. “Do not say that you are hurt after

all!” he exclaimed in a tone of horror.

“It is your own blood, Ewen. Your head was not much cut, Archie says.

But oh, my child, if I had had your death too at my door, when there

is so much that I must answer for!”

And the young man saw that his Chief was moved—more deeply moved than

he had ever seen him; but, being still stupid from the blow on the

head, he thought, “Why does he say that . . . whose death is at his

door?” And he lay looking with a mixture of affection and perplexity

at the kinsman who was still as much his pattern of all that was

noble, wise and generous as when he himself had been a boy under his

tutelage. Then the fort fired one of its twelve-pounders at the

battery, and through the din Lochiel told him that a litter had been

sent for to take him to Glen Nevis House, where he should see him

again later.

Soon after, therefore, four of his men carried Ewen to that house of

Alexander Cameron’s at the opening of the glen which Lochiel and

Keppoch had made their head-quarters; and he heard the voice of the

Nevis, telling of the heights from which it had descended; and a

little later, when that had faded from his hearing, a less agreeable

one, Lowland and educated, saying how disgraceful it was that a

peaceful writer could not go a mile from Maryburgh to visit a client

without being seized by cattle-thieves; that indeed the said thieves

could do no less than send him back under escort and safe-conduct. And

here the indignant speaker’s gaze must have fallen upon the litter

with its burden, for his next remark was: “What have we here—another

of ye killed? I’m rejoiced to see it!”

Ewen felt constrained to deny this imputation. “I am not in the least

killed,” he rejoined with annoyance, opening his eyes to find himself

almost at the door of Glen Nevis House, and to see, in the midst of a

group of rather shamefaced Highlanders, Mr. Chalmers, the Whig notary

of Maryburgh, whom he knew and who knew him. The lawyer gave an

exclamation.

“Gude sakes, ’tis Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy! I’m unco sorry to see

you in this condition—and in such company, Ardroy!”

“Why, what other company do you suppose I should be in?” asked Ewen,

and shut his eyes again and heard no more of Mr. Chalmers and his

grievances. But that chance meeting was to mean a great deal to him

afterwards.

What meant more to him at the moment, however, was that Dr. Cameron

kept him in bed longer than he had anticipated, and he had not been on

his legs again for more than a day or two when the siege of Fort

William was suddenly abandoned. The defenders were too resolute, the

besiegers unfortunate, and their artillery not sufficiently powerful;

and in the night of April 3, after spiking their remaining cannon, the

attacking force withdrew. And, since they were in their own land of

Lochaber, and it was seed-time or past it, Lochiel and Keppoch gave

permission to their men to go home for a few days. So Ewen and his

little force returned to Ardroy, and he saw Loch na h-Iolaire again,

and caused Neil to row him upon it, for it was too cold for a swim; in

the middle of which voyage he was struck by a sudden suspicion, and,

landing on the islet, examined it for traces of the heron. There were

none; and the nest, up at the top of the tallest pine-tree, must long

have been uninhabited, for the winds had blown it nearly all away.

Shortly afterwards Lachlan had a singularly unpleasant interview with

his chieftain, in which, upbraided with the most direct disobedience,

he replied that his concern for the being he loved best on earth was

even stronger than his wish to obey him; after which, in a dramatic

but perfectly sincere manner, he drew his dirk and said that rather

than Mac ’ic Ailein should look at him with such anger he would plunge

it into his own heart. In the end Ewen was constrained to forgive him,

after pointing out how little his disobedience had availed. There were

more herons than one in Lochaber.

And other officers than Captain Windham in King George’s army, he

might have added. His twice-held prisoner had indeed passed from his

thoughts these many weeks; the question of the slaughtered heron

necessarily brought him back there for a moment, but without any

permanence. Ewen did not anticipate another meeting with him, for were

Angus’s prophecy going to be fulfilled to the letter, they would

surely have encountered each other in the confusion of Falkirk fight,

where the second battalion of the Royals had—until it fled—faced the

Camerons across the ravine. No; that two meetings should come to pass

out of the five predicted was quite a reasonable achievement for the

old _taibhsear_.

And then one afternoon, when he was absorbed in thoughts of Alison,

with all the final suddenness of the expected came a panting messenger

from Achnacarry, with a scrawl in Lochiel’s writing: “Gather your men

and march at once. Cumberland is moving. God send we reach Inverness

in time!”

* * * * * *

A bad dream is sometimes only a dream to the sleeper; he may know it

to be such, and tell himself so. But this, though it held some of the

elements of nightmare, was no dream; it was reality, this tramping of

a tired and half-starved army through the night in a hopeless attempt

to surprise the Duke of Cumberland’s camp—hopeless because it was

plain that they would never get to Nairn before daylight now.

Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp, officer after officer, had come

riding past to the head of the column of Highlanders and Atholl men to

urge Lord George Murray to halt, for the rear could not keep up. And

yet, thought Ewen rather scornfully, they had not just marched more

than fifty miles over mountainous country in two days, as most of Clan

Cameron had.

It was by this feat of endurance and speed that Lochiel and his men

had reached Inverness the previous evening, to learn, to their dismay,

that Cumberland had been allowed to cross the Spey unopposed. Despite

fatigue they had made but a brief halt in the town and had proceeded

to Culloden House, whither the Prince had gone earlier in the day. A

warm welcome had been theirs, for he was becoming alarmed at their

non-appearance, the more so that by no means all his scattered forces

were yet returned from the various enterprises on which they had been

despatched. Cromarty, the Macgregors and the Mackinnons were still

north of the Moray Firth, no one knew where, and Keppoch had not yet

appeared, nor the Frasers, nor Cluny Macpherson and his men. To-day,

since early morning, the whole army had been drawn up on the chosen

ground on Drumossie Moor, in the belief that Cumberland would advance

that day and attempt to reach Inverness. But the hours went by and the

enemy did not appear, and then the cravings of hunger began to be

felt, for all the food which had passed any man’s lips that day was a

single biscuit served out at noon. And at last it was clear that, the

fifteenth of April being his birthday, Cumberland was remaining at

Nairn to allow his troops fitly to celebrate it. The Prince’s hungry

forces therefore withdrew from the moor again to the vicinity of

Duncan Forbes’s mansion.

It was known that Lord George Murray had not liked the ground chosen

for their stand, and Brigadier Stapleton and Colonel Ker of Graden,

the ablest staff officer the Prince possessed, had crossed the water

of Nairn that morning to seek for a better. They reported that the

boggy, hilly ground there was much more suitable than the open moor

for receiving the Hanoverian attack, since it was almost impossible

for cavalry and artillery, and the foot might perhaps be tempted into

some pass where they could be fallen upon and annihilated. On the

other hand, it was urged that, if the Highlanders withdrew over the

stream into the hills, Cumberland would almost certainly slip by them

to Inverness, seize the baggage and stores and starve them out. The

matter was still unsettled when, at an informal council of officers in

the afternoon, someone (Ewen was not clear who) had proposed to

surprise the Hanoverian camp by a night attack. Most of the soldiers

there, it was thought, would be more or less drunk after the

festivities of the birthday. Lord George Murray and the Prince were

both found to be in favour of the idea; moreover, owing to the

scandalous neglect of the commissariat shown by Hay of Restalrig, who

had succeeded Murray of Broughton as secretary, there was not a crumb

of food for the men next day. Objections to the plan there were

indeed: the distance—a good ten miles—the danger of a spy’s carrying

the news to the English camp, the absence of so many contingents. But

the arrival of Keppoch with two hundred MacDonalds when the meeting

was in progress clinched the matter, and the night attack was resolved

upon.

The decision had purposely been kept from the men themselves, and it

was with remorseful knowledge of the futility of their preparations

that Ewen had watched his own little company choosing the driest spots

on the heathery hillside for a night’s repose, making a fire and

rolling themselves supperless in their plaids to seek in sleep a

palliative for the gnawing hunger which possessed them. Perhaps it

would have been better if the rank and file had been told what was

afoot, for by the time planned for the start, seven o’clock, it was

found that hundreds of them had stolen off in search of food. And to

the mounted officers sent out in the utmost haste to beat them up and

bring them back—no easy task—many had replied that the officers might

shoot them if they pleased, but go back they would not until they had

had meat. The Prince was urged to give up the plan, but he refused;

and as those who had remained were assembled, the word had been given

to march off.

It was an excellent night for a surprise, dark and misty; but it was

also very favourable for tired and hungry men to drop unobserved out

of the ranks, and many of them did so. Ewen was as tired and hungry as

anyone else, but he shut his mouth and plodded on like an automaton at

the head of his company. Lochiel was in front, and where Lochiel went

he followed as a matter of course. And close on his heels came Neil

and Lachlan, of the same mind regarding him.

Although Lord George had never consented actually to stop, he had been

obliged to march slower and slower in consequence of the messages from

the rear; but now at last there came a halt, and a prolonged one. The

Duke of Perth rode past, and presently Hay of Restalrig. Discussion

was evidently going forward in the van. And meanwhile the unwished-for

light was growing in the east, not yet daybreak, but its harbinger.

Faces began to be distinct, and haggard faces they were.

And here came back one of the Mackintosh guides, the same who, not

long before, had brought the order to attack with the sword only.

Before he spoke to him Ewen guessed what orders he brought now. They

were to retrace their steps; the surprise was being abandoned. Too

much time had been lost on the way, and to attack in daylight would be

madness. All the nightmare effort had been for nothing—for worse than

nothing . . .

* * * * * *

Between five and six of that cold, grey morning Ewen found himself

once more before the gates of Culloden House. Men were dropping where

they stood; some, he knew, were lying worn out along the roadside. He

was in no better case himself; in some ways, indeed, in a worse, for

it was not three weeks since he had left his bed after his experience

at Fort William. But in anger and desperation he despatched Neil and

Lachlan, who still seemed capable of movement, to Inverness with

orders to get food for their comrades if they had to steal it. It was

all he could do, and when he got inside the house he sat down

exhausted in the hall, and fell asleep with his head on a table. He

was hardly conscious of the stir a little later, when the Prince

arrived, tired, dispirited and sore from the complaints which he could

not avoid hearing. But from scraps of talk about him (for the place

was full of officers in the same plight as himself) Ewen’s weary brain

did receive the welcome impression that they would at least have some

hours to rest and recuperate—and later, please Heaven, to get some

food—for Cumberland was evidently not going to attack to-day.

He was dreaming that he was at home, and sitting down to a good meal,

when he felt someone shaking him, and, raising his head, saw one of

his own cousins from Appin, Ian Stewart.

“What is it?” he asked stupidly.

“A straggler has just come in with news that some troops are advancing

from Nairn. He did not know whether it was the main body or only

skirmishers . . .”

Ewen dragged himself to his feet. All round the hall others were doing

the same, but some would require more to rouse them than a mere

rumour. It was broad daylight; a clock near marked nine o’clock. “It

cannot be the main body—the attack!” he said incredulously. “There was

no sign of general movement at Nairn; the camp fires were burning—we

could see them four miles away. However, the truth can soon be

discovered.”

The weary-faced Appin lad shrugged his shoulders. “It will not be very

easy to make sure,” he said. “Fitz-James’s Horse is all dispersed

after fugitives and food. I tell you, Ardroy, I do not much care which

it is, if only I can get an hour’s sleep.”

“I must find Lochiel,” said Ewen. He had no idea where he was—a

sufficient comment on his own state—but was told that he was upstairs

with the Prince, who, on coming in, had thrown himself just as he was

upon his bed. Half dizzy with sleep and hunger, Ewen went up the wide

staircase, hearing everywhere voices discussing the report, and

arguing and wondering what was to be done, and declaring that the

speakers disbelieved the news—because they desired to disbelieve it.

When he reached the landing the door of the Prince’s bedchamber

opened, and Lord George Murray and Ker of Graden came out together,

the latter looking very grim, Lord George plainly in a rage. They went

down the stairs to the encumbered hall, Lord George calling for his

aides-de-camp. The door meanwhile had been left ajar; loud voices came

through it, and Ewen had a glimpse of the Prince, sitting on the edge

of his bed, still booted, with Sir Thomas Sheridan, his old tutor,

beside him. He was speaking, not to him, but to someone invisible.

