“No, no, you know that’s not my thought,” said Ewen, distressed. “I’d

leave Ardroy to you as blithely as I did a year ago—I will so leave it

. . . presently.”

“Aye, that you will do presently—but not by your own will. You’ll go

off from this door as you left Fort Augustus a week ago, tied on a

horse again, and your father’s house really in flames behind you—and

all because you will not listen to advice!”

“You make me out more obstinate than I am,” said Ewen gently. “Your

advice is excellent, Aunt Marget, but you do not know . . . all the

circumstances.”

“That can easily be remedied,” said Miss Cameron with meaning. But to

that suggestion Ewen made no reply.

Miss Cameron turned round in her chair, and then got up and faced him.

“Ewen, my dear, what is wrong? What is it that is keeping you from

getting out of the country? Surely it is not . . . that there is

something amiss between you and Alison?”

Ewen did not meet her eyes. But he shook his head. “Alison and I——” he

began, but never finished. How put into words what Alison was to him?

Moreover, that which was keeping him back did stand between him and

her—at least in his own soul. “Some day, perhaps, I will tell you,

Aunt Marget,” he said quietly. “But I’d be glad if you would not

discuss my departure just now.—You have dropped your knitting.”

He picked it up for her, and Margaret Cameron stood quite still,

looking up uneasily at the height of him, at his brow all wrinkled

with some pain of whose nature she was quite ignorant, at the sudden

lines round his young mouth. She ended her survey with a sigh.

“And to think that—since we cannot get a letter to her—the lassie may

be breaking her heart over there, believing that you are dead!”

Ewen took a step away, with a movement as though to ward off a blow.

Then he translated the movement into a design to snuff the candles on

the table behind him. After a moment his voice came, unsteady and

hurt: “Aunt Margaret, you are very cruel.” And his hand must have been

unsteady, too, for he snuffed the flame right out.

“’Tis for your own good,” replied Miss Cameron, winking hard at the

engraving of King James the Third as a young man over the mantelshelf

in front of her. Ewen relighted from another the candle he had

slain, saying nothing, and with the air of one who does not quite

know what he is doing. “At least, I’m sure ’tis not for mine,” went

on Miss Cameron, and now, little given to tears as she was, she

surreptitiously applied a corner of a handkerchief to one eye. “You

cannot think that I _want_ you to go away again . . . and leave the

house the . . . the mere shell of emptiness it is when you are not

here!”

Ewen looked round and saw the scrap of cambric. In an instant, despite

the pain it cost him, he had knelt down by her side and was taking her

hands into his, and saying how sorry he was to grieve her, and

assuring her that there was nothing, nothing whatever wrong between

him and Alison.

Yet even then he made no promises about departure.

* * * * * *

Nor had he made any a week later, when, one hot afternoon, he lay,

reflecting deeply, on the bed in his own room, with his hands behind

his head. Although his wounded leg was already much stronger, it

rebelled with effect against unremitting use all day, and to Ewen’s

intense disgust he found it imperative to spend a portion of the

afternoon thus. He regarded this necessity as not only burdensome but

disgraceful.

The wind soughed faintly through the pines of the little avenue, and

then passed on to ruffle the ivy outside his open window. A little

brown, some of them, after their fiery ordeal, the topmost of those

tough leaves were still there, and made just the same rustling noise

as of old. And there Ewen lay, apparently at peace; back in his own

room, among his modest possessions, his life and liberty snatched from

the enemy, his home unharmed after all, and over the seas his young

wife waiting for him in safety, the call of the sword no longer

keeping him back from her, since the sword was shattered.

But he was by no means at peace; there was unceasing war in his

breast. The way to Alison was barred by a spectre which he could not

lay. It was in vain to tell himself that, by God’s mercy, his most

unwilling lapse at Fort Augustus had done no harm, that no one of his

own party knew of it, that it was not even a complete revelation. To

his acutely sensitive Highland pride the mere fact of the betrayal of

his Chief’s trust was agony. Alison could not heal that wound, which,

now that Ewen was back again in his old surroundings, almost in his

old life, seemed to have broken out bleeding afresh. There was only

one man who could draw the poison from it, and Ewen knew neither where

he was nor how he could come at him.

And meanwhile his dreams were full of Alison; and a night or two ago

he had even seemed to hear her voice in one, asking in so pitiful and

faint an accent why he delayed to come to her, now that honour no

longer forbade it. She was so lonely . . .

Ewen sighed deeply, and withdrew his hands from beneath his head. The

double scar on his right palm caught his eye for an instant. He

wondered, not by any means for the first time, whether Windham had

heard of his escape; if he had, he would know that he had indeed given

him his life—yes, even by his refusal to witness against him, since

that was the direct cause of the prisoner’s being taken over the

Spean, where he had met and seized his great opportunity. To judge by

the Englishman’s palpable distress at their farewell interview,

Windham would be exceedingly glad of the news of his escape. Some day,

perhaps, he might contrive to get a letter conveyed to his hands. He

would like to tell him in person. But he was never to see him again,

so it seemed, for the five meetings were over. Again he counted them:

here, at Edinburgh, on Beinn Laoigh, at Fort Augustus. And suddenly

his pulse quickened with pleasure—that made four, only four! . . . No,

of course, there had been two at Fort Augustus. . . . Yet what (save

his own recapture) stood now in the way of their meeting again some

day?

But the ivy leaves went on rubbing their hands together, and through

the window at the other side of the room came the clucking of Miss

Cameron’s remaining hens, drowsy sounds both, and Ewen, pondering this

question, began to fall asleep. Yet, just before he lost

consciousness, there shot through his mind, apparently from nowhere, a

last flicker of Angus’s prediction of a year ago . . . something about

twisted threads . . . a thread of one colour and a thread of another.

It had meant nothing at the time and he had totally forgotten it

since. Now, between the two worlds of sleep and waking, it not only

came back to him, but, with the curious pictorial clarity sometimes

vouchsafed in that state, he seemed to see what it meant. Then picture

and meaning faded, and he slept.

He slept quietly for a while, and then dreamt that a man had come into

the room and was standing looking down at him. Yet somehow he knew

that it was not a dream, that there was really someone there. He tried

to rouse himself, but could not; and then the man laid a hand on his

wrist. And at that, still half in a dream, he began to struggle and to

speak.

“Let go my arm, you damned torturer! . . . No, not if you cut me in

pieces! . . . Ah, my God, but there’s another way . . . another way!”

The hand had left his wrist quickly, and now it was laid on his

shoulder, and a voice—Lochiel’s voice—said, “Ewen, wake up. No one is

hurting you.”

He woke instantly, crying, “Donald! Donald!” half sure, all the time,

that it was but a dream. Then he caught his breath and lay staring

upwards. It was not indeed Lochiel, but it was his brother who stood

there, looking down at him with a good deal of attention.

“_Archie!_” he gasped in the most complete astonishment. “You here!

Why?”

“Don’t you think you would be the better of a doctor, my dear Ewen?”

enquired his cousin cheerfully. “That is why I am here.”

“But there’s a price on your head,” protested Ewen. “You should not,

should not have come here!”

Archibald Cameron smiled his gentle, quizzical smile and sat down on

the bed. “I understand from Miss Margaret that you daily affirm the

house of Ardroy to be perfectly safe. Moreover, one does not dictate

to a physician, my dear boy, how and when he shall visit his patients.

I heard how you escaped as you were being carried to Fort William, and

I did not believe that it was your body which was found some days

after in one of the pools of Spean. (You do not know, perhaps, that

that is what has been given out at Fort Augustus.) But I guessed that

that same body needed attention, so, being yesterday in Glendessary, I

made my way hither. Now, let me look at those wounds of yours.”

And, though Ewen protested that these were quite healed and that he

was only a trifle lame, Dr. Cameron insisted. The extent of the

lameness, very patent when he made the young man walk about the room,

evidently displeased him.

“When you get to France, Ewen, you must have the care of a good

surgeon. I greatly fear that an important muscle in the thigh has been

severed; but with proper treatment it may reunite again.”

“I suppose you have been talking to Aunt Margaret,” remarked his

patient, sitting down upon the bed. “But, as I have told her, I am not

going to France—yet. The muscle must reunite at home.”