“I tell you,” his voice came sharply, edged with fatigue and

obstinacy, “I tell you the English will be seized with panic when they

come to close quarters. They cannot face my Highlanders in the charge;

’twill be again as it was at Gladsmuir and——”

Then the door shut behind Lochiel, coming slowly out. He did not see

the young man waiting for him, and on his tired, unguarded face Ewen

could read the most profound discouragement.

As he crossed the landing Ewen took a couple of strides after him,

laying hold of his plaid, and the Chief stopped.

“Is it true, Donald?”

“I suppose so,” answered Lochiel quietly. “At any rate we must take up

our positions at once.”

“Over the water of Nairn, then, I hope?”

“No. The Prince is immovable on that point. We are to take our stand

on our old positions of yesterday on the moor.”

“When you and Lord George disapprove!—It’s the doing, no doubt, of the

same men who were for it yesterday, those who have nothing to lose,

the French and Irish officers!”

Lochiel glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t speak so loud, Ewen. But you

are right—may God forgive them!”

“May God—reward them!” said Ewen savagely. “We are to march our

companies back to the moor then?”

“Yes. And we and Atholl are to be on the right wing to-day.”

Ewen was surprised, the MacDonalds always claiming and being conceded

this privilege. But he did not seek the reason for the change, and

followed his Chief in silence down the stairs. The confusion in the

hall had increased, and yet some officers were still lying on the

floor without stirring, so spent were they.

“Find me Dungallon and Torcastle,” said Lochiel. “By the way, have you

had anything to eat, Ewen, since noon yesterday?”

“Have you, which is more to the point?” asked Ewen.

Lochiel smiled and shook his head. “But fortunately a little bread and

whisky was discovered for the Prince.”

Ewen found Ludovic Cameron of Torcastle, the Chief’s uncle, and

Cameron of Dungallon, major of the regiment, and himself went out in a

shower of sleet to rouse his men, having in several cases to pull them

up from the ground. He had got them into some kind of stupefied order

when he saw Lochiel and Dungallon come by. A body of MacDonalds was

collecting near, and as the two Camerons passed—Ewen scarcely realised

it then, but he remembered it afterwards—there were muttered words and

a black look or two.

But he himself was thinking bitterly, “I wonder are we all fey? We had

the advantage of a good natural barrier, the Spey, and we let

Cumberland cross it like walking over a burn. Now we might put the

Nairn water between him and us—and we will not!” An insistent question

suddenly leapt up in his heart; he looked round, and by good fortune

Lochiel came by again, alone. Ewen intercepted and stopped him.

“For God’s sake, one moment!” He drew his Chief a little apart towards

the high wall which separated the house from the parks. “If the day

should go against us, Lochiel, if we have all to take to the

heather——”

“Yes?” said his cousin gravely, not repudiating the possibility.

“Where will you make for? Give us a rendezvous—give me one, at all

events!”

“Why, my dear boy, I shall make for Achnacarry.”

“But that is just where you would be sought for by the Elector’s

troops!”

“Yet I must be where the clan can find me,” said the Chief. “Loch

Arkaig is the best rallying point. ’Tis not easy neither to come at it

suddenly in force because there is always the Lochy to ford. And if I

were strictly sought for in person, there are plenty of skulking

places round Achnacarry, as you know.”

“But none beyond the wit of man to discover, Donald—and most of them

known to too many.”

“Of the clan, perhaps, yes. But you do not imagine, surely, that any of

them would be betrayed by a Cameron! Moreover, Archie came on a new

one the other day when we were there; he showed it to me. Truly I do

not think the wit of man could find that unaided, and no one knows of

it but he and I. So set your mind at rest, dear lad.” He took a step

or two away. “I’ll tell you too, Ewen.”

The young man’s face, which had become a little wistful, lit up. “Oh,

Donald . . .”

“Listen,” said Lochiel, dropping his voice, and coming closer to the

wall. “Half-way up the southern slope of Beinn Bhreac, about a hundred

paces to the right of the little waterfall. . . .”

And Ewen, listening eagerly, heard of an overhanging birch tree whose

old roots grasped like hinges an apparently immovable block of stone,

which could be moved if one knew just where to push it, and of a cave,

long disused, which Dr. Cameron had found behind it—a place whose

existence could never be suspected. And there, if hard pressed . . .

“Yes, surely there you would be safe!” said Ewen with satisfaction.

“That is a thousand times better than any of the old places. I thank

you for telling me; I shall not forget.”

“Whom should I tell if not you, my dear Ewen,” said his Chief, laying

his hand for a moment on his shoulder. “You have always been to me——”

More he did not say, for Dungallon was at his elbow, urgently

summoning him. But perhaps, also, he could not.

* * * * * *

Ewen pulled his bonnet lower on his brows, and, bending his head

against the sleety blast, set his face with the rest towards the fatal

stretch of moorland, the last earthly landscape that many a man there

would ever see. But over that possibility he was not troubling

himself; he was wondering whether it were possible to be much

hungrier, and what his foster-brothers would do when they returned and

found him gone into battle without them. And like a litany he repeated

to himself, to be sure that he remembered them aright, the directions

Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh had given him: “Half-way up the southern slope of

Beinn Bhreac, about a hundred paces to the right of the waterfall . . .”

Just as they were all taking up their positions a gleam of sun shot

through the heavy, hurrying clouds, and fell bright upon the moving

tartans, Stewart and Cameron, Fraser, Mackintosh, Maclean and

MacDonald, lighting too the distant hills of Ross across the firth,

whence Cromarty came not, and the high ground over the Nairn water on

the other hand, where Cluny Macpherson was hurrying towards them with

his clan, to arrive too late. Then the gleam went out, and the wind

howled anew in the faces of those who should spend themselves to death

unavailingly, and those who should hold back for a grudge; it

fluttered plaid and tugged at eagle’s feather and whipped about him

the cloak of the young man for whom the flower of the North stood here

to be slain; and faint upon it, too, came now and then the kettledrums

of Cumberland’s advance.

CHAPTER III

Once more Keith Windham—but he was Major Windham now, and on General

Hawley’s staff—was riding towards Lochaber. This time, however, he

was thankful to find himself so occupied, for it was a boon to get

away from what Inverness had become since the Duke of Cumberland’s

victory a couple of weeks ago—a little town crammed with suffering and

despair, and with men who not only gloated over the suffering but who

did their best to intensify it by neglect. One could not pass the

horrible overcrowded little prison under the bridge without hearing

pitiful voices always crying out for water. And as for last Sunday’s

causeless procession of those poor wretches, in their shirts or less,

the wounded too, carried by their comrades, simply to be jeered

at—well, Major Windham, feigning twinges from his wound of Fontenoy,

had withdrawn, sick with disgust, from the neighbourhood of the

uproariously laughing Hawley.

And not only was he enjoying a respite, if only of a few days, from

what was so repugnant to him, but he had been chosen by the Duke

himself to carry a despatch to the Earl of Albemarle at Perth. It

seemed that the Duke remembered a certain little incident at Fontenoy.

General Hawley, relinquishing his aide-de-camp for the mission, had

slapped him on the shoulder and wished him good luck. The errand

seemed to promise transference to the Duke’s own staff; and, if that

should occur, it meant real advancement at last, and, when Cumberland

returned to Flanders, a return with him.

So Keith was in better spirits than he had been for the last week.

Surely the end of this horrid Scottish business was approaching for

him! Falkirk—a bitter memory—was more than avenged, for the late

victory on the moor of Culloden could not have been completer—he only

wished he could get out of his mind some of the details of its

completion. But there was this to be said for ruthless methods of

suppression, that they were the sooner finished with.

To tell truth, Major Windham’s immediate situation was also exercising

his mind a good deal. Wade’s road from Fort Augustus to Dalwhinnie and

Perth ran over the steep Corryarrick Pass into Badenoch, and he had

been told that somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Pass he would

find a military post under a certain Major Guthrie of Campbell’s

regiment, in which bivouac he proposed to spend the night. (There had

been a time last August when Sir John Cope with all his force dared

not risk crossing the Corryarrick; it was different now.) Keith had

first, of course, to get to Fort Augustus, and had set out from

Inverness with that intention; but about half-way there, just before

the road reared itself from the levels of Whitebridge to climb to its

highest elevation, he had been inexplicably tempted by a track which

followed a stream up a valley to the left, and, on an impulse which

now seemed to him insane, had decided to pursue this rather than the

main road. His Highland orderly, a Mackay from Lord Reay’s country,

only too pleased, like all his race, to get off a high road, even

though he was riding a shod horse, jumped at the suggestion, averring,

in his not always ready English, that he knew the track to be a

shorter way to the Corryarrick road. So they had ridden up that

tempting corridor.

It was a most unwise proceeding. At first all had gone well, but by

this time it was clear to Keith that he and his orderly, if not lost,

were within measurable distance of becoming so. The original track had

ceased, the stream had divided and they knew not which branch to

follow; and either only seemed to take them higher and higher towards

its source. Bare and menacing, the mountain-sides closed in more and

more straitly upon the foolhardy travellers. The Highlander was of use

as a pioneer, but Keith had expected him to be a guide, whereas it

soon appeared that he had no qualifications for the post, never having

been in these parts before, despite his confident assertion of an hour

ago. Every now and then they were obliged to lead their horses, and

they were continually making detours to avoid boggy ground. Keith

trudged on silent with annoyance at his own folly, his orderly voluble

in assurances that ‘herself’ need not be alarmed; there were worse

places than this in Sutherland, yet Dougal the son of Dougal had never

lost himself.

It was hard to believe that it was the first of May, so cold was it;

not only were the surrounding mountains capped with snow, but it lay

in all the creases of the northern slopes to quite a low level. There

were even patches not far above the route which the travellers were

painfully making out for themselves. And it was actually a pocket of

snow in a sort of overhanging hollow some way off to their left, a

little above them, which drew Keith’s eyes in that direction. Then he

saw, to his surprise, that there was a figure with a plaid drawn over

its head sitting in the hollow—a woman, apparently.

He called Mackay’s attention to it at once. “Ask her if she can tell

us the best way to the Corryarrick road.”

The Highlander shouted out something in his own tongue, but there was

no answer, and the woman huddled in her plaid, which completely hid

her face, did not move. “She will pe asleep, whateffer,” observed

Mackay. “_A bhean_!—woman, woman!”

But another thought had struck the Englishman. Tossing the reins of

his horse to Mackay, he strode up to the hollow where the woman sat,

and stooping, laid a hand on her shoulder. For any warmth that struck

through the tartan he might as well have touched the rock against

which she leant. He gave an exclamation, and, after a moment, drew the

folds of the plaid a little apart.

If the young woman who sat crouched within it, stiff now, like the

year-old child in her arms, knew the way anywhere, it was not to the

Pass of Corryarrick. There was a little wreath of half-melted snow in

a cranny near her head; it was no whiter than her face. The upper half

of her body was almost naked, for she had stripped herself to wrap all

she could round the little bundle which she was still clasping tightly

to her breast. But it was only a bundle now, with one tiny, rigid

waxen hand emerging to show what it had been.

Keith removed his three-cornered hat, and signed to Mackay to leave

the horses and come.

“The poor woman is dead,” he said in a hushed voice, “—has been dead

for some time. Can she have met with an accident?”

“I think she will haf peen starfed,” said his orderly, looking at the

pinched face. “I haf heard that there are many women wandering in the

hills of Lochaber and Badenoch, and there iss no food and it hass been

fery cold.”

“But why should she have gone wandering like this, with her child,

too?”

The Mackay turned surprised eyes upon him. “Because you English from

Fort William will haf burnt her house and perhaps killed her man,” he

replied bluntly. “Then she wass going trying to find shelter for

herself and the wean. . . . And now there iss no one to streak her and

to lay the platter of salt on her preast. It iss a pity.”

He, too, with the innate reverence of his race for the dead, was

standing bareheaded.