Archie looked at him keenly. He _had_ been talking to Aunt Margaret.

“I am not advising France solely in the interests of your lameness,

Ewen.”

“Well I know that! But I shall stay in Scotland for the present.”

“Until you are captured again, I suppose?” said Dr. Cameron, crossing

one leg over the other and leaning back against the post at the bottom

of the bed. “But I do not know on what grounds you assume that you

will have so lucky an escape a second time.”

“Oh, I shall not be captured here,” said Ewen carelessly. “And when I

can walk a little better, I shall very likely take to the heather for

a while—like you!” And as Archibald Cameron raised his eyebrows he

said with more warmth, “My God, Archie, I’d rather skulk in sight of

Loch na h-Iolaire with nothing but my plaid and a handful of meal,

even were there a redcoat behind every whin-bush, than lie in the

French King’s bed at Versailles!”

“No doubt,” responded his cousin, unmoved. “And so would I. Yet I

shall certainly make for France—if God will—when my tasks here are

done. I hope indeed that it may not be for long; who knows but next

year may see another and a more successful effort, with support from

the French. The Prince——”

“Yes, indeed,” said Ewen eagerly, “what of the Prince? My last news

of him was from a fellow-prisoner at Fort Augustus, MacDonald of

Kingsburgh, who, though he is Sleat’s factor, brought him to his

own house in Skye disguised as the maidservant of one Miss Flora

MacDonald, and was arrested in consequence. I heard much from him, and

laughable some of it was, too, for Kingsburgh’s wife and daughter seem

to have been frightened at the queer figure that His Royal Highness

made in his petticoats. But you will have later news of him, Archie?”

“The Prince was at the end of July in Glenmoriston,” said Dr. Cameron,

“but he is now, I think, in Chisholm’s country, farther north. There

is so plainly a Providence watching over him that I have no doubt he

will be preserved from his enemies to the end; and it is therefore the

duty of his friends to preserve themselves, too. Yes, I am going to

read you a lecture, _Eoghain mhóir_, so you had better lie down again;

I shall not begin until you do.” He waited until Ewen had grumblingly

complied, and then began, ticking off the points on his fingers.

“_Imprimis_, you stubborn young man, there is this house, almost

miraculously preserved from destruction, and, if you keep clear of it,

likely to continue immune. There is your good aunt, who can well

continue to look after it, but who, if you are found under its roof,

will certainly be driven out of it and very possibly imprisoned. You

are not on the list of attainted persons, and you have the advantage

at this moment of an official report declaring you drowned. Most of

all, have you not someone already in France who is breaking her heart

for a sight of you?”

Lying there, Ewen changed colour perceptibly, and it was only after a

moment that he answered: “There are broken hearts in plenty, Archie,

in Lochaber.”

“But I do not see, my dear lad, how they are to be mended by your

offering up the fragments of Alison’s—and your own.”

Ewen uttered a sound like a groan, and, twisting over, buried his face

in the pillow; and presently there emerged some muffled words to the

effect that he longed to go to Alison, but that . . . and then

something wholly unintelligible in which the word ‘honour’ was alone

distinguishable.

Dr. Cameron looked down at the back of the uneasy auburn head with the

affectionate tolerance which one might display to the caprices of a

younger brother. “No, Ewen, to my mind honour points to your

going—aye, and duty and common sense as well. You cannot help your

tenants by remaining here; Miss Cameron can now do that much more

effectively—so long as you do not compromise her by your presence. You

cannot help the Cause or the Prince; you cannot help Lochiel;”—the

head gave a sudden movement—“he is for France with me when the

opportunity comes. Another day—that is a different tale; but ’tis

likely there will never be another day for you if you persist in

remaining here now. . . . And there is another point, which I hope you

will pardon me for mentioning: is your wife going to bear you a child,

Ewen?”

“How do I know?” answered Ewen in a stifled voice from the pillow.

“Our happiness was so short . . . and I have had no letter.”

“Then, before you throw your life uselessly away,” said Archibald

Cameron gravely, “it is your duty to make sure that there will be a

son to follow you here, Mac ’ic Ailein. Do you wish your ghost to see

strangers at Ardroy?”

No Highlander could ever affect to disregard that argument, and Ewen

remained silent.

“And Alison—do you suppose that she found her wedded happiness any

longer or more satisfying than you did? God knows, my dear Ewen, I

hold that neither wife, children, nor home should stand in a man’s way

when duty and loyalty call him—for, as you know, I have turned my back

on all mine—but when duty and loyalty are silent, then he does very

wrong if he neglects those ties of nature.”

And on that Archibald Cameron, conceiving that he had preached long

enough, got up from the bed. Ewen was still lying with his face

hidden: was there something on his mind, as Miss Cameron affirmed? The

doctor went and looked out of the far window, and saw the lady in

question scattering meal to her hens.

“Archie,” came from the bed after a moment or two, “if I go, it is

only on one condition, which you can grant.”

“I?” said Dr. Cameron, turning round, rather surprised. Ewen had

raised himself on to an elbow. He looked oddly pale and strained. “What

is the condition, _’ille_?”

“That I see Lochiel first.” And over his fair skin there swept a wave

of red.

It occurred to Dr. Archibald then how strange it was that Ewen, for

all his intense devotion, had not yet asked news of his kinsman and

Chief. But he looked doubtful. “I am afraid that would be difficult,

because you are both disabled; you cannot travel to him, nor he to

you.”

“Yes, I had thought of that,” said Ewen, now quite pale again. “But I

must contrive it somehow.” And as Archie was silent, reflecting, he

added, with a sharp note in his soft voice, “Is there any other reason

why I should not?”

“Of course not—save that you will meet in France, please God.”

“That will not serve. I must see him before I leave Scotland. I know

that he is no longer in Lochaber.” The short phrases were jerked out;

even more so the last one: “Archie, where _is_ he?”

“He——” Archie was beginning, when unfortunately he heard Miss Cameron

calling to him from below, possibly uttering a warning of some kind.

He turned sharply to the window and never finished. But on Ewen

the effect was of a man who has second thoughts about answering

a question, and is not only mute, but turns his back upon the

questioner.

In his present state of mind, it was quite enough, and next moment, to

his visitor’s amazement, he had thrown himself off the bed with such

violence that he staggered. “I knew it!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You

will not tell me where he is because you have heard what I did at Fort

Augustus—because Lochiel has heard it. I am not to be trusted! That is

why you came, I believe—why you want me gone at any price from

Scotland!” And as Archibald Cameron, already swung round again from

the window, stared at him in consternation, Ewen added, clenching his

hands, “I’ll not go! I’ll not be got rid of like that! I’ll get myself

killed here in Lochaber . . . the only thing I can do in expiation.”

And with that he sank down on the side of the bed and hid his face in

his hands.

Dr. Cameron hastily left the window, but before his amazement allowed

him words, Ewen was adding, in a strangled voice, “You are quite

right, from your point of view, neither to let me see him nor to tell

me where he is. But, Archie, I swear to you by my father’s memory that

I did not do it willingly! How can he believe that of me!”

His cousin stooped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ewen,” he said

with great gentleness, “I have not the least notion what you are

talking about. What did you do at Fort Augustus? Nothing, I’d stake my

soul, that your father’s son need ever be ashamed of. You would have

let yourself be ‘cut in pieces’ first, eh? I was just on the point of

telling you where Lochiel was; he is in Badenoch, hiding in a hut on

Ben Alder with Macpherson of Cluny. Now,” he sat down and slipped his

arm completely along the bowed shoulders, “will you tell me what is on

your mind, and why you must see him?”

CHAPTER IV

Thinking it over afterwards, Ewen knew why it had been such a comfort

to tell Archie; it was that Dr. Cameron seemed to understand so well

what he had suffered that he never tried to belittle the cause of it.

Instead of attempting to minimise this he said that he would have felt

exactly the same had such a terrible mischance befallen him. Only how

could Ewen at any stage have imagined that Donald, if he heard of his

lapse, would ever believe that he had made a disclosure willingly?

“I blame you for that, my poor Ewen,” he said, shaking his head. “You

must surely have known that he would as soon suspect me as you, who

have been like an elder son to him, who so nearly threw away your life

for him at Fort William. . . . I think that’s the worst part of your

confession, but as you say that I am not to suppress anything I must

tell him that too, though it will hurt him.”

Ewen raised his colourless face, to which, however, a measure of

tranquillity had already returned. “I am sorry for that; but you must

not keep back a word. Tell him how I allowed myself to fall asleep

when I suspicioned it might be dangerous; tell him that I insulted

Lord Loudoun somewhat unworthily—_he_ would not have done that—tell

him everything. You are only a proxy, you know, Archie—though a very

satisfactory one,” he added gratefully. “There’s no other man save

Lochiel that I could have told. _Dhé_, but I feel as if Ben Nevis had

been lifted off me!”

Archibald Cameron gave his arm a little pressure. “Now ’tis my turn to

make a confession to you. When I first came into this room I found

myself emulating that Captain Greening of yours—whom, by the way, I

should rejoice to meet on some good lonely brae, with a precipice near

by. But, like your talking, my dear lad, my overhearing was

accidental.”

“Do you mean that I was saying things in my sleep again? Archie, this

is intolerable!”

“You bade me loose your arm when I touched you, and spoke of

preferring to be ‘cut in pieces’ and of ‘another way’. You have just

told me what that ‘other way’ was. Ewen, what was the first way, and

who took it with you? You have not told me everything, after all.”

The young man was looking on the floor, and there was colour enough in

his face now. “I do not very much wish to revive that memory. . . .

But if you must know, I was near being flogged by order of the Lowland

officer who captured me. He had been going to shoot me first—I’ll

tell you of that anon. It was because he wanted . . . what they wanted

and got at Fort Augustus.—No, do not look so horrified, Archie; he

did not carry it out (though I’ll admit I believed he was going to).

It was only a threat.”

“Then, if it was only a threat,” remarked Dr. Cameron, looking at him

closely, “why did you call me a ‘damned torturer’ when I touched you?”

“I . . . Really, Archie, I cannot be responsible for everything I say

in my sleep. I apologise, but if you were worth your salt you would

give me some drug to cure me of the cursed habit!”

“I’m afraid the drug does not exist, my dear boy. When your mind is at

peace you will not do it any more. And don’t you think that it would

conduce to that state if you told me why you called me so unpleasant a

name?”

Ewen gave him a little shake. “_Mo thruaigh_, Archie Cameron,” he said

with vivacity, “I begin to think it was because you merit it with this

persistence of yours! If I said that, I suppose I must have been

remembering that when one has had a bayonet through one’s arm not long

before, it is conveniently sensitive, that is all. But after a few

experiments, Major Guthrie found that it was not sensitive enough.

They knew better how to do things at Fort Augustus.”

Archibald Cameron still gazed at him, compressing his lips. “So the

Lowlander tried ‘experiments’, did he? And do you still consider

yourself a traitor, Ewen? I’d give you a rather different name, and

so, I fancy, will Lochiel.”

“But I don’t mean you to tell Lochiel _that_! No, Archie, that was not

confession—you got it out of me unfairly!”

“Unfortunately you made me promise to tell him everything,” retorted

his cousin, smiling. “To turn to another aspect of this matter, then,”

for Ewen was really looking unhappy, “it was, I suppose, to this Major

Guthrie with a fancy for experiments that you were betrayed by the

English officer who was your prisoner here—I might almost say your

guest—last August. I hope that he did not go so far as to take part in

these proceedings, too?—Bless us, what is wrong now?”

For this partial change of topic had proved far from soothing. With a

sharp exclamation Ewen had got up from the bed.

“Good God, Archie, how did you hear that story? It’s not true—Major

Windham did not betray me—he saved me!”

“Did he? Well, I’d far liefer hear that than the other thing. But that

was what Lachlan MacMartin told us, when he came hotfoot to us at

Achnacarry at the beginning of May.”

“Lachlan—_Lachlan_ went to Achnacarry!” exclaimed Ewen in amazement.

“Yes, he appeared there one day nearly crazy with rage and remorse

because you had been captured while he had left you in order to get

food. He wanted Donald to march against Fort Augustus and deliver

you.”

Ewen had begun to limp distractedly about the room. “I did not know

that. But, great heavens, what a story to get abroad about Major

Windham! Archie, he saved my life at the last minute; I was actually

up against the wall before the firing-party when he dashed in between

at the risk of his own. I should not be here now for you to bully but

for him. It is true that I, too, God forgive me, was deluded enough

for a short time to think his goodness calculated treachery, but at

least I did not spread it abroad. And that is only part of what he has

done and given up for me.” He gave his cousin a sketch of the rest. “I

cannot think how Lachlan got such a mistaken notion into his head, for

he was not there when I was found and taken, and he can hardly have

met with that scoundrel Guthrie, who is capable of any lie.”

“What has become of Lachlan—is he here at Ardroy?”

“No, he has never returned, and no one knows anything of him; he has

undoubtedly been either captured or killed, and much more probably

killed, I fear. But I wish he had not spread this slander; ’tis at

least to be hoped that no word of it reaches poor Windham!”

“I like to see in you, Ewen,” said his cousin, “the same concern for

another man’s honour as for your own. But you know the Erse proverb,

‘A lie goes but on one leg’.”

“Like me,” commented Ewen with a smile. “Yet you think that in France

I may go on two again?”

“You will certainly have a better chance of it. Then I may tell

Lochiel, when I get back to Badenoch, that you consent to be

reasonable?”

“Yes, thanks to you, I will go—since he is going. But I must wait a

chance of getting off.”

“There’s a chance now,” said his cousin quickly; “but you must start

for the coast to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” Ewen’s face fell. “So soon!” His glance swept round the

room and lingered for a moment on the heathery distances visible

through the window. “Very well,” he said with a little sigh. “Tell me

what I must do—no,” he caught himself up, “first tell me a little

about Donald. Those wounds of his, are they healed? Archie, I hope due

care is being taken of him on Ben Alder?”

“You look as if you think I ought not to have left him,” said Dr.

Cameron, smiling. “But he has had Sir Stuart Threipland of Edinburgh

with him, and the wounds are healing, though slowly. And I assure you

that I have been too busy following Mercury of late to pay much

attention to Æsculapius; I have been to and fro in Lochaber and

Moidart a great deal more regularly than the post. More by token I am

become a sort of banker. For I suppose you did not hear in your

captivity, Ewen, that at the beginning of May two French ships landed

six barrels of gold—forty thousand louis d’or—in Moidart for the

Prince; and with some ado, owing to the reluctance of Clanranald’s

people to lose sight of it, I got it conveyed to Loch Arkaig, and it

has been buried there against future requirements.—I know what you are

going to say, ‘If only we had had that money earlier, when we needed

it so!’”

Those were indeed the words which leapt to the young man’s lips. Yet

since over the ruined fortunes of to-day there still danced, like

will-of-the-wisps, the hopes of to-morrow, he fell to discussing the

possible uses of this money with the man to whose endeavours (as he

soon discovered) it was due that the French had not carried it off

again when they heard the news of the disaster at Culloden. Archibald

Cameron had indeed played post and banker to some purpose! Ewen looked

at him with admiration not free from concern.

“Archie, are you duly careful of your own safety in these constant

journeyings of yours, seeing that you are proscribed by name?”

His cousin smiled. “You may be sure that I am careful. Am I not

pre-eminently a man of peace?”

Nevertheless not even Balmerino, the dauntless old soldier, was to

make a more memorable end on the scaffold than Archibald Cameron. But

his time was not yet—not by seven years; though, all unknowing, he had

just been talking of what was to bring him there—the belated French

treasure, fatal as the fabled gold of the river maidens to nearly

every man who touched it.

“Now, for your getting off to France,” he resumed. “There has lately

been a French privateer off Loch Broom, and she may very well be

hanging off the coast farther south, therefore you should start for

Moidart without a day’s delay. Since the twenty-fifth of July the

coast is not so closely watched for the Prince as it was; the cordon

of sentries has been removed. Make for Arisaig or Morar; at either you

will be able to find a fisherman to take you off at night to the

French vessel if she is still there. You speak French, so the rest

should be easy.”

“And will Lochiel and the Prince try to leave by her?”