“I wish we could bury them,” said Keith. But it was out of the

question; they had neither the implements nor the time; indeed, but

for the food that they carried, and their horses, the same end might

almost be awaiting them in these solitudes. So Mackay replaced the

plaid, and they went silently back to the horses and continued their

journey.

‘You English’—we English—have done this; we whose boast it has always

been that we do not war with women and children; we English whose

vengeance (Keith had realised it ere this) is edged by the remembrance

of past panic, of the disgrace of Prestonpans and Falkirk and

invasion. He went on his way with a sensation of being branded.

Yes, he had been too true a prophet. The comedy _had_ turned to grim

and bloody earnest. And, despite relief and natural exhilaration at

victory—of which there was not much left in him now—despite the

liberation of his native country from a menace which she affected to

despise, but which in the end had terrified her, despite the

vindication, at last, of the worth of trained troops, Keith Windham

could say with all his heart, ‘Would God we were back in the days of

farce!’ Yes, even in the days when last he was in Lochaber, for the

very mortification of the rout at High Bridge last summer and of his

subsequent captivity had been easier to bear than the feeling that he

belonged now to a band of executioners—was indeed closely connected

with the most brutal of them all. He had been gratified when Hawley,

on his arrival at Edinburgh, had, on Preston’s recommendation, chosen

him to fill a vacancy on his staff; but during the last two weeks he

had come to loathe the position. Yet his ambitious regard for his own

career forbade him to damage it by asking permission to resign his

post; indeed, had he taken such a remarkable step, he would not now be

on his way to Perth, having turned his back for a while on what had so

sickened him.

Another half-hour passed, and the memories which had been sweeping

like dark clouds over Keith’s mind began to give way to a real

sensation of alarm, not so much for his personal safety as for the

carrying out of his mission. Suppose they did not find their way

before nightfall out of this accursed maze into which he had so

blindly ventured? He consulted anew with Mackay, and they resolved to

abandon the line which they had been taking, and try instead to find a

way over a spur on their right, for the mountain which sent it forth

was neither craggy nor strewn with scree, and the slope of the spur

was such that it was even possible to make use of their horses. At the

worst its summit would give them a view, and they might then be able

to strike out a better route for themselves.

As Keith was putting his foot in the stirrup Dougal Mackay caught his

arm and said excitedly, “I wass hearing a shout, sir!”

“I heard nothing,” responded Major Windham, listening. “Where did it

come from?”

The orderly pointed ahead. “The men that shouted will pe round the

other side of this _beinn_. Let uss make haste, sir!”

Praying that the Highlander was not mistaken Keith scrambled into the

saddle, and his horse began to strain up the slope. He himself could

hear nothing but the melancholy notes of a disturbed plover, which was

wheeling not far above their heads, and he cursed the bird for

drowning more distant sounds. Then, sharp through the mournful cry,

there did come a sound, the crack of a shot—of two shots—and the

mountains re-echoed with it.

For a moment both Keith and his orderly instinctively checked their

horses; then Keith struck spurs into his, and in a few minutes the

panting beast had carried him to the top of the shoulder . . . and he

had his view.

Directly before him rose another mountain-side, much greener than the

rest, and this greenness extended downwards into the almost level

depression between it and the slope whose summit he had now reached.

Below him, in this narrow upland valley, stood a small group of rough

huts for use when the cattle were driven up to the summer pasture, and

in front of these was drawn up a body of redcoats, to whom a mounted

officer was shouting orders. On the ground near the entrance of the

largest shieling lay a motionless Highlander. The shots thus explained

themselves; the soldiers were at their usual work, and Keith had

ridden into the midst of it. He felt weariness and disgust, but he

needed direction too badly not to be glad to meet with those who could

give it. Presumably the detachment was from the post on Wade’s road,

and the officer might even be Major Guthrie himself. Hoping that the

worst was now over, he rode slowly down the hillside through the

bloomless heather, unnoticed by the group below.

The fern-thatched roof of one of the shielings had already been fired,

and to its first cracklings Keith realised with distaste that the

butchery was not yet finished. Three or four scarlet-clad figures came

out of the hut before which the dead man lay, half carrying, half

dragging another Highlander, alive, but evidently wounded. The officer

pointed, and they followed the usual summary method in such cases,

and, after planting him against the dry-stone wall of the building

itself, withdrew, leaving him face to face with the firing-party. But

apparently their victim could not stand unsupported, for a moment or

so after they had retired he slid to one knee and then to the ground.

“Detestable!” said Major Windham to himself. He had recognised the

tartan now—the one of all others that he would never mistake, for he

had worn it himself—the Cameron. But that did not surprise him. The

doomed Highlander was now struggling to his feet again; he gained them

unaided, and, steadying himself with one hand against the wall behind

him, stood once more upright, so tall that his head was well above the

edge of the low thatch. Now Keith was near enough to see the lower end

of a dirty bandage round his left thigh, and the whole of another on

his sword arm, for all that he had upon him was a kilt and a ragged

shirt. And——

“Good God!” exclaimed the Englishman aloud; and, calling out at the

top of his voice, “Stop! stop!” he drove the spurs into his horse,

came slithering down the last part of the slope, raced towards the

shieling, leapt off, and, holding up his hand—but all faces were now

turned towards him—ran in between the already levelled muskets and

Ewen Cameron.

Ewen alone had not seen him. His face was the colour of the wall

behind him; his eyes were half closed, his teeth set in his lower lip,

and it was plain that only his force of will was keeping him upright

there. A tiny trickle of blood was beginning to course down his bare

leg. And even the blind instinct to face death standing could keep him

there no longer; for the second time he swayed, and the wounded leg

gave way under him again. But this time Keith’s arms caught him as he

sank.

Oblivious of the stupefaction which had descended upon the soldiers,

and of the more than stupefaction manifested by the officer behind

them, Keith lowered that dead weight to the ground and knelt beside

it. In Ardroy’s gaunt face a line of white showed under the closed

lids, and Keith’s hand pressed on the torn shirt found a heartbeat so

faint that he thought, ‘He was dying when they dragged him out, the

brutes!’ Perhaps he had not been in time after all. He remembered that

there was brandy in his holster, and looked up with an idea of

summoning Mackay.

But by this time the officer had ridden up, and was there a pace or

two away, towering over the pair by the wall.

“Am I tae tak ye for a surgeon, sir?” he enquired in a strong Lowland

accent, and in a tone compounded of hot rage and cold. “If sae, an’

ye’ll hae the kindness tae shift yersel’ oot o’ the way for a meenut,

there’ll be nae further need o’ yer sairvices!”

Keith laid Ewen’s head down on the grass, and, standing up, regarded

the rider, a neat, fair-complexioned Scot of about five-and-forty,

with little light eyes under sandy brows.

“Major Guthrie, I think?” he suggested, and saluted him. “I am Major

Keith Windham of the Royals, on General Hawley’s staff, and now on my

way with despatches from His Royal Highness to Perth.”

“I care little if ye hae despatches frae God Himsel’!” retorted Major

Guthrie with increasing fury. “And this isna Perth . . . Haud awa frae

yon wa’—unless ye’ve a fancy tae be shot tae!”

But Keith did not move. “This is not a common Highlander, sir,” he

said, as calmly as he could. “He is an officer, despite his dress.”

For officers, as Major Guthrie must know, were not shot in cold

blood—now.

“What’s that tae me?” enquired Guthrie. He turned. “Here, ye sumphs,

pit him up afore the wa’ again!”

Two of the men made an undecided move forwards, but the sight of this

other officer of equal rank standing so resolutely in front of the

prostrate Highlander daunted them.

“But listen, Major Guthrie,” pleaded Keith, keeping a tight hold upon

his own rapidly rising temper and disgust, “this gentleman is really

of more than ordinary importance, for he was at one time aide-de-camp

to the Pretender’s son, and he is Lochiel’s near kinsman—some kind of

cousin, I think. You surely would not——”

“Lochiel’s near kinsman, did ye say?” interrupted Guthrie, bending

down a little. “Hoo is he called?”

“Cameron of Ardroy, a captain in Lochiel’s regiment. I am sure,” went

on Keith, eager to follow up the impression which Lochiel’s name

appeared to have made, “I am sure you will recognise, Major, that the

Duke would not wish him to be shot out of hand like this!”

“Indeed I’m obliged tae ye, Major Somebody or ither, for sae kindly

instructing His Royal Highness’s wishes tae me,” retorted the

Lowlander, but he bent still farther from the saddle, and gazed down

for a moment at what was lying so still by the wall—at the dirty,

bloodstained, half-clothed figure which Keith had last seen so gallant

in powder and satin, cool, smiling and triumphant. The plea he had

offered—the only plea that he could think of—was it going to save

Ewen Cameron from lying there stiller yet? He tried to read Guthrie’s

intentions on his face, but all that he could see there was its innate

meanness and cruelty.

The saddle creaked as the rider came upright again. He looked down at

Keith himself now with eyes that seemed to hold a flickering light.

“This is God’s truth ye’re tellin’ me, that yon”—he pointed

contemptuously—“is Lochiel’s cousin?”

“Yes, on my honour as an officer.”

“And may I speir hoo ye ken it?”

“Because I have met him before. I assure you, sir, that if they knew

at Inverness——”

“This is nae mair Inverness than it is Perth, Major—Keith! I’m actin’

here on my ain authority, and if yon lousy rebel lying there had the

Duke’s ain protection on him I wudna regard it if I thocht fit. Still

and on, I’m weel aware that as Lochiel’s near kinsman he may be of

mair value alive than deid—we shall see of hoo much in a day or two.

. . . Aye, I doot they’ll be wishing they had him at Inverness!”

“But you cannot send him all the way to Inverness,” protested Keith,

rather alarmed. “He is evidently badly wounded—ill. . . .” He dropped

on one knee beside Ewen again.

Guthrie gave a short laugh. “Did I say I was gaun to? Ye maun tak me

for a fule, Major. Findin’s keepin’, as they say.—But deil kens,” he

added, suddenly dismounting, “hoo I’m tae transport the man even to my

ain camp the nicht; I’ve naething tae carry him on, and I dinna

jalouse——” Here he too came and stooped over the unconscious figure.

“Aye, _he’s_ no’ for sittin’ a horse, that’s plain. I’m thinkin’ I’ll

e’en hae to leave him here till the morn, and send doun a party wi’ a

litter. There’s ane thing,” he added coolly, raising himself with a

shrug of his shoulders, “he’ll no’ rin awa’, and there’s naebody left

aboot the place. Aye, that’s what I’ll dae.”

“You are going to leave him here alone all night, in this state?”

exclaimed Keith, loosing the almost pulseless wrist.

Guthrie stared angrily at him. “Upon my saul, Major! Are ye expectin’

a spital on Ben Loy? For a man on Hawley’s staff ye’re unco tender tae

a rebel! If I canna tak the prisoner wi’ me I’ve nae choice but leave

him here . . . unless ye’d prefer me tae blaw his harns oot after a’.

It’s nane too late for it yet, ye ken.” And he laid a hand on one of

his own pistols.

“No, you are quite right, sir,” said Keith hastily, almost humbly. “I

see that you can do nothing else but leave him till the morning.”

“Sergeant,” called out Major Guthrie, “pit the prisoner ben the hoose

again, and dinna fire yon shieling. Noo, Major Keith, in payment for

the guid turn ye’ve done me, I’ll hae the pleasure of offerin’ ye

hospeetality for the nicht, and settin’ ye on the richt road for

Perth, which ye’re no’ on the noo, ye ken!”

“I am much beholden to you, sir,” replied Keith stiffly. “But I am not

aware of having laid you under any obligation.”

Guthrie raised his sandy eyebrows. “Are ye no’? Aweel, ye may be

richt; we’ll see, we’ll see.—Aye, sergeant, fire the lave o’ them; we

mauna leave ony bield for the rebels.”

The thatch of the next shieling, going up with a roar, lit sharply the

uniforms of the men who, roughly enough, lifted Ardroy from the

ground, and, staggering a little, for he was no light weight,

disappeared with him round the corner of the miserable little

dwelling. Biting his lip, Keith watched them go; and then Mackay

brought up his horse, restive at the flames. The men came out again.