“I doubt it, for I fear she will be gone by the time Donald could

reach the coast, or His Royal Highness either. But do not delay your

departure on that account, Ewen, for the larger the party getting off

from shore the more hazardous is the attempt—at least, if there are

any soldiers left in those parts now. (There cannot, at any rate, be

many.) Now I must be getting on my way.”

“You will not pass the night with us?” suggested Ewen. “Aunt Margaret

seems to have a high opinion of the garrets as a refuge.”

Dr. Cameron shook his head. “I must push on; ’tis only five o’clock.

God bless you, my dear Ewen, and bring us to meet again—even though it

be not in Scotland!”

“I wish I were coming with you to Ben Alder,” said Ewen rather

wistfully, halting after his visitor down the stairs.

“Trust me to do your business with Donald as well as you could do it

yourself—nay, better, for I suspect that you would leave out certain

episodes.—You’ll be rid of this fellow at last, Miss Margaret,” he

said to the figure waiting at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve sorted

him!”

“’Tis you have the skill, Archibald Cameron,” replied the lady,

beaming on him. “None of _my_ prayers would move him. You’ll drink a

health with us before you go?”

And under the picture of King James the Third and Eighth the three of

them drained their glasses to the Cause which had already taken its

last, its mortal wound.

* * * * * *

Next day Ewen kept his word, and set about his departure. A garron was

found for him to ride, and two of his men who had followed him through

the campaign were to accompany him to the coast. Yielding to pressure,

he had agreed to take young Angus MacMartin with him to France as his

personal servant. He could not refuse it to Neil’s memory and to old

Angus’s prayers that a MacMartin should be about him still.

He was to leave at dusk, since travelling by night would be less

hazardous, and a little before sundown he went up to Slochd nan Eun to

take leave of his foster-father, with whom he had had little converse

since his return, for Angus had been ill and clouded in mind. But he

had borne the loss of his two sons with an almost fierce resignation;

it seemed as if he had asked no better fate for them, especially for

Neil. He had recovered from his illness now, but he was rather frail

and still at times a little confused. A daughter looked after him in

the old cottage which had once rung with the laughter of many

children, and with Ewen’s own; but the old man was alone, crouched

over the fire, with a plaid across his knees when Ewen, helping

himself on the ascent with a staff, arrived at the door.

Half blind though he was, Angus’s hearing was as keen as ever, and,

even with the unfamiliar halt in it, he knew his foster-son’s step.

“Mac ’ic Ailein, is it you? Blessings on your head! You have come to

say farewell to me, who shall never see you again.”

Tremblingly and slowly he arose, and embraced the young man. “Neil and

Lachlan shall go with you, son of my heart, that you take no harm

before you embark on the great water.”

“Neil is dead, foster-father, do you not remember?” asked Ewen gently.

“He gave his life for me. And Lachlan—I fear Lachlan is dead also.”

“It is true that I do not see them any more,” replied the old man,

with a singular detachment, “for I grow blinder every day; yet I hear

Neil’s pipes very well still, and when the fire burns up I know that

Lachlan has put on a fresh peat for me. Good sons both, but I have

between my hands a son who is dearer, though I did not beget him—O my

tall and beautiful one, glad was the day when you came back after the

slaughter, but gladder this day, for you carry your head out of reach

of your foes!” He passed his hand lingeringly over the bright locks.

“And yet . . . all is not well. I do not know why, but all is not

well. There is grief on the white sand . . . grief and mourning, and a

sound of tears in the wind that blows there.”

“Indeed there is grief,” said Ewen sighing, “grief enough in my heart

at going, at leaving Alba and my father’s house. I was almost for

staying, Angus, did I take to the heather; but the brother of Mac

Dhomhnuill Duibh has been here, and he bids me go. The Chief himself

is going. But we shall return——”

“Some will return,” broke in Angus, sinking his head upon his breast.

“Aye, some will return.” Sitting there, he stared with his almost

sightless eyes into the fire.

Ewen stood looking down at him. “Shall _I_ return?” he asked after a

moment.

“I shall not see you, treasure of my heart . . . But these eyes will

see my own son come back to me, and he too grieving.”

“But I fear that Lachlan is dead, foster-father,” repeated Ewen,

kneeling on one knee beside him. “Is it not his wraith that puts the

peats on the fire for you?”

“It may be,” answered the old man. “It may well be, for when I speak

to him he never answers. Yet one night he stood here in the flesh, and

swore the holy oath on his dirk to be avenged on the man who betrayed

you to the _saighdearan dearg_. My own two eyes beheld him, my two

ears heard him, and I prayed the Blessed One to give strength to his

arm—for it was then that you were gone from us, darling of my heart,

and fast in prison.”

“But you surely do not mean, Angus,” said his foster-son, puzzled,

“that Lachlan came back here after I was captured? You mean that you

saw his _taibhs_. For in the flesh he has never returned to Slochd nan

Eun.”

“Yes, for one night he returned,” persisted the old man, “for one

night in the darkness. None saw him but I, who opened to him; and he

would not go near the house of Ardroy, nor let any see him but his

father, because he was sick with grief and shame that he had left you

on Beinn Laoigh to the will of your enemy. Ah, Mac ’ic Ailein, did I

not feel that many things would come upon you because of the man to

whom the heron led you! But that I never saw—that he would betray you

to the _saighdearan dearg_! May Lachlan soon keep his oath, and the

raven pick out the traitor’s eyes! May his bones never rest! May his

ghost——”

Ewen had sprung up, horrified. “Angus, stop! What are you saying! That

man, the English officer, did not betray me: he saved me, at great

risk to himself. But for him the redcoats would have shot me like a

dog—but for him I should not have escaped from their hands on the way

to Inverlochy. Take back that curse . . . and for Heaven’s sake tell

me that you are mistaken, that Lachlan did not swear vengeance on

_him_, but on the man who took me prisoner, a Lowland Scot named

Guthrie. That is what you mean, Angus, is it not?”

But Angus shook his grey head. “My son swore vengeance on the man who

was your guest, the English officer who found you in the bothy on

Beinn Laoigh, and delivered you up, and told the soldiers who you

were. Lachlan found this out from the talk as he skulked round the

Lowlander’s camp in the dark. Vengeance on the Lowlander he meant to

have if he could, but he swore it for certain against the other, the

English officer, because he had broken your bread. So he took oath on

the iron to rest neither day nor night till that evil deed was repaid

to him—he swore it here on the _biodag_ on which you both saw blood

that day by the lochan, and which you bade him not throw away. I think

he meant to hasten back and lie in wait for the English officer as he

returned over the pass of Corryarrick, and to shoot him with the

musket which he had stolen from one of the redcoats. But whether he

ever did it I do not know.”

Bewildered, and with a creeping sense of chill, Ewen had listened

mutely in order that he might, perhaps, contrive to disentangle the

true from the false in this fruit of the old man’s clouded brain. But

with these last words came a gleam of comfort. No, Lachlan had not

succeeded in any such attempt, thank God. And since then—for it was in

May that Windham had returned over the Corryarrick—his complete

disappearance pointed to but one conclusion, that he was gone where he

could never keep his dreadful and deluded vow. Ewen drew a long breath

of relief; yet it was rather terrible to hope that his foster-brother

was dead.

Still, he would take what precaution he could.

“If, when I am gone, Angus,” he said, “Lachlan should return here,

charge him most straightly from me that he abandon this idea of

vengeance; tell him that but for the English officer I should be lying

to-day where poor Neil is lying.—I wonder if anyone gave Neil burial,”

he added under his breath.

But Angus heard. He raised himself. “Lachlan buried him when he came

there after yourself, _Eoghain_, and found you gone, and was near

driving the dirk into his own heart, as he told me. Yes, he stayed to

bury his brother; and so when he came to the camp of the redcoats they

had taken you to Kilcumein. But all night long he prowled round the

tents, and heard the redcoats talk—he having the English very well, as

you know—and tried to get into the tent of their commander to kill him

while he slept, and could not. So he hastened to Achnacarry, and found

Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, and besought him to go with the clan and besiege

the fort of Kilcumein and take you out of it; but the Chief had not

enough men. So Lachlan came here secretly, to tell me that he had not

been able to stay the redcoats from taking you, and that Neil had been

happier than he, for he had died outside the door before they entered

to you; and all that was left for him was to slay the Englishman—and

so he vowed. But now, it seems, the Englishman is not to be slain?”

“A thousand times, no!” cried Ewen, who had listened very attentively

to this recital, which certainly sounded as if it had come originally

from Lachlan’s own lips, and some of which, as he knew from Archie,

was true. “Remember that, if Lachlan should come here.—But I cannot

understand,” he went on, frowning, “how, if Lachlan overheard so much

of the soldiers’ talk, he did not overhear the truth, and learn how

Major Windham ran in and saved me from being shot. Surely that is the

matter which must most have engaged their tongues, and in that there

was no question of delivering me up.”

“I do not know what more my son heard,” said Angus slowly, “but, when

a man hates another, does not his ear seek to hear the evil he may

have done rather than the good?”

“Yes, I suppose he did hate Major Windham,” said Ewen thoughtfully.

“That was the reason then—he wanted a pretext. . . . Indeed I must

thank God that he never got a chance of carrying out his vow. And,

from his long absence, I fear—nay, I am sure—that he has joined poor

Neil. Alas, both my brothers slain through me, and Neil’s children

fatherless!”

“But Angus _Og_ goes with you, is it not, son of my heart, that he too

may put his breast between you and your foes?”

‘That he shall never do’, thought Ewen. “Yes, he goes with me. Give me

your blessing, foster-father; and when I come again, even if your eyes

do not see me, shall your hands not touch me, as they do now?” And he

guided the old hands to his shoulders as he knelt there.

“No, I shall not touch you, treasure of my heart,” said Angus, while

his fingers roved over him. “And I cannot see whether you will ever

come back again, nor even whether you will sail over the great water

away from your foes. All is dark . . . and the wind that comes off the

sea is full of sorrow.” He put his hands on Ewen’s head. “But I bless

you, my son, with all the blessings of Bridget and Michael; the charm

Mary put round her Son, and Bridget put in her banners, and Michael

put in his shield . . . edge will not cleave thee, sea will not

drown thee. . . .” He had slid into reciting scraps of a _sian_ or

protective charm, but he did not go through to the end; his hands fell

on to his knees again, and he leant back and closed his eyes.

Ewen bent forward and threw some peats on to the fire. “Tell me one

thing, foster-father,” he said, looking at him again. “Even if I never

leave the shores of Moidart, but am slain there, or am drowned in the

sea, which is perhaps the meaning of the wind that you hear moaning,

tell me, in the days to come shall a stranger or a son of mine rule

here at Ardroy?”

Angus opened his eyes; but he was so long silent that Ewen’s hands

began to clench themselves harder and harder. Yet at last the old man

spoke.

“I have seen a child running by the brink of Loch na h-Iolaire, and

his name is your name.”

Ewen drew a long breath and rose, and, his foster-father rising too

with his assistance, he kissed him on both cheeks.

“Whatever you have need of, Angus, ask of Miss Cameron as you would of

me.”

“You are taking away from me the only thing of which I have need,”

said the old man sadly. “Nevertheless, it must be. Blessings,

blessings go with you, and carry you safely away from the white sands

to her who waits for you . . . and may my blessings draw you back

again, even though I do not greet you at your returning.”

* * * * * *

When Ewen came slowly down the path again he found himself thinking of

how he had descended it last August behind Keith Windham, nearly a

year ago. The story of Lachlan’s vow had perturbed him, but now he saw

it in a far less menacing light. Either his foster-brother’s unquiet

spirit was by this time at rest, or the whole thing was a dream of

that troubled imagination of the old seer’s, where the distinction

between the living and the dead was so tenuous.

Soon he forgot Keith Windham, Angus and everyone. Loch na h-Iolaire

lay before him under the sunset, a sunset so tranquil and so smiling

that in its sleepy brightness, which mirrored all the mountains round,

the loch seemed to hold the very heart of content. Ewen had the

sensation that his heart, too, was drowned there. And by his own will

he was saying farewell to loch and mountain, island and red crag. He

remembered how Alison had said that he would be hard put to it to

choose between her and them. Was she right?

There was a place where for a little there was no bank, but marshy

ground, and where the water came brimming into the reeds and grasses,

setting them faintly swaying. He went to it, and, stooping with

difficulty, dipped a cupped hand into the water and raised it to his

lips. Perhaps that sacramental draught would give him to see this

scene as bright and sharp in dreams, over there in the land of exile

whither, like his father, like all who had not counted the cost, he

was going.

As he drank there was a loud croak over his head, and, looking up, he

saw a heron winging its slow, strong way over the loch towards the

sunset. It might almost have been the same heron which he and Alison

had watched that evening last summer, when it had seemed to arrive

from the western coast like a herald from him who had landed there.

Now it was going towards the coast once more, as he, the outlaw, was

going, and as his Chief and his fugitive Prince would soon be going.

In a little year, between two flights of a heron seen over Loch na

h-Iolaire, the whole adventure of ruin had been begun and consummated.

Well, if one’s life remained to one it was in order to come back some

day and renew the struggle. Ewen took off his bonnet. “God save King

James!” he said firmly, and turned away from the mirrored mountains to

take the same path as the heron.

CHAPTER V

This sea-fog, Keith Windham decided, was worse than the inland mist;

thicker, more woolly, more capricious. Yesterday, for instance, one

had wakened to it, and all day it had cloaked sea and shore and the

wild, tumbled mountains of the ‘Rough Bounds’. Yet towards evening it

had suddenly lifted, and the night had been clear and moonlit. But

this morning the white veil was down again, and only now, some hours

after sunset, was it clearing away.

And this was all the more vexatious because in the silver clearness of

last night he had distinctly made out a strange vessel—a Frenchman, he

was sure—anchored somewhere off the isle of Rum. But in the day,

thanks to that muffling fog, who knew whether she was still off the

coast or no! Yet in a few minutes more, when the moon came up from

behind the mountains, he hoped to be able to see as far as her

anchorage; meanwhile, followed by his orderly, he rode slowly along

the flat shore in the direction of Morar.[1]

[1]Pronounced Mórar.

No one could accuse Major Keith Windham of neglecting Lord

Albemarle’s instructions; if anything, he went beyond them in his

ceaseless vigilance. Quartered himself at Arisaig, he thence patrolled

the coast in both directions, from Loch nan Uamh, the Adventurer’s

original landing-place, to Morar of the white sands on the other, and

had his grumbling men out in all weathers, at all hours of the day and

night, and for any kind of false alarm. But he spared himself still

less than them, taking little sleep and covering miles every day,

often on foot. If fatigue, like virtue, were its own reward, then he

had that recompense. And so far it was his only one.

But at least Keith felt tolerably certain that no fugitives had yet

made their escape from his strip of coast, no fugitives of any kind.

For, apart from using every endeavour to secure the person of the

Pretender’s son, he had been instructed to prevent all communication

with French vessels, of whom one or two might always be hovering off

the coast. These nights, therefore, that this ghostly ship was

visible, it naturally behoved him to be extraordinarily vigilant,

since it was unlikely that she was there by chance; she was probably

hanging about in hopes of taking off the prize that he was after, and

he was duly grateful to the moon last night for showing her to him.

And surely it was time for the moon to appear now! Keith put his hand

impatiently into the breast of his uniform for a little almanac which

he carried there, and, encountering a packet which he also carried,

was swept at the touch of it away for a moment from shore and ship and

moonrise.

Having left Fort Augustus for the coast so soon after Ewen Cameron had

confided to his care the letter to his wife, Keith had had no

opportunity of despatching it; moreover, why send that farewell letter

now that its writer had escaped? So not knowing where else to dispose

it, he still carried the packet with the lock of hair upon him, a

material token of the tie between him and the foe who had captured him

a year ago, and had held him in a species of bondage ever since. The

thought had never formulated itself so definitely until to-night, but,

by gad, it was true!

He had been hard put to it to conceal his exultation when, just before

setting out from Fort Augustus for Moidart, he had heard of Ewen’s

escape and disappearance; and this news had, ever since, been a source

of the most unfeigned pleasure to him. His sacrifices had not been in

vain; they had been well worth the making. He thought of Ewen back at

Ardroy—_his_ doing, that! Ewen would recognise it, too. He had not

failed in everything!