“Well, Major, are ye no’ satisfied?” asked Guthrie, already back in

the saddle.

Satisfied? No. But he was on such dangerous ground; this man’s mercy,

if so it could be called, was like a bog; at any moment there might be

no more foothold. A little more pressing for better treatment, and he

would have Ardroy shot out of mere spite; Keith was sure of it.

But—left alone, scarcely breathing . . . and in what condition _had_

Ewen been left in there?

“I’ll ride after you in a moment, sir,” he said. “You see, I am under

a sort of obligation to this young Cameron. I’ll just go in and leave

him my brandy-flask.”

Really Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment had the most unpleasant

eyes he had ever encountered! “As ye will, sir,” he returned. “I doot

he’ll no’ be able tae thank ye. But I advise ye no’ tae be ower lang

wi’ him, for I canna wait, and ’tis for me tae warn ye this time that

the Duke’ll no’ be verra pleased if ye lose the way tae Perth again.”

He turned his horse; Keith took the flask out of his holster, said a

word to Mackay, and went round to the door of the shieling.

It was Neil MacMartin who lay shot not far from the entrance; Keith

recognised him instantly. No doubt it was only over his dead body that

they had been able to get at his wounded foster-brother. Inside the

tiny place it was so dark that for a moment Keith could hardly see

anything; then, by a sudden red glow from without, he distinguished

Ewen’s body in the far corner, on a heap of something which proved to

be dried fern and heather. The soldiers had flung him back there with

little regard for his wounds or for the coming cold of night. But

there was a plaid lying in a heap on the floor; Keith picked this up

and spread it over him. Ardroy was still senseless, but when Keith

tried to arrange him more comfortably he moaned; yet it was only the

faintest trickle of brandy which the Englishman could get down his

throat. He desisted finally, for fear of choking him, and closed his

cold, nerveless hand round the flask instead. Looking about he saw not

a trace of food nor even of water, though there was an overturned bowl

on the floor; he hurried out with this to the burn which he had

noticed, filled it and placed it within reach. But it seemed rather a

mockery, now that the only hand which might have held it to Ewen

Cameron’s lips was lifeless outside. Had he done Ardroy a kindness

after all in saving him from the volley?

Mackay was in the doorway. “The redcoats iss all gone, Major. I am not

seeing them now.”

Keith jumped up. His duty came before an enemy’s plight, whatever were

his feelings towards that enemy. He could do no more.

The leaping flames outside had died down to mere incandescence, and

the dead man and the senseless were left in possession of the

darkening hollow where the burn’s voice, babbling on in protest or

unconcern, was now the only sound to break the silence.

CHAPTER IV

“Weel, sir, and was yer _frien_’ able tae thank ye?” enquired Major

Guthrie when the Englishman overtook him at the end of the little

column as it wound along the mountain-side. Keith said No, that he had

not yet recovered his senses.

“’Tis tae be hoped he’ll hae gotten them again when I send for him,”

commented the Lowlander. “He’ll no’ be o’ muckle use else. But are ye

sure, Major, that he kens whaur Lochiel is the noo?”

“How do I know what he knows? And use—of what use do you expect him to

be?” asked Keith shortly.

“What use?” Guthrie reined up. “Losh, man, dinna ye ken there’s a

thousand punds on Lochiel’s heid, that he’s likely skulking somewhere

round Achnacarry or Loch Arkaig, and that tae ken his hiding-place wad

be half-way tae the apprehension o’ the man himsel’! Gin ye come frae

Inverness ye canna be ignorant o’ that!—And why for else did ye lay

sic a stress upon yon rebel bein’ sib tae Lochiel, if ye didna mean

that he wad be o’ use tae us in that capacity?”

Keith sat his horse like a statue, and stared at the speaker with

feelings which slowly whitened his own cheek. “Is it possible you

imagine that I thought Ewen Cameron, a Highlander and a gentleman,

would turn informer against his own Chief?”

“Then for what ither reason,” retorted Guthrie, “when ye came wi’ yer

damned interference, did ye insist on his kinship wi’ Lochiel, and

imply that he kenned o’ his whereaboots?”

“I never implied such a thing!” burst out Keith indignantly. “Not for

a moment! You must most strangely have mistaken me, Major Guthrie. And

if Cameron of Ardroy did know, he would never dream of betraying his

knowledge!”

“Ah,” commented Guthrie, surveying him slowly. “Then it’s no’ worth

the fash o’ sendin’ for him the morn.” And smiling crookedly he

touched his horse with his heel, and moved on again after his men.

But Keith Windham remained behind on the mountain path, almost stunned

with disgust. That he should be thought capable of suggesting such a

reason for sparing Ewen Cameron’s life! This then was the cause of

Major Guthrie’s change of intention at the mention of Lochiel’s name,

the meaning of his reference to the ‘good turn’ which Major Windham

had done him! Keith’s impulse was to leave the very path which

Guthrie’s horse had trodden. But he could not gratify this desire; he

was dependent on Guthrie’s guidance. Besides, Ardroy lay helpless and

utterly alone in the hut; he had not saved him yet. Great heavens,

what line was he to take to that end now?

He moved on slowly after the Lowlander, who took no notice of him. On

the narrow path they were obliged to ride in single file, but soon the

track, descending to a lower level, joined a wider one, and here the

Major waited for him to come abreast.

“Since your object in hinderin’ the execution a while syne wasna zeal

for His Majesty’s sairvice, as I thocht,” he observed, “ye maun gie me

leave to say, Major . . . I didna richtly get yer name—that I find yer

conduct unco strange.”

“I am fully prepared to answer to my superiors for my conduct, sir,”

replied Keith very stiffly. “As I told you just now, I am under an

obligation to that young Cameron such as any soldier may owe to an

enemy without dishonour. He spared my life when it was his for the

taking, and as his prisoner last year I received very different

treatment from that which we are now giving to ours!”

“Ah, sae ye were his prisoner?” repeated Guthrie, fixing his little

ferret eyes upon him. “When micht that hae been?”

“It was after the affair at High Bridge last summer,” answered Keith

shortly.

“High Bridge!” A light seemed to dawn on Guthrie’s face—not a pleasant

light. “What, it’s _you_ that lost the twa companies of Sinclair’s

there, along wi’ Scott last August—ye’ll be Major Windrum then?”

“Windham,” corrected Keith, still more shortly.

“Ou aye, Windham. Tae think I didna ken the man I was gangin’ wi’, me

that’s aye been ettlin’ tae meet ye, for I mind hearin’ ye were pit on

Hawley’s staff after yon tuilzie—ha, ha! Aye, I mind hearin’ that

verra weel.—Nae offence meant, Major Windham”—for Keith’s expression

was distinctly stormy—“we all hae oor meelitary misfortunes, . . . but

we dinna a’ get promoted for them!—And ye were sayin’ yon rebel made

ye prisoner. What did he dae wi’ ye?”

“He accepted my parole,” said the Englishman between his teeth.

“And let ye gang?”

“No. I was at his house for some days, and afterwards accompanied him

to Glenfinnan.”

“Ye seem tae hae been chief wi’ him! And whaur was this hoose of his,

if ye please?”

“Can that be of any moment to you, sir?” retorted Keith, goaded by

this interrogatory.

“Dod! I should think sae! It’s o’ moment tae me tae ken hoo far it lay

frae Lochiel’s ain hoose of Achnacarry.”

“Well, that I am afraid I cannot tell you,” replied Keith sourly. “I

was never at Achnacarry, and I have no knowledge of the neighbourhood.

I am not a Scotsman.”

“Fine I ken that! But e’en a Southron has lugs tae his heid, and ye

maun hae heard tell the name o’ the district whaur yon rebel’s hoose

was situate? If ye canna tell me that I’ll be forced tae think——” He

broke off with a grin.

“And what, pray, will you be forced to think?” demanded Keith,

surveying him from under his lids.

“Aweel, I suld think ye could jalouse that,” was Guthrie’s reply.

“Come noo, Major, ye can surely mind some landmark or ither?”

It was no use fencing any more. “Mr. Cameron’s house was near a little

lake called the Eagle’s Lake, in the mountains some way to the north

of Loch Arkaig.”

“Ah, thank ye, Major Windham, for the effort,” said Guthrie with

another grin. “I hae a map in the camp. . . . And syne ye couldna be

pairted frae yer rebel frien’, but gaed wi’ him to Glenfinnan tae see

the ploy there?”

“Do you suppose I went willingly? I have told you that I was his

prisoner.”

“But ye were at Glenfinnan wi’ him, and that’s o’ moment too, for nae

doot ye’d see him an’ Lochiel thegither. Did ye no’?”

“Once or twice.”

“And hoo did they seem—on intimate terrms wi’ ane anither?”

“I was not concerned to spy upon them,” retorted Keith, who had an

instant picture of the Chief as he had once seen him, with an

affectionate hand on Ewen’s shoulder, a picture he was not going to

pass on. “I have told you that they were cousins.”

“Aye, ye tellt me that. But ilka Highlander is cousin tae twenty

mair.” They rode on for perhaps a moment in silence, and then Guthrie

began again. “See here, Major Windham, what the de’il’s the gude o’

tellin’ me the Cameron’s this and that, and syne, when ye’ve hindered

me frae shootin’ him as he desairves, tae begin makin’ oot he’s

naething o’ the sort? I suppose ye’ll say noo he wasna aide-de-camp

tae the Pretender’s son neither?”

“I am not in the habit of telling lies,” replied Keith. “He _was_

aide-de-camp to the Pretender’s son, at least when the Highland army

occupied Edinburgh, and that, as I said, and say still, is an

excellent reason for not shooting him out of hand.”

“Ye met him in Enbra, then?”

“I did.”

“As an enemy or a frien’?”

“As an enemy, of course.” Keith was having to keep a tight hold of

himself. “Yet there again he put me under an obligation.” And at

Guthrie’s expression he was unable to resist adding, “But I dare

warrant the recognition of an obligation is no part of your creed,

sir.”

Guthrie met this thrust instantly. “And me that gleg the noo tae allow

mine tae ye! Fie, Major! But as a plain soldier I’m thinkin’ there’s

ower muckle obleegation atween you and yer Cameron; ye’re gey frien’ly

wi’ him for an enemy, rinnin’ in like that when ye micht hae gotten a

ball in yer ain wame. But since ye assure me he’ll no’ tell what he

kens aboot Lochiel, he maun e’en bide in yon shieling and rot there,

for it’s no’ worth a brass bodle tae bring him in.”

Keith’s heart sank at these words. Yet he could not bring himself to

assert that Ardroy would impart his knowledge (if he had any), for he

was certain that he would rather die than do such a thing. Yet somehow

he _must_ be got out of that desolate place.

He summoned up all his own powers of dissimulation.

“You are quite mistaken, Major Guthrie,” he said carelessly. “I am not

a friend of Mr. Cameron’s in the sense that you imply, and I should be

as glad as anyone to hear of Lochiel’s capture—if it would advance His

Majesty’s affairs in this kingdom.” He added this qualifying clause to

salve his own conscience, since Lochiel’s capture was about the last

he would rejoice at. But he had to say something worse than this, and

he did it with loathing, and a hesitation which perhaps served him

better than he knew, fidgeting meanwhile with his horse’s reins. “You

know, sir, that although I am sure Mr. Cameron would never answer a

direct question, he might perhaps drop . . . inadvertently drop . . .

some hint or other—and I presume you have a certain measure of

knowledge and might find a hint valuable—I mean that it might, by good

luck, complete your information. At least I should think that it would

be worth your while to bring him into camp on the chance of it.”

It sounded to him so desperately feeble a bait that it was surely to

no purpose that he had soiled his lips with its utterance. Yet Guthrie

appeared to respond to the suggestion with surprising alacrity.

“Drap a hint,” he said meditatively, rubbing his chin. “Aye, maybe.

Thank ye for the notion, Major; I’ll e’en think it ower. I could

aiblins drap a hint mysel’.” And they rode on in silence for a few

minutes after that, Keith not knowing whether he more detested himself

or the man beside him.