And now he pictured Ewen lying hid in the mountains round Loch na

h-Iolaire until the worst of the storm had blown over. He could not

imagine him leaving Ardroy unless he were obliged, and surely, not

being on the list of proscribed, he could contrive to elude capture in

those wilds. His wife would doubtless get news of him somehow, return

to Scotland and visit him secretly; and in the end, when the price had

been paid by those who had not had his good fortune, and there was for

the others an amnesty or some act of indemnity, he might be able to

occupy his home again in peace. It had so happened, Keith believed,

after the Fifteen.

Was then his hope that they should meet again some day so impossible

of fulfilment now? It was true that if he himself succeeded in

capturing the ‘Prince’, Ewen would not readily take his hand. However,

no need to face that dilemma yet. But, in a sense, every day that ‘the

young gentleman’ was still in Scotland brought nearer the hour when he

must try to leave it, and if Lord Albemarle were right in supposing

that he would make for this stretch of coast, already familiar to him,

he must soon approach the snare laid for him there.

And the presence of that unknown ship last night seemed to indicate

that the actual moment of that approach was very near. Ah! now at last

he would be able to look for her, for the moon had pushed up over the

craggy eastern summits at his back into a cloudless sky.

Keith gave his horse to his orderly, and going along a low spur of

rock gazed steadily out to sea. The fantastic peaks of Rum were

even more unreal in the moonlight than in the day, and the isle of

Eigg of an even odder shape. At first he thought that the stranger

was gone, and then all at once he saw her, a ghostly bark on the

rippling silver. She seemed to be off Morar, and, since some of her

square-sails appeared to be set, he doubted if she were at anchor; but

she was certainly not sailing away.

Keith had to make a rapid decision. At Morar he had an officer and

thirty men stationed. That, surely, was enough. He could, if he

wished, send back to Arisaig and bring up some more from there; yet

should Arisaig and not Morar prove after all the destined spot, and he

had denuded Arisaig of watchers, he would be undone. Loch nan Uamh,

the original landing-place, was also provided with a quota, but the

distance did not admit of bringing any soldiers thence to-night.

He returned to his orderly and mounted his horse. “I shall ride on to

Morar. Go back to Arisaig and tell the Captain so; desire him to keep

a close watch on the shore, for the Frenchman is lying off the coast

again and nearer in than last night.”

The man saluted and rode off along the rough sandy road, and Keith was

left alone with the ship, the moonlight and his own excited thoughts.

Not that he stayed to contemplate any of these; he pushed on at a

smart trot for Morar, turning over the question of a boat, without

which no fugitive could, naturally, reach the ship. He had temporarily

confiscated every boat on this stretch of coast except such as were

genuinely needed for fishing, to which he had granted a permit. Even

of the owners of these he was not sure, for they were all MacDonald of

Clanranald’s dependents. It would no doubt have been better to have

burnt every one of their craft. Yet even then a vessel could easily

despatch one of her own, at the risk of being fired on.

Keith took a last look at the burnished and gently moving expanse of

which he must now lose sight, for here the track turned sharply to the

right to run round the deep little inlet of Morar. But there was no

visible speck upon the sea which might be a boat.

And before long he was approaching the shoreward end of the inlet on

the rough sandy track of a road, bordered by dense undergrowth, which

ran round, a little higher than the level shore, under trees of no

great stature. The tide was coming in fast over the dazzling white

sands of Morar, snow under the moon, and drowning the little river

which tumbled from the wild, deep freshwater loch behind, where Lord

Lovat had sought his last refuge. It was so intensely quiet, and the

tide was slipping in so noiselessly, that the roar of the double falls

was carried very clearly over the water. Reining up, Major Windham

listened for some sign of the patrol which should be going its rounds

from the quarters on the other side of the bay, across the river; and,

to his displeasure, could detect none. This on a night when a French

ship was off the coast! The men must be got out at once.

He touched his horse with the spur and then pulled up again. What was

that dark shape down there on the sand? A small boat, and so near the

incoming tide that in another quarter of an hour or so it would be

afloat. No fisherman could have been so careless as to leave it there,

unless it were secured in some way. Brimful of suspicion as Keith was

to-night, he had jumped off his horse in an instant, and thrown the

bridle over a convenient branch. He knew better than to take the

animal plunging into the soft, dry sand of the slope; he was almost up

to his ankles himself before he was down.

Yes, he was right; the boat was there for no purpose authorised by

him. It had only recently been brought there, for it was not made fast

to anything. There were oars in it, but no nets or fishing-lines. It

needed no more evidence to convince him that the little craft had been

placed there in readiness to take off some person or persons to-night

to the strange vessel.

The most lively anger seized Major Windham. What was that damned

patrol about not to have discovered this? He must certainly gallop

round to their quarters without a moment’s delay and turn out the lazy

brutes. His pulses leaping, he plunged up the yielding sand to the

tree-shadowed road, turned to throw himself into the saddle—and stood

staring like a man bewitched. His horse was gone . . . gone as if

swallowed up!

“It is not possible!” said Keith to himself. “I have not been down

there two minutes!”

But, evidently, it was possible. Black though the shadows were under

the trees, he could tell that they held nothing so solid as a horse.

He looked up and down the empty white track, streaked and dappled with

those hard shadows; he examined the branch. It was not broken, and the

beast could certainly not have twitched his bridle off it. Someone had

been watching him, then, and human hands had conveyed the animal

away—whither?

Furious, he began to run back along the road; its sandy surface was

already too much churned up to show any hoof-marks. He did not

remember passing any crofts as he came. Though a man could hide in the

thick bushes on the seaward side, a horse could not be concealed in

them. He turned abruptly and went back again, remembering that there

was a dwelling or two farther along, between him and the river. If

some of these MacDonalds had stolen his horse and hidden it there, by

Heaven it should be the worse for them!

What, however, was of paramount importance now was not the finding of

his horse, but the beating up of the patrol with the least possible

delay. Yet by the time that he, on foot, could get round to their

quarters, or at least by the time that the soldiers arrived on the

spot, the boat would probably have put out with her freight. That was

why his horse had been spirited away by the ambushed spy in league

with to-night’s fugitives.

Keith set his jaw and cursed himself most fervently for having come

alone. The extraordinarily skilful way in which his horse had been

made to vanish, joined to the inexplicable lateness of the patrol,

only confirmed his conviction that it was the Pretender’s son for whom

that boat was waiting. Then, at all costs, he must delay its putting

out. . . . Could he disable it in some way? Not easily, without tools,

but he would do his best.

Once more he plunged down the sandy slope. But the boat, though old,

was solid. A knife, a sword, could make no impression on those

timbers. Keith had a moment of angry despair; then he remembered

having seen in one of these craft the other day a plugged hole,

designed to allow water to drain out if necessary. Suppose this boat

had one!

Getting in he peered and felt over the bottom, and at last, to his

joy, his fingers encountered, toward the after end, a rough peg of

wood sticking up like a cork. After some tugging he succeeded in

wrenching it out, and slipped it into his pocket. He could get his

thumb through the hole he had thus unplugged. He leapt out and ran

towards the slope again in triumph. One of two things would happen

now: either the Pretender’s son and his companions would discover what

had been done, and a new plug would have to be fashioned to fit the

hole, which would delay them not a little, or—what seemed to Keith

more probable—they would launch the boat and pull off without

examining it, on which it would almost immediately fill and sink, and

its occupants be forced to struggle back at a disadvantage to a shore

by that time, it was to be hoped, straitly guarded.

Keith was half-way up the slope again when he stopped abruptly, for in

the stillness he had distinctly heard voices—low voices at no very

great distance. The patrol at last, perhaps? He did not think so. The

speakers seemed to be coming along the tree-shadowed road between him

and the end of the inlet, the very road along which he was preparing

to hasten. A party of Jacobite fugitives would most certainly not

allow a soldier in uniform to run past them if they could help it. Was

the prize going to slip through his fingers after all?

No, hardly, in that unseaworthy boat! But he must perforce let the

owners of these cautious voices pass him and get on to the beach

before he started for the quarters of the patrol. Had the tide not

already been so high he could have cut across the sands and swum or

waded the river, but that was out of the question now; he could only

go by the road. He looked round for shelter, and slipped cautiously

into a high bush of hazel which itself stood in a patch of shadow so

deep that he felt sure of being invisible.

Not only voices, but muffled footsteps were audible by this time, and

presently a man—a fisherman, he thought—ran down the slope towards the

boat. He had scarcely passed before it came to Keith with a gust of

despair that he had set himself an almost impossible task. Now that

the fugitives were already here, before he had even started, he could

never get round and fetch the patrol in time, for if the Jacobites

were left to embark undisturbed they would discover and repair the

loss of the plug—that man down there was probably discovering it

now. But there was another way of rousing his dilatory men, for,

unbelievably negligent as they were this evening, they could not fail

to hear a pistol-shot. That would bring them to the place in double

quick time; and although to fire would naturally alarm the fugitives,

and make them embark with all the greater despatch, there was gain in

that, since—if it were not already done—they would pretty certainly

not discover the loss of the plug. Keith drew the loaded pistol from

his belt, but he put it at half-cock only, because he must wait until

the party was well past him before firing, seeing that he was only one

against he knew not how many.

Centuries seemed to pass while he waited, and considered, only to

dismiss, the idea of deliberately shooting at the Pretender’s son with

a view to disabling him; for he could not in this light be sure of

stopping short at that. His heart beat faster than ever it had done at

Fontenoy or Culloden Moor, for this business was fraught for him with

issues more momentous than any battle. What happened in the next

quarter of an hour would decide his whole future—and no fighting had

done that for him.

A sudden fall of sand behind him startled him for a moment, but he

dared not turn his head to look what had caused it, for three . . .

four dim shapes were coming at last out of the shadows above and

beyond him, and beginning to descend the slope. The tallest was

limping badly; and he was also the principal figure, for the others,

he could see now, were only gillies, and one was a boy. Had the

Pretender’s son gone lame in his wanderings? It was quite possible.

Or . . . or . . . God of Heaven! The sand seemed to swim under Keith’s

feet. It was not Charles Edward Stuart, it was Ewen Cameron who had

walked into his trap, Ewen Cameron who had just limped down past him

on the arm of one of the gillies . . . Ewen, his friend, whom he had

thought safely hidden in Lochaber!

The bitter disappointment and the disastrous surprise of it overwhelmed

Keith, and he stood there stupefied. Once more he had come on a fool’s

errand—not the first since he had watched the coast. This was

Edinburgh over again . . . but a much more sinister repetition of it.

For the net which he had spread for the arch-rebel was not empty;

it held a lesser but indubitable prize—a chieftain, Lochiel’s kinsman.

With a wild sense of being in a net himself he realised the cogency of

the arguments which he had used against Guthrie; if Ewen Cameron was

too important to shoot out of hand, he was also too important to let

go. . . . And he saw Ewen sent back to the scaffold after all, and by

him: tied on a horse again, by his hands. . . . Or, since the boat was

holed, and Ewen was lame, he would drown, perhaps, when it sank . . .

the men were already pushing it nearer to the water. . . .

Stabbed to alarm by that thought he stepped almost unconsciously out

of his sheltering hazel bush, and stood at the edge of the shadow with

some vague notion of shouting to warn Ardroy. . . . No, what he had to

do was to fire, and bring the patrol here quickly and arrest him. He

was to stop all communication, to allow no one to leave . . . much

less a chieftain and a kinsman of Lochiel’s. . . .

“God help me!” he said aloud, and put a hand over his eyes.

There was a sudden crackling of broken stems, a fierce exclamation

behind him, something glittered out of the shadow, and Keith swung

quickly round just as the man who had been tracking him for over a

week sprang down upon him. And so he did not receive Lachlan

MacMartin’s dirk between the shoulders, as Lachlan had intended, but

in his breast.

* * * * * *

Leaning on young Angus’s shoulder by the boat, Ewen watched the Morar

fisherman hastily fitting in the spare plug which he had brought with

him (because, as he had explained, the redcoats had played the trick

of removing one from Ranald Mor’s boat the other night). The fates had

indeed been kind—no patrol this evening—if they were quick they would

get out of the bay without a single shot being fired at them.

The boat was being pushed down to the water when all at once the lad

Angus gave a little cry, clutched at his master’s arm and pointed up

the beach. Ewen, turning his head, saw two men locked together on the

sandy slope, saw one drop and roll over, had a dim impression that he

wore uniform, and a much clearer one of a wild figure running over the

sand towards him with a naked dirk in his hand. Young Angus tried to

throw himself in front of his chieftain, but the grip on his shoulder,

suddenly tightening, stayed him. Moreover in another moment the

spectre with the dirk was on his knees at Ewen’s feet, holding up the

weapon, and, half sobbing with excitement, was pouring out a flood of

words as hot as lava:

“Mac ’ic Ailein, I have kept my vow, I have avenged you—and saved you,

too, though I knew not till the _biodag_ was bare in my hand that it

was you who had passed. The Englishman would have betrayed you a

second time . . . but he lies there and will not rise again. Oh, make

haste, make haste to embark, for there are redcoats at Morar!”

Despite his disfigured face, Ewen had recognised him at once, and the

meaning of his words, for all their tumbling haste, was clearer

still—horribly clear. Frozen, he tried to beat that meaning from him.

“God’s curse on you, what have you done!” he exclaimed, seizing his

foster-brother by the shoulder. “If you have really harmed Major

Windham——” But the moon showed him the bloody dirk. With a shudder he

thrust the murderer violently from him, and, deaf to young Angus’s

shrill remonstrances, started to run haltingly back towards the slope.

Surely, surely Lachlan had mistaken his victim, for what could Windham

be doing here at Morar?

But it _was_ Keith Windham. He was lying on his side, full in the

moonlight, almost at the bottom of the slope, as if he had been thrown

there . . . stunned, perhaps, thought Ewen wildly, with a recollection

of how he himself had lain on Culloden Moor—though how a dirk could

stun him God alone knew. Half-way down the slope lay a pistol. Calling

his name he knelt and took him into his arms. Oh, no hope; it was a

matter of minutes! Lachlan had used that long blade too well.

As he was lifted, Keith came back from a moment’s dream of a shore

with long green rollers roaring loudly under a blood-red sunset, to

pain and difficult breath and Ewen’s arms. He knew him.

“I . . . I did not have to . . . fire,” he gasped; but Ewen could not

realise what lay behind the words. “Go . . . go before . . . they come

from Morar . . .”

“My God, my God!” exclaimed Ewen, trying to staunch the blood which

that spotless sand was already drinking. “Oh, Windham, if I could only

have warned you—if I had known that _he_ was here . . .”

“There is a hole . . . in the boat,” said Keith with increasing

difficulty. “I . . . took out . . . the plug.”

“They have put in another—one they had in readiness. Windham, for

God’s sake try to——”

Try to do what? “Your letter . . . is still . . . I had no . . .”

“Duncan—Angus!” called Ewen desperately, “have none of you any

brandy?”

But his men, who had run up, were intent on another matter. “Come, the

boat is ready—and I think the redcoats are stirring over the river,”

said Duncan Cameron, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Come, Mac ’ic

Ailein, come!”

Ewen answered him in Gaelic. “I shall not stir while he breathes.”

But the dying man seemed to understand. “Go . . . Ardroy! . . . I

implore you!” He began to fumble at one hand with the other, and

managed to pull off the signet-ring which he always wore, and to hold

it out a little way. Ewen took it, not knowing what he did.

“I was watching for . . . the Pretender’s son,” went on Keith, lower

and lower; “then I saw . . . it was you . . . and I had to try . . .

to decide . . . duty . . . no, it is just as well . . . I could not

. . . have borne . . .” He sighed and shut his eyes.

Ewen held him closer, still trying to stay the flood, and trying, as

he knew, in vain. Yet Keith only seemed to be going to sleep. He was

murmuring something now which Ewen had to stoop his head close to

hear. And then all that he could catch were the words, “. . . desire

. . . friends . . . always . . .”

“Yes, yes, always,” he answered in anguish. “Always!” But there would

be no ‘always’. “Oh, if only you had not been in that madman’s path!”