But by the time that they came in sight of the little river Tarff,

which they must ford before they could get up to the Corryarrick road,

Major Guthrie was busy weaving what he evidently considered a highly

diverting explanation of his companion’s interest in ‘yon rebel’,

which he now refused to attribute to the alleged ‘obligation’ under

which Major Windham professed to labour. “I see it a’,” he chuckled;

“he had a bonny sister, and she was kind tae ye, Major—kind as yon

ither lass of a Cameron was kind to the Pretender’s son. Or a wife

maybe? Oot wi’ it, ye sly dog——” And for a moment or two he gave rein

to a fancy so coarse that Keith, no Puritan himself, yet innately

fastidious, longed to shut his mouth.

“And that’s how ye repaid his hospitality, Major,” finished the

humorist as they splashed through the Tarff. “’Tis a guilty

conscience, not gratitude, garred ye save him!”

After that he reverted to the subject of his companion’s staff

appointment, which seemed to possess a sort of fascination for him,

and tapped a very galling and indeed insulting vein of pleasantry in

regard to it. And Keith, who would not have endured a quarter of this

insolence from anyone else in the world, no, not from the Duke of

Cumberland himself, swallowed it because he knew that Ewen Cameron’s

life hung on this man’s pleasure. First of all his companion supposed

that General Hawley did not know what a viper he was cherishing in his

bosom, in the shape of an officer who possessed a weakness for rebels

which could certainly not be attributed to that commander himself; of

this Keith took no notice, so Major Guthrie passed on to affect to

find something mightily amusing in the distinction of staff rank

having been bestowed on a man who had run away at the first shot of

the campaign. He actually used the expression, but at once safeguarded

himself by adding, with a laugh, “Nae offence, my dear Major! I ken

weel the twa companies o’ Sinclair’s just spat and gied ower, and you

and Scott could dae nae less but gang wi’ them—’twas yer duty.” But

after a moment he added with a chuckle, “Forbye ye rinned farther than

the rest, I’ve heard!”

Ardroy or no Ardroy, this was too much. Keith reined up. Yet, since it

seemed deliberate provocation, he kept surprisingly cool. “Major

Guthrie, I’d have you know I do not take such insinuations from any

man alive! If you know so much about me, you must know also that

Captain Scott sent me back to fetch reinforcements from Fort

Augustus.”

Guthrie, pulling up too, smote himself upon the thigh. “Aye, I micht

ha’ kent it! Forgie me, Major Windham—yon was a pleasantry. I aye

likit ma joke!”

“Allow me to say, then, that I do not share your taste,” riposted

Keith, with a brow like thunder. “If we were not both on active

service at the moment——”

“Ye’d gar me draw, eh? Dinna be that hot, man! ’Twas an ill joke, I

confess, and I ask yer pardon for it,” said Guthrie with complete

good-humour. “See, yonder’s the camp, and ye’re gaun tae sup wi’ me.”

Keith wished with all his heart that he were not. But he felt, rightly

or wrongly, that he must preserve a certain measure of amenity in his

relations with the arbiter of Ardroy’s fate, and, though it seemed to

him that he had never done anything more repugnant (except make his

recent speech about the possibility of Ewen’s dropping a hint) he

affected a demeanour modelled in some remote degree upon his

companion’s, and insincerely declared that he was foolish not to see

that Major Guthrie was joking, and that he bore him no ill-will for

his jest.

What baffled him was the reason for the ill-will which he could hardly

doubt that Guthrie bore _him_. Was it because he had hindered the

shooting of a rebel? But, according to his own showing, Major Guthrie

hoped to find the rebel more useful alive than dead.

It was certainly no deprivation to the Englishman when he discovered,

on arriving at Guthrie’s camp athwart the road, some miles from the

top of the pass, that he was not to share the commanding officer’s

tent. Finding, as he now did, that the distance from the mountain-side

where he had come upon the soldiers was not so great as he had feared,

he would much have preferred to push on over the pass to Meallgarva,

but his horse and his orderly’s were too obviously in need of rest for

this to be prudent, and when he was offered a vacant bed in another

tent (for it appeared that the captain of the company had gone to Fort

Augustus for the night) his worst apprehensions were relieved. The

lieutenant, indeed, who made a third at the meal which he was

nevertheless obliged to share with Guthrie, was of a different stamp

entirely, an open-faced lad from the Tweed named Paton, whom Keith at

once suspected of disliking his major very heartily.

On the plea that he must make an early start, the guest afterwards

excused himself from playing cards with Guthrie and his subaltern, and

withdrew to Lieutenant Paton’s tent. Once there, however, he made no

attempt to undress, but flung himself on the camp bed and lay staring

at the lantern on the tent pole. A few miles away on the other side of

the Tarff the man whom he had tried so hard to save lay dying,

perhaps, for want of food and care. What Guthrie’s real intentions

were about fetching him in to-morrow he, probably of set purpose, had

not allowed his visitor to know. And the question rather was, would

Ewen Cameron be alive at all in the morning—he seemed at so low an

ebb, and the nights were still so cold. Do what Keith would he could

not get him out of his head. It was useless to tell himself that he

had, alas, witnessed worse episodes; that it was the fortune of war;

that he was womanish to be so much distracted by the thought of an

enemy’s situation. He had been that enemy’s guest; he had seen his

domestic circumstances, met his future wife, knew what his very

furniture looked like. Was not all that even more of a tie than that

double debt which he felt he owed him? His instincts were stronger

than his judgment, and when, an hour or so later, Lieutenant Paton

slipped quietly through the flap of the tent, he rose up and abruptly

addressed him.

“Mr. Paton, you look as if you had the natural sentiments of humanity

still left in you. Can you tell me where I could procure some food,

and if possible some dressings, for that unfortunate rebel left alone

upon the mountain-side, about whom you heard at supper?”

The young man looked considerably taken aback, as well he might. “But

how would you propose, sir, to get them to him? And the Major, I

thought, spoke of fetching him into camp to-morrow.”

“I am not at all sure that he will, however,” replied Keith. “And even

if he does I fear he may fetch in a corpse. If I can get some food

and wine I propose to take them to him myself; I think I can find the

way back without difficulty, and my orderly is a Highlander.” And as

Lieutenant Paton looked still more astonished he added, “You must not

think me a mere philanthropist, Mr. Paton. I owe the man in that hut a

good deal, and I cannot endure the thought of having turned my back

upon him in such a plight. In any case I should be making an early

start for Dalwhinnie. Is there any cottage in this neighbourhood where

I could buy bread?”

“No, but I could procure you some in the camp, sir,” said the boy

quite eagerly. “And, as for dressings, you are welcome to tear up a

shirt of mine. I . . . I confess I don’t like these extreme measures,

even with rebels, and I should be very glad to help you.”

“You’ll not get into trouble, eh?”

“Not to-night, at any rate, sir; the Major is in bed by now. And

to-morrow, if it is discovered, I can say that you ordered me to do

it, and that I dared not dispute the orders of a staff officer.”

CHAPTER V

And thus it was that a few hours later Major Windham started back to

Beinn Laoigh again with bread and meat and wine, and an orderly who

plainly thought him mad. Lieutenant Paton had seen them clear of the

camp, whose commander was fortunately wrapped in slumber. Keith would

not need to pass its sentries on his return, for the track up from the

Tarff joined the road to the pass on the farther side of it.

He found that he had noted the position of the shieling hut better

than he could have hoped, considering the disagreeable preoccupation

of his mind during the ride thence with Major Guthrie, and by good

chance there was a moon not much past the full. In her cold light the

mountains looked inexpressibly lonely and remote as Keith rode up the

sheep track to the pasture where the harmless little shelters had

stood. A faint exhausted smoke yet lifted itself from one or two of

the blackened ruins. The stream was chanting its changeless little

song, and in the moonlight Neil MacMartin still lay on guard outside

the broken door of the one unburnt shieling. Keith bent over him as he

passed; he was stiffening already in the plaid which was his only

garment. And Ardroy?

Taking from Mackay the lantern which he had brought for the purpose,

and the food and wine, Keith went rather apprehensively into the dark,

low-roofed place. Except that he had flung his left arm clear, its

occupant was lying as he had left him, long and quiet under the tartan

covering; his eyes were closed and he did not look very different from

his dead foster-brother outside. But as the light fell on his face he

moved a little and faintly said some words in Gaelic, among which

Keith thought he heard Lachlan’s name. He stooped over him.

“Ardroy,” he said gently, and laid a hand on the arm emerging from the

tattered shirt-sleeve.

At the touch Ewen opened his eyes. But all that he saw, evidently, in

the lantern light, was the bright scarlet uniform above him. “What,

again!” he said with an accent of profound weariness. “Shoot me in

here, then; I cannot stand. Have you not . . . a pistol?”

Keith set the lantern on the floor and knelt down by him. “Ardroy,

don’t you know me—Windham of the Royals? I am not come for that, but

to help you if I can.”

The dried fern rustled as the wounded man turned his head a little.

Very hollow in their orbits, but blue as Keith remembered them, his

eyes stared up full of unbelief. “_Windham!_” he said at last, feebly;

“no, it’s not possible. You are . . . someone else.”

“No,” said Keith, wondering how clear his mind might be, “it is really

Windham, come to help you.” He was searching meanwhile for the flask

of brandy which he had left, and finding it slipped down, untouched,

among the sprigs of heather, he wetted Ewen’s lips with a little of

the spirit.

“Yes, it _is_ Windham,” said Ewen to himself. His eyes had never left

his visitor’s face. “But . . . there were other soldiers here before

. . . they took me out to shoot . . . I think I must have . . . swooned.

Then I was . . . back in this place. . . . I do not know why. . . .

Are you sure you . . . have not orders to . . . take me out again?”

“Good God, no!” said Keith. “I have nothing to do with shootings; I am

alone, carrying despatches. Tell me, you are wounded—how severely?”

“My right arm . . . that is nothing much. . . . This thigh . . .

badly. I cannot . . . move myself.”

“And what of food?” queried Keith. “I do not see any here—but I have

brought some with me.” He began to get it out. “Are you not hungry?”

“Not now,” answered Ewen. “I was once . . . Captain Windham,” he went

on, apparently gathering together what forces he had, “your coming . . .

this charity . . . I cannot . . .”

“Do not try!” put in Keith quickly. “Not hungry? How long, then, is it

since you have eaten?”

“Eaten!” said the Highlander, and what might be interpreted as a smile

dawned on his bony face. “There is no food . . . in these hills. I

have had nothing but water . . . for three days . . . I think. . . .

That is why Lachlan has gone . . . to try . . .” The words tailed off

as the spark of astonishment and animation in him went out quite

suddenly, leaving his face the mask it had been when Keith entered.

Three days! No wonder that he was weak. Keith threw the water out of

the bowl, poured some wine into it, and lifting Ewen’s head from the

bracken held it to his lips. “Drink this!” he commanded, and had to

say it two or three times before Ewen obeyed.

“But this is wine, Lachlan,” he murmured confusedly. “How did you come

by wine?” Then his eyes turned on Keith as if he recognised him again,

and the recognition was only a source of bewilderment.

Keith meanwhile was breaking bread into the wine. He knew that one

must not give a starving man too much food at first. But the fugitive,

far from being ravenous, seemed to find it difficult to swallow the

sops which were put to his lips. Keith, however, persevered, and even

added some meat to the bread, and patiently fed him with that, till

Ewen intimated that he could eat no more. Keith’s next intention was

then announced.

“Now I am going to dress your wounds, if they need it,” he said.

“You’ll permit me?”

“_Permit_ you!” repeated Ewen, gazing at him with a renewal of his

former wonder.

Keith took the bowl, and went out for water. The moon was hidden

behind a bank of cloud, but a planet hung like a great flower over one

of the black mountain-tops. The grazing horses lifted their heads

enquiringly, and Mackay, sitting propped against the shieling wall,

scrambled sleepily to his feet.

“No, I am not going on yet. Get me that torn linen from my saddlebag.”