But that, at least, was not fortuitous. Yet to Keith the assassin had

only been some man of Morar in league with the embarkation.

He reopened his eyes. “Your hand . . .” Ewen gave it to him, and saw a

little smile in the moonlight. “Have you been . . . burying any more

cannon? . . . I always liked you,” said his enemy clearly; and a

moment after, with his hand in Ewen’s, was gone to that place ‘where

an enemy never entered and from whence a friend never went away’.

Ewen laid him back on the patched sand, and, getting to his feet,

stood looking down at the man to whom the heron had brought him—foe,

enigma, saviour, victim of a terrible mistake. And friend—yes; but it

was too late for friendship now. It had already been too late at their

last meeting—which had not been the last after all—when he himself, as

he thought, was standing on the threshold of death. But it was Keith

Windham who had gone through that door, not he. . . . Had he known

that he was dying? . . . Every word of the few he had spoken had been

about _him_ . . .

Then through the haze of shock and grief penetrated the sound of a

distant shot, and he remembered that there were other lives than his

at stake.

“Go—go and hide yourselves!” he commanded. But the two Camerons shook

their heads. “Not until you are in the boat, Mac ’ic Ailein!”

“I will come, then,” said Ewen. He would rather have stayed, now; but

he knelt again and kissed Keith’s forehead. And that it should not be

found on him, an equivocal possession, perhaps, he drew out his own

letter to Alison and slipped it, all sodden, into his pocket. Then he

suffered the gillies to hurry him down to the boat, for already it was

clear that the soldiers were crossing the river, and some twenty yards

away a couple of ill-aimed bullets raised spirts of sand.

By the boat was waiting Lachlan, Lachlan who, directly he was

recovered from the result of his first attempt by Loch Tarff, had once

more set about the fulfilment of his vow, who had hung about Inverness

through July and found no opportunity, lost track of his quarry when

he went to Fort Augustus, picked it up again in Moidart, and had

hardly let him out of his sight since. It was he who had removed the

horse.

“Ewen, my brother, forgive me—forgive me!”

Ewen turned on him a terrible face. “Never! You have killed my

friend!”

“Never? Then as well have my life, too!” cried Lachlan. The reddened

dirk which a year ago he had been moved to fling into the loch spun

glinting through the moonlight and splashed into the sea, and its

owner, turning, ran headlong towards the road and the oncoming patrol.

* * * * * *

Soon the noise of shots and shouting could be heard no longer, only

the creak of the oars in the rough rowlocks as young Angus and the

fisherman pulled hard over the moonlit sea towards the French

privateer. But Ewen sat in the sternsheets of the little boat with his

face buried in his hands, and cared not that he went to safety.

The day would come when, pondering over his memories of those broken

sentences, recalling the pistol lying on the sand, he would arrive at

a glimpse of the truth, and guess that Lachlan’s blade had saved Keith

Windham from a decision too cruel, and that perhaps he had been glad

to be so saved. But he would never realise—how should he?—that the

tide which for a year had been carrying the Englishman, half ignorant,

sometimes resisting, among unlooked-for reefs and breakers, away from

the safe, the stagnant Dead Sea of his choice, had borne him to no

unfitting anchorage in this swift death, devoid of thoughts of self.

For Ewen saw Keith only as a loser through meeting him—a loser every

way—whereas in truth he had been a gainer.

A hail came over the water; they were approaching the privateer. He

tried to rouse himself from his stupor of grief and regret, and from

the self-reproach which stabbed scarcely less deep because it was

causeless. And as he did so the kind moonlight showed him his friend’s

ring upon his finger.

EPILOGUE

HARBOUR OF GRACE

EPILOGUE

HARBOUR OF GRACE

The fresh wind scouring the mouth of the Seine kept the fishing boats

from Honfleur lying well over, and at the foot of the cliffs of Ste.

Adresse the waves were shivering themselves in a joyful welter of

foam. Long pennants of cloud streamed and vanished in the blue; all

the shipping rocked at anchor, and Alison Cameron, crossing the

market-place of Havre-de-Grâce with a basket on her arm, had to

clutch at her black cloak lest it should be whirled off her shoulders.

She had reached the French port in time to see her father alive; in

time, indeed, to give him nearly six weeks of the most devoted

care. But in May he died peacefully, ignorant of the catastrophe which

had torn for ever the webs that he had helped to weave. Since he was

ill it had not been very difficult to keep from him the news of the

downfall of Jacobite hopes and the fugitive state of the Prince, and

to invent reasons for the absence of any news of Ewen Cameron. Of

Hector’s capture he had known before leaving Scotland. It was the

thought of Ewen, to whose care he knew Alison now definitely

committed, which had made his last hours easy. “Your man will never

let you want for aught, my lass,” he had said, near the end; and

Alison had had the strength to keep from him the anxiety which racked

her.

And so one morning she found herself left alone in the lodging where

her father had lain ill, a little house belonging to a youthful married

couple, kind and sympathetic enough, and glad that the Scottish lady

should stay on there, waiting for the husband who, Madame Grévérend

was privately sure, would never come now, having without doubt been

slain in the deserts of l’Ecosse. And when, later on, a gossip would

ask her why the young Scottish lady did not voyage back to those

deserts to find her husband, or to procure news of him, or at least to

have the solace of weeping on his tomb, Madame Grévérend would explain

that the poor creature was so persuaded that her husband would in the

end come to Havre-de-Grâce seeking her that she feared to miss him if

she went away.

“But she will wait for ever, one fears,” Madame Grévérend would

finish; “and she left without even a good-for-nothing like this to

plague her!” And here she would snatch up her fat, curly-headed

Philippe and kiss him. “Yes, she has lost everything, poor lady, and

she only five months married.”

But one has never lost everything. Alison still had that possession

which Madame Grévérend could not understand, the certitude which had

come to her in the cabin of the brig at Inverness. Sooner or later

Ewen would come for her.

Yet it was hard, sometimes, to cling to that belief when the weeks

went by and there was not the slightest crumb of authentic news of

him. All she had was negative; for there was in Havre-de-Grâce another

Scots refugee, a Mr. Buchanan who had served in the Duke of Perth’s

regiment, and he had convinced her, on evidence that seemed conclusive

to a mind which only longed to believe it, that Ardroy had not been

among the slain or massacred in the battle. Where, then, was he?

Her marketing finished, Alison took her way homewards through the

bright windy weather, and came, down the little Rue des Vergers, to

the small, sanded courtyard with the pear-tree where she dwelt above

M. and Mme Grévérend. In that sunlit space there was at the moment

only the grey cat curled in a corner, a pair of pigeons promenading,

and Philippe, seated rosily upon his mother’s doorstep, deliberately

pouring sand on to his curls, as if in penitence for some misdeed, by

means of an old teacup.

“My bairnie, don’t do that!” called Alison, half laughing, half

horrified. “Fi donc, quelle saleté!”

Philippe gave her a most roguish glance, scooped up and emptied upon

his locks a sort of final bumper cupful, and then rose uncertainly to

his fat legs and came to her, lifting a beaming, smeared face for a

kiss. Alison wiped his countenance and gave him one.

“Are you all alone, Philippe?”

The child intimated that he was, and then entered unasked upon a long

explanation of the complicated reasons which had led him to make a

garden of his head.

“I think you had better come up to my room with me and let me brush

out that horrid sand, my pretty,” said Alison, wondering what would

happen if she held him upside down and shook him. “Veux-tu bien?”

He nodded, and Alison held out a hand. But neither of his were

available, since one still clutched his teacup, and the other was

tightly closed over some small object.

“What have you there?” asked the girl. It might so well be a beetle or

a worm.

Philippe was coy about revealing his treasure, though he evidently

desired to display it. But at last he opened a fat fist. “De

l’argent!” he said exultingly, for, though immature, he was a true

Norman. And indeed there lay in his pink palm a small coin.

There was something about that piece of money which caused Alison’s

heart to leap suddenly into her throat; and, to the infant’s dismay,

she snatched his treasure from his hand and looked at it closely. It

was no coin of France: no coin of any realm at all, in fact, but a

Scottish trade token of the town of Inverness.

“Who gave you this, Philippe?” she asked, looking