To his surprise, when he went back into the hut after even so

momentary an absence, Ewen had fallen asleep, perhaps as the result of

eating after so long a fast. Keith decided not to rouse him, and

waited. But five minutes saw the end of the snatch of feverish

slumber, for Ardroy woke with a little cry and some remark about the

English artillery which showed that he had been back at Culloden

Moor. However, he knew Keith instantly, and when the Englishman

began to unbandage his wounded sword-arm, murmured, “That was a

bayonet-thrust.”

The arm had indeed been transfixed, and looked very swollen and

painful, but, as far as Keith could judge, gave no particular cause

for anxiety. He washed the wound, and as he bound it up again saw

clearly in the rays of the lantern, which for greater convenience he

had set upon an old stool that he had found, a curious white seam on

the palm of the hand; another ran across the fingers. He wondered for

a moment what they were; then he guessed.

But when he came round and unbandaged Ewen’s thigh—and miserably

enough was it bandaged—and found there a deep gash, in no satisfactory

state, he was somewhat horrified. This injury called for a surgeon,

and he had nearly said so; but, reddening, checked himself, recalling

the deliberate denial of care to the Jacobite wounded at Inverness,

and the actual removal of their instruments from the few of their own

surgeons imprisoned with them. Would Ewen Cameron get real attention

in Major Guthrie’s hands?

He glanced at him, lying with his eyes shut and his hands gripped

together on his breast, but making neither sound nor movement, and

wondered whether he were hurting him intolerably, and what he should

do if he went off into another of those long swoons, and thereupon

finished his task as quickly as he could and had recourse to the

brandy flask once more. And then he sat down at the bottom of the

rough bed—for the heather and fern was spread on a rude wooden

framework standing about a foot from the floor—and gazed at him with a

furrowed brow. The lantern on the stool beside him revealed the

Highlander’s pallor and exhaustion to the full, but, though his eyes

were closed, and he lay quiet for a considerable time, he was not

asleep, for he suddenly opened them, and said:

“I cannot understand; did you know that I was here, Captain Windham

. . . or is it chance that has brought you . . . so opportunely?”

“It was chance the first time—for this is the second time that I have

been here,” replied Keith. “I will tell you about it. I was on my way

this afternoon from Inverness to Perth when some impulse made me

attempt a very foolish short cut among the mountains. I think now that

it must have been the finger of Fate pushing me, for thus I came upon

this place just a moment or two before they dragged you out and set

you against the wall . . . only just in time, in fact. I protested and

argued with the officer in charge—a Major Guthrie, who has a camp on

the Corryarrick road up there—and was fortunately able to prevent his

shooting you in cold blood.” And, as Ewen gave a little exclamation,

he hurried on in order not to give him time to ask (should he think of

it) how he had accomplished this feat. “But he intends—at least I

think he intends—to send a party in the morning and take you prisoner;

and indeed, brute though he is, I hope that he will do so, for

otherwise what will become of you, alone here?”

But Ewen left that question unanswered, and was equally far from

asking on what ground he had been spared. The fact itself seemed

enough for him, for he was trying agitatedly to raise himself a

little. “It was you . . . though I saw no one . . . you saved my life,

then!” he exclaimed rather incoherently. “And now . . . is it possible

that you have come back _again_ . . . out of your way! Captain

Windham, this debt . . . this more than kindness . . .” He struggled

to go on, but between emotion, weakness and recent pain it was more

than he could do, and seeing him almost on the point of breaking down

Keith stopped him quickly.

“For God’s sake don’t talk of debts, Ardroy—or, if you must, remember

what I owe you! See, you are horribly weak; could you not eat a little

more now?”

Ewen nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and put out a shaky left

hand, apparently to show that he could feed himself. And while he

nibbled in a rather half-hearted way at the slice of bread and meat

which Keith put into it, Major Windham himself wandered slowly about

the hovel. The ashes of last summer’s fires lay white in the middle of

the floor, and through the hole in the roof which was the only outlet

for the smoke a star looked in as it passed.

It seemed to Keith that before he went on his way he must tell Ardroy

the means he had used to save him. Surely there was nothing

blameworthy or unnatural in his having revealed who Ewen was, when he

stood between him and imminent death? But from telling him the reason

which Guthrie supposed or feigned to suppose lay at the back of his

action, he mentally shied away like a nervous horse, the Lowlander had

rendered the whole subject so horribly distasteful to him. Moreover it

was not Guthrie who had suggested that Cameron of Ardroy might

‘inadvertently drop a hint’. How _could_ he tell Ewen that he had said

that about him?

He turned round, miserably undecided. Ewen had finished his pretence

at a meal, and his eyes were fixed on his visitor. Keith had a sudden

access of panic; he was sure that the Jacobite was going to ask him on

what plea he had stopped his execution. He would put a question to him

instead.

“How did you get so far with a wound like that?” he asked, coming back

to his former place, and sitting down again. “You had Neil MacMartin

to help you, I suppose? You mentioned Lachlan, too, just now.”

He had not anticipated more than a brief reply, but Ewen, once

started, told him the whole story—not indeed, with any superfluity of

words, and slowly, with pauses here and there. But the narrative was

quite connected, though the speaker gave a certain dreamy impression

of having half forgotten his listener, and of going on as if he were

living his experiences over again rather than narrating them.

It appeared that he had received both his wounds in that desperate

charge into which the clans of the right wing had broken, maddened by

the cruel artillery pounding which they had endured, a charge so

furious that it had pierced and scattered the English front line

regiments, only to dash itself to pieces on the bayonets of Sempill’s

behind them. At the second and severer injury he fell, and was unable

to get to his feet again, for it seemed as if a muscle had been

severed in his thigh, and he was besides losing blood very fast. Only

the devotion of one of his followers got him away from the heap of

dead and wounded strewn like seaweed along the front of the second

line; this man, powerful and unhurt, tied up the gash as best he

could, and succeeded in carrying his chieftain a little out of the

carnage, but in doing so he was shot dead, and once more Ewen was on

the ground among the fallen. This time he was lying among the dead and

wounded of the Atholl men, with none of his own clan to succour him,

and here a strange—and yet ultimately a lucky—mischance befell him.

For a wounded Stewart, half crazed no doubt by a terrible cut on the

head, crawled to him where he lay across his dead clansman and,

cursing him for one of the Campbells who had taken them in flank,

dealt him a furious blow on the forehead with the butt of a pistol.

The result for Ewen was hours of unconsciousness, during which he was

stripped by some redcoats who would certainly have finished him off

had they not thought him dead already. He came to his senses in the

very early morning, naked, and stiff with cold, but so thirsty that he

contrived to drag himself as far as the little burn which crossed the

end of the English line in the direction of their own. There, almost

in the stream, and unconscious again, Lachlan and his brother, who had

been searching for him since evening, almost miraculously found him.

His foster-brothers carried him to a farm-house on the moor, where,

indeed, he was not the only wounded fugitive, but by noon that day,

fearing (and with good reason) a search and a massacre, they somehow

procured an old worn-out horse, and taking turns to ride it and to

hold him on its back, succeeded in crossing the Water of Nairn and

gaining the slopes of the Monadhliath Mountains. What happened then

Ewen was not quite clear about; between pain, loss of blood, and

exposure he was always more or less fevered, but he remembered an

eternity of effort and of going on. At last the old horse fell dead;

for a whole day Neil and Lachlan carried him between them till,

weakened by want of food, they could get him no farther, and had taken

shelter on Beinn Laoigh because the shieling hut at least gave him a

roof from the cold and the rain. They did not know of Guthrie’s camp

on the Corryarrick road, which indeed was pitched after they got to

Beinn Laoigh; in any case they could not entirely avoid the road, for

it would have to be crossed somewhere if they were ever to get back to

Ardroy. But in these lonely mountains they were really faced with

starvation, and Lachlan had at last been forced to go out scouting for

food, and must either have gone far afield or have met with disaster,

for he had been gone since the day before.

“But if he still breathes,” finished Ewen, “I know that he will

return; and if he is in time perhaps he can contrive to get me away to

some other hiding-place before the soldiers come for me to-morrow. But

in any case, Captain Windham—no, I see that it is Major—I am not

likely to forget this extraordinary charity of yours . . . nor your

intervention yesterday. . . . Was it yesterday?” he added rather

vaguely.

“Yes, since it must now be after midnight. The tartan attracted my

notice first,” said Keith, “and then, by great good fortune, I looked

again, and recognised you.”

“This is Neil’s kilt that I have on,” said Ewen with a faint smile.

“There was not a stitch of my own left upon me. . . . You wore the

philabeg too, once . . . it seems a long time ago. . . . But I do not

think,” he went on, rather feverishly talkative now, “that you would

have recognised me the day before, with a two weeks’ beard on me. It

happened, however, that I had made poor Neil shave me as best he could

with his _sgian_.”

“That was good fortune, too,” agreed Keith. “Certainly I should not

have known you bearded.”

“And it is because I had been shaved that I am alive now?” Ewen gave a

little laugh. “Do you know, Windham, that before ever I met you old

Angus, my foster-father—you remember him?—predicted that our lives

would cross . . . I think he said five times. And this is . . . I

can’t count. . . . How many times have we met already?”

“The old man predicted five meetings!” exclaimed Keith, struck. “How

strange! This is the third . . . yes, the third time we have met. If

he is right, then we shall meet again, and more than once. I hope it

may be in happier circumstances.”

“And that I can thank you more fitly,” murmured Ewen. “Last time . . .

do you remember the house in the Grassmarket? . . . You told me the

comedy would end some day, and the players be sorry they ever took

part in it.”

Keith nodded. It was not the first time in the last twelve hours that

he had remembered the house in the Grassmarket.

“But I, for one, do not regret it,” went on Ewen, with a touch of

defiance. “Not for myself, that is. I would do it again. Yet there is

poor Neil outside, killed defending me . . . and so many others on

that horrible moor. . . . You were there, I suppose?”

“I was there,” said Keith. “But _my_ hands are clean of the blood of

massacre!” he added almost fiercely. “If I could have stopped—— We’d

best not speak of it. But your cause is lost, Ardroy, and I suppose

you know it. It only remains for you to escape the consequences, if

you can.”

“I do not seem to be in very good trim for doing that,” said Ewen, and

again he gave the shadow of a smile. “But, since we speak so frankly,

I cannot think that our cause is lost while the Prince and Lochiel

remain at large. We may be scattered, but—— The Prince has not been

captured, has he?” he asked sharply, having evidently seen the change

which the mention, not of the Prince but of Lochiel, had brought to

Keith’s face.

“No, no, nor is it known where he is.”

“Thank God! And Lochiel?”

Keith shrank inwardly. Now it was coming. His momentary hesitation had

a cruel effect on Ewen, who dragged himself to his elbow. “Windham,”

he said hoarsely and imploringly, “surely he’s not . . . what have you

heard? . . . My God, don’t keep me in suspense like this! If he’s

captured tell me!”

“You mistake me,” said Keith, nearly as hoarsely. “He has not been

captured. . . . I am sorry if I misled you.”

Ewen had relapsed again, and put a hand over his eyes. It was fairly

clear that his Chief’s fate was even more to him than that of his

Prince. And now that odious information must be imparted.

Keith tried to gain a little time first. “But Lochiel was wounded

in the battle. Did you know that?”

Ewen removed his hand. “Yes, and have thanked God for it, since it

caused him to be early carried off the field.”

“You saw him fall?”

“No, but afterwards we met with some of the clan, and got news of

him.”

“That must have been a great relief to you,” murmured the Englishman.

Suddenly he was possessed with a desire to find out how much Ewen knew

about Lochiel. Half of him hoped that he knew very little—why, he

could not have said—but the other half thought: If he knows a certain

amount, Guthrie will take better care of him. “But you can have had no

news of your Chief since then?” he hazarded.

“No,” answered the Highlander. “There has been no opportunity.”

Keith looked at him nervously. Ardroy was lying gazing upwards;

perhaps he could see that peering star. Would it be possible to advise

him, if he found himself in Major Guthrie’s custody, to pretend to

have definite knowledge of Lochiel’s whereabouts, even though that

were not the case? Dare he suggest such a thing? It was not one-half

as offensive as what he had already suggested to Guthrie!

Ewen himself broke the silence. “Since we speak as friends,” he said,

his eyes travelling to the open doorway “—and how could I regard you

as an enemy after this?—I may tell you that I have, none the less,

the consolation of knowing where Lochiel is at this moment—God bless

him and keep him safe!”

Keith’s mouth felt suddenly dry. His unspoken question was answered,

and the frankness of the acknowledgment rather took his breath away.

Yet certainly, if Ardroy was as frank with Guthrie it might serve him

well.

“You know where Lochiel is?” he half stammered.

Ewen shut his eyes and smiled, an almost happy smile. “I think he is

where (please God) he will never be found by any redcoat.”

“You mean that he has gone overseas?” asked Keith, almost without

thinking.

Ardroy’s eyes opened quickly, and for a second, as he looked up at the

speaker, there was a startled expression in them. “You are not

expecting me to tell you——”

“No, no,” broke in Keith, very hastily indeed. “Of course not! But I

should be glad if he were so gone, for on my soul there is none of

your leaders whom I should be so sorry to see captured.”

Yet with the words he got up and went to the doorway. Yes, Ardroy

_had_ the secret; and he wished, somehow, that he had not. The moment

could no longer be postponed when he must tell him of his conversation

with Guthrie, were it only to put him on his guard. Bitterly as he was

ashamed, it must be done.

He stood in the doorway a moment, choosing the words in which he

should do it, and they were hatefully hard to choose. Hateful, too,

was it to leave Ardroy here helpless, but there was no alternative,

since he could not possibly take him with him. Yet if Lachlan

returned, and in time, and especially if he returned with assistance,

he might be able to get his foster-brother away somewhere. Then Ewen

Cameron would never fall into Guthrie’s hands. In that case what use

to torment him with prospects of an interrogatory which might never

take place, and which could only be very short?

No; it was mere cowardice to invent excuses for silence; he must do

it. He came back very slowly to the pallet.

“I must tell you——” he began in a low voice, and then stopped. Ewen’s

lashes were lying on his sunken cheek, and did not lift at the

address. It was plain that he had fallen anew into one of those sudden

exhausted little slumbers, and had not heard even the sentence which

was to herald Keith’s confession. It would be unnecessarily cruel to

rouse him in order to make it. One must wait until he woke naturally,

as he had done from the last of these dozes.

Keith took the lantern off the stool and sat down there. And soon the

wounded man’s sleep became full of disjointed scraps of talk, mostly

incoherent; at one time he seemed to think that he was out after the

deer on the hills with Lachlan; then he half woke up and muttered,

“But it’s we that are the deer now,” and immediately fell into another

doze in which he murmured the name of Alison. Gradually, however, his

slumber grew more sound; he ceased to mutter and to make little

restless movements, and in about five minutes he was in the deep sleep

of real repose, which he had not known, perhaps, for many nights—a

sleep to make a watcher thankful.

But Keith Windham, frowning, sat watching it with his chin on his

hand, conscious that his time was growing very short, that it was

light outside, and almost light in this dusky hovel, and that the pool

of lantern-shine on the uneven earth floor looked strange and sickly

there. He glanced at his watch. No, indeed, he ought not to delay any

longer. He took up and blew out the lantern, went outside and roused

Mackay, washed the bowl and, filling it with water, placed it and the

rest of the food and wine within reach.

His movements had not roused the sleeper in the least. For the last

time Keith stooped over him and slipped a hand round his wrist. He

knew nothing of medicine, but undoubtedly the beat there was stronger.

It would be criminal to wake Ardroy merely in order to tell him

something unpleasant. There came to the soldier a momentary idea of

scribbling a warning on a page of his pocket-book and leaving this on

the sleeper’s breast; but it was quite possible that the first person

to read such a document would be Guthrie himself.

He rearranged the plaid carefully, and stood for a moment longer

looking at the fugitive where he lay at his feet, his head sunk in the

dried fern. And he remembered the hut at Kinlochiel last summer, where

he had done much the same thing. He had talked somewhat earlier on

that occasion, had he not, of obligation and repayment; well, he had

more than repaid. Ewen Cameron owed him his life—owed it him, very

likely, twice over. Yet Keith was conscious again that no thought of

obligation had drawn him to dash in front of those muskets yesterday,

nor had the idea of a debt really brought him back now. What then? . . .

Absurd! He was a man who prided himself on being unencumbered with

friends. Moreover, Ewen Cameron was an enemy.

It was strange, then, with what reluctance, with what half-hopes,

half-apprehensions, he got into the saddle and rode away under the

paling stars, leaving his enemy to rescue or capture; very strange,

since that enemy was likewise a rebel, that he should so greatly have

desired the former.

IV

‘YOUR DEBTOR, EWEN CAMERON’

“So, in this snare which holds me and appals me,

Where honour hardly lives nor loves remain . . .”

—H. BELLOC. _On Battersea Bridge_.

CHAPTER I

The mist shrouded every mountain-top, sagging downwards in some places

like the roof of a tent, and in others, where a perpetual draught blew

down a corrie, streaming out like smoke. How different from last week,

when, cold as it was up there, the top of the Corryarrick Pass had

presented to Major Windham’s eyes a view from Badenoch to the hills of

Skye. To-day, recrossing it, and looking back, he could hardly

distinguish through the greyish-white blanket more than three or four

of its many traverses winding away below him.

But here, on the lower levels of the mountain road, where it prepared

to debouch into that which ran along the Great Glen, this clogging

mist had become a fine and most penetrating rain, bedewing every inch

of the rider’s cloak and uniform, his hat, the edges of his wig, his

very eyebrows and lashes, and insinuating itself down his collar.

Major Windham did not know which was the more objectionable form of

moisture, and wished it were late enough in the day to cease exposing

himself to either, and to put up for the night at Fort Augustus, which

he should reach in another twenty minutes or so. But it was still too

early for that, and, bearer as he was of a despatch from Lord

Albemarle to the Duke of Cumberland, he must push on beyond Fort

Augustus before nightfall; must, indeed, reach the only halting-place

between that spot and Inverness, the tiny inn known, from Wade’s

occupation of it when he was making the road, as the General’s Hut.

However, he intended to stop at Fort Augustus to bait the horses—and

to make an enquiry.

It was six days since he had left Guthrie’s camp, and he was not

altogether surprised to-day to find it gone, but, to judge from the

litter lying about, only recently gone. There was, therefore, no one

to give him news of Ardroy, but he was sure that, if the Jacobite had

been made prisoner, he would have been sent or taken to Fort Augustus,

and he could get news of him there.

That night in the shieling, just a week ago, seemed to Keith much

farther off than that, and the emotions he had known then to have lost

their edge. ‘Gad, what a fit of philanthropy I had on me that day!’ he

reflected. If ‘Hangman Hawley’ came to know of it how he would sneer

at him, and the rest of the staff, too. Luckily they would not know.

So consoling himself, and cursing the rain anew, he came to Fort

Augustus, or rather to what remained of it. Its Highland captors who,

during their attack upon it, had partially demolished the new fort,

had, on the summons to face Cumberland, blown up and fired most of the

residue. A small temporary garrison had been sent there after the

victory to secure the abandoned stronghold for the Government; but it

had now been taken possession of by a larger force in the shape of the

Earl of Loudoun’s regiment, under the Earl himself, and eighteen

‘independent companies’. These had only marched in a few hours before,

in consequence of which influx the whole place was in a state of great

turmoil.

There was so little accommodation in the ruined fort that a small

village of tents was being erected in the meadows by the mouth of the

Tarff, and between the confusion of camp-pitching and the fact that

nearly everyone whom he encountered was a new-comer, Keith found it

difficult to discover who was or had been responsible for prisoners

sent in before Lord Loudoun’s arrival. He did, however, elicit the

information that Major Guthrie’s detachment was now somewhere on the

road between Fort Augustus and Inverness. And at last, though he did

not succeed in seeing anybody directly responsible, he was told that a

wounded Cameron, said to be the head of one of the cadet branches of

the clan, had been captured the previous week and sent in by that very

detachment, and that he had been given proper care and was progressing

favourably.

That was all Keith wanted to know for the moment, and he delayed no

longer. A certain vague disquiet which had teased him during the past

week about Guthrie’s possible treatment of his prisoner was allayed.

For the rest, he had already made his plans about Ardroy. It was at

Inverness, with Cumberland, that he could really do Ewen service,

especially if the Duke did take him on to his personal staff. To His

Royal Highness he could then represent what he owed to the captured

rebel, and, before he himself returned with the Commander-in-Chief to

Flanders, he might very well have the satisfaction of knowing that the

object of his ‘philanthropy’ had been set at liberty.

As he turned away from Fort Augustus, where the vista of Loch Ness was

completely blotted out in rain, and addressed himself to the long

steep climb up the Inverness road, Keith’s thoughts went back to the

Earl of Albemarle in Perth, craving like himself to get overseas once

more—whence, though colonel of the Coldstream Guards, he had come to

serve as a volunteer under Cumberland. His lordship, who had,

moreover, greatly preferred commanding the front line in the recent

battle to his present post with the Hessian troops in Perth, had

lamented his situation quite openly to Cumberland’s messenger; he

detested Scotland, he announced, and had fears, from a sentence in the

despatch which that messenger had delivered to him, that he might be

appointed to succeed Hawley in this uncongenial country. Having thus,

somewhat unwisely, betrayed his sentiments to Major Windham, he was

more or less obliged to beg his discretion, in promising which Keith

had revealed his own fellow-feeling about the North. When they parted,

therefore, Lord Albemarle had observed with much graciousness that if

this horrid fate of succeeding General Hawley should overtake him, he

would not forget Major Windham, though he supposed that the latter

might not then be in Scotland for him to remember. No; Keith, though

grateful for his lordship’s goodwill, distinctly hoped that he would

not. He trusted to be by then in a dryer climate and a country less

afflicted with steep roads . . . less afflicted also with punitive

measures, though, since Perth was not Inverness, he was not so much

dominated by those painful impressions of brutality as he had been a

week ago.

The greater part of the lengthy and tiresome ascent from the level of

Loch Ness was now over, and Keith and Dougal Mackay found themselves

again more or less in the region of mist, but on a flat stretch of

road with a strip of moorland on one hand. Water glimmered ahead on

the left; it was little Loch Tarff, its charms dimmed by the weather.

Keith just noticed its presence, tightened his reins, and, trotting

forward on the welcome level, continued his dreams about the future.

Twenty-five yards farther, and these were brought abruptly to a close.

Without the slightest warning there came a sharp report on his right,

and a bullet sped in front of him, so close that it frightened his

horse. Himself considerably startled too, he tried simultaneously to

soothe the beast and to tug out a pistol from his holster. Meanwhile,

Dougal Mackay, with great promptitude and loud Gaelic cries, was

urging his more docile steed over the heather towards a boulder which

he evidently suspected of harbouring the marksman.

As soon as he could get his horse under control Keith also made over

the strip of moorland, and arrived in time to see a wild, tattered,

tartan-clad figure, with a musket in its hands, slide down from the

top of the boulder, drop on to hands and knees among the heather and

bogmyrtle, and begin to wriggle away like a snake. Major Windham

levelled his pistol and fired, somewhat at random, for his horse was

still plunging; and the Highlander collapsed and lay still. Keith

trotted towards him; the man had already abandoned his musket and lay

in a heap on his side. The Englishman was just going to dismount when

shouts from Dougal Mackay, who had ridden round the boulder, stayed

him. “Do not pe going near him, sir; the man will not pe hit

whateffer!” And as this statement coincided with Keith’s own

impression that his bullet had gone wide, he stayed in the saddle and

covered the would-be assassin with his other pistol, while Mackay, who

certainly did not lack courage, slid off his own horse and came

running.

And it was even as Mackay had said. At the sound of the feet swishing

through the heather the heap of dirty tartan lying there was suddenly,

with one bound, a living figure which, leaping up dirk in hand, rushed

straight, not at the dismounted orderly, but at the officer on the

horse. Had Keith not had his pistol ready he could hardly have saved

himself, mounted though he was, from a deadly thrust. The man was at

his horse’s head when he fired. . . . This time he did not miss; he

could not. . . .

“I suppose I have blown his head to pieces,” he said next moment, with

a slightly shaken laugh.

“Inteet, I will pe thinking so,” replied Mackay, on his knees in the

heather. “But it will pe pest to make sure.” And he put his hand to

his own dirk.

“No, no!” commanded Keith, as he bent from the saddle, for somehow the

idea of stabbing a dead man, even a potential murderer, was repugnant

to him. “It is not necessary; he was killed instantly.”

There could be small doubt of that. One side of the Highlander’s

bearded face was all blackened by the explosion, and as he lay there,

his eyes wide and fixed, the blood ran backwards through his scorched

and tangled hair like a brook among waterweeds. The ball had struck

high up on the brow. It came to Keith with a sense of shock that the

very torn and faded philabeg which he wore was of the Cameron tartan.

He was sorry. . . .

Deterred, unwillingly, from the use of his dirk, the zealous Mackay

next enquired whether he should not put the cateran’s body over his

horse and bring him to Inverness, so that, dead or alive, he could be

hanged at the Cross there as a warning.

“No, leave him, poor devil,” said Keith, turning his horse. “No need

for that; he has paid the price already. Let him lie.” He felt

curiously little resentment, and wondered at the fact.

Dougal Mackay, however, was not going to leave the musket lying too.

“Ta _gunna_—she is Sassenach,” he announced, examining it.

“Take it, then,” said Keith. “Come, we must get on to the General’s

Hut before this mist grows thicker.”

So they rode away, leaving the baffled assailant staring into vacancy,

his dirk still gripped in his hand, and under his head the heather in

flower before its time.

Once more the road mounted; then fell by a long steep gradient. The

General’s Hut, a small and very unpretentious hostelry, of the kind

known as a ‘creel house’, was at Boleskine, down on its lower levels,

and before Keith reached it he could see that its outbuildings were

occupied by soldiers. They were probably Major Guthrie’s detachment.

Indeed, as he dismounted, a uniformed figure which he knew came round

the corner of the inn, but it stopped dead on seeing him, then, with

no further sign of recognition, turned abruptly and disappeared again.

It was Lieutenant Paton.

So these _were_ Guthrie’s men, and he could hear more of Ardroy. But

he would have preferred to hear it from Paton rather than from

Guthrie, and wished that he had been quick enough to stop that young

man.

The first person whom Keith saw when he entered the dirty little

parlour was Guthrie himself—or rather, the back of him—just sitting

down to table.

“Come awa’, Foster, is that you?” he called out. “Quick noo; the brose

is getting cauld.” Receiving no response he turned round. “Dod! ’tis

Major Windham!”

Keith came forward perforce. “Good evening, Major Guthrie. Yes, I am

on my way back to Inverness.”

“Back frae Perth, eh?” commented Guthrie. “By the high road this time,

then, I’m thinkin’. Sit ye doun, Major, and Luckie whate’er she ca’s

hersel’ shall bring anither cover. Ah, here comes Foster—let me

present Captain Foster of ma regiment tae ye, Major Windham. Whaur’s

yon lang-leggit birkie of a Paton?”

“Not coming to supper, sir,” replied Captain Foster, saluting the new

arrival. “He begs you to excuse him; he has a letter to write, or he

is feeling indisposed—I forget which.”

“Indeed!” said Guthrie, raising his sandy eyebrows. “He was weel

eneugh and free o’ correspondence a while syne. However, it’s an ill

wind—— Ye ken the rest. Major Windham can hae his place and his meat.”

Keith sat down, with as good a grace as he could command, at the

rough, clothless table. This Foster was presumably the officer whose

bed he had occupied in the camp, a man more of Guthrie’s stamp than of

Paton’s, but better mannered. Lieutenant Paton’s excuse for absence,

coupled with his abrupt disappearance, was significant, but why should

the young man not wish to meet Major Keith Windham? Perhaps because

the latter had got him into trouble after all over his ‘philanthropy’.

Between the three the talk ran on general topics, and it was not until

the meal was half over that Guthrie suddenly said:

“Weel, Major, I brocht in yer Cameron frien’ after ye left.”

Keith murmured that he was glad to hear it.

“But I got little for ma pains,” continued Guthrie, pouring himself

out a glass of wine—only his second, for, to Keith’s surprise, he

appeared to be an abstemious man. He set down the bottle and looked

hard at the Englishman. “But ye yersel’ were nae luckier, it seems.”

Keith returned his look. “I am afraid that I do not understand.”

“Ye see, I ken ye went back tae the shieling yon nicht.”

“Yes, I imagined that you would discover it,” said Keith coolly. “I

trust that you received my message of apology for departing without

taking leave of you?”

“Yer message of apology!” repeated Major Guthrie. “Ha, ha!

Unfortunately ye didna apologise for the richt offence! Ye suld hae

apologised for stealing a march on me ahint ma back. ’Twas a pawky

notion, yon, was it no’, Captain Foster?”

“I must repeat that I am completely in the dark as to your meaning,

Major Guthrie!” said Keith in growing irritation.

“Isna he the innocent man! But I forgie ye, Major—since ye gained

naething by gangin’ back.”

“_Gained!_” ejaculated Keith. “What do you mean, sir? I did not go

back to the shieling to gain anything. I went——”

“Aye, I ken what ye said ye gaed for,” interrupted Guthrie with a

wink. “’Twas devilish canny, as I said, and deceived the rebel himsel’

for a while. All yon ride in the nicht juist tae tak’ him food and

dress his wounds! And when ye were there tendin’ him sae kindly ye

never speired aboot Lochiel and what he kennt o’ him, and whaur the

chief micht be hidin’, did ye?—Never deny it, Major, for the rebel

didna when I pit it tae him!”

“You devil!” exclaimed Keith, springing up. “What did you say to him

about me?”

Guthrie kept his seat, and pulled down Captain Foster, who, murmuring

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” had risen too. “Nae need tae be sae

distrubel’d, Captain Foster; I’m na. That’s for them that hae uneasy

consciences. What did I say tae him? Why, I tellt him the truth, Major

Windham: why ye set such store on saving his life, and how ye thocht

he micht be persuaded tae ‘drap a hint’ aboot Lochiel. Forbye he didna

believe that at first.”

Keith caught his breath. “You told him those lies . . . to his face

. . . and he believed . . .” He could get no farther.

“Lies, were they?” asked Guthrie, leaning over the table. “Ye ne’er

advised me tae bring him into camp tae ‘complete ma knowledge’? Eh, I

hae ye there fine! Aweel, I did ma best, Major Windham; nane can dae

mair. But I doot he has the laugh of us, the callant, for he tellt me

naething, either by hints or ony ither gait, a’ the time I had him in

ma care. So I e’en sent him wi’ a bit report tae Fort Augustus, and

there he is the noo, as ye may have heard, if ye speired news o’ him

when ye came by.”

Keith had turned very white. “I might have known that you would play

some dirty trick or other!” he said, and flung straight out of the

room.

Fool, unspeakable fool that he was not to have foreseen something of

this kind with a man of Guthrie’s stamp! He _had_ had moments of

uneasiness at the thought of Ardroy’s probable interview with him, but

he had never anticipated anything quite so base as this. “Take me to

Lieutenant Paton at once!” he said peremptorily to the first soldier

he came across.

The man led him towards a barn looming through the mist at a little

distance. The door was ajar, and Keith went in, to see a dimly lit

space with trusses of straw laid down in rows for the men, and at one

end three horses, his own among them, with a soldier watering them.

The young lieutenant, his hands behind his back, was watching the

process. Keith went straight up to him.

“Can I have a word with you alone, Mr. Paton?”

The young man stiffened and flushed; then, with obvious reluctance,

ordered the soldier out. And when the man with his clanging buckets

had left the building, Paton stood rather nervously smoothing the

flank of one of the horses—not at all anxious to talk.

“Mr. Paton,” said Keith without preamble, “what devil’s work went on

in your camp over the prisoner from Ben Loy?” And then, at sight of

the look on Paton’s face, he cried out, “Good God, man, do you think

that I had a hand in it, and is that why you would not break bread

with me?”

Lieutenant Paton looked at the ground. “I . . . indeed I found it hard

to believe that you could act so, when you seemed so concerned for the

prisoner, but——”

“In Heaven’s name, let us have this out!” cried Keith. “What did Major

Guthrie say to Mr. Cameron? He appears to have tried to make him

believe an infamous thing of me—that I went back to the shieling that

night merely in order to get information out of him! Surely he did not

succeed in making him think so—even if he succeeded with you? . . .

Answer me, if you please!”

The younger man seemed very ill at ease. “I cannot say, sir, what Mr.

Cameron believed about you in the end. He certainly refused, and

indignantly, to believe it at first.”

“He _cannot_ have believed it!” said Keith passionately. “‘In the

end’? How long, then, did Major Guthrie have him in his custody?”

“He kept him for twenty-four hours, sir—in order to see if he would

make any disclosures about Lochiel.” And Lieutenant Paton added, in a

very dry tone, turning away and busying himself with a horse’s

headstall, “A course which it seems that you yourself advised.”

Keith gave a sound like a groan. “Did the Major tell Mr. Cameron that

also?”

Paton nodded. “Yes, he did—and more, too: whether true or not I have

no means of judging.”

Keith had the sensation that the barn, or something less material, was

closing in round him. This honest boy, too—— “Look here, Mr. Paton, I

will be frank with you. I was so desperately afraid that Ardroy would

be left to die there in the shieling that I did suggest to Major

Guthrie that it might be of advantage to bring him into camp, though I

knew that he would have his trouble for nothing. Though I

unfortunately recommended that course I was perfectly certain that Mr.

Cameron would not give the slightest inkling of any knowledge that he

might have.”

“No, it was plain from the beginning that he would not,” said the

young man, “and that was why . . .” He broke off. “If Mr. Cameron is a

friend of yours it is a good thing that you were not in our camp that

morning . . . or no, perhaps a misfortune, because you might have

succeeded in stopping it sooner. I could not.”

“Succeeded in stopping what?” asked Keith. Then the inner flavour of

some of Guthrie’s recent words began to be apparent to him. He caught

Paton by the arm. “You surely do not mean that Major Guthrie resorted

to—violent measures? It’s impossible!”

Thus captured, the young soldier turned and faced him. “Reassure

yourself, sir,” he said quickly, seeing the horror and disgust on his

companion’s face. “He could not carry them out; the prisoner was in no

state for it. He could only threaten, and . . . question.”

“He threatened to shoot him after all?”

“No, not to shoot him, to flog him.” And as Keith gave an exclamation

and loosed his hold, Paton added, “And he went very near doing it,

too.”

“Threatened to flog him! Mr. Paton, you are jesting!” said Keith

incredulously. “Flog a badly wounded prisoner, and a gentleman—a

chieftain—to boot!”

“I am not jesting, sir; I wish I were. But I am thankful to say that

it was not carried out.—Now, if you will excuse me, Major Windham, I

must be about my duties.” His tone indicated that he would be glad to

leave a distasteful subject.

But Keith made a movement to bar his passage. “Mr. Paton, forgive my

insistence, but your duties must wait a little. You cannot leave the

matter there! For my own sake I must know what was said to Mr.

Cameron. You see how nearly it concerns my honour. I implore you to

try to recall everything that passed!”

Reluctantly the young man yielded. “Very well, sir; but I had best

speak to the sergeant to ensure that we are not disturbed, for this

barn is the men’s quarters.”

He went out to give an order. Hardly knowing what he did, Keith turned

to his horse, busy pulling hay from the rack, and looked him over to

see that Mackay had rubbed him down properly. Threatened with

flogging—Ewen Cameron!

Paton came back, closed the door and brought up a couple of pails,

which he inverted and suggested as seats. “You must be tired, Major,

after your long ride, and I am afraid that this will be a bit of a

sederunt.” So Keith sat down in the stall to hear what his ill-omened

suggestion had brought on the man whom he had saved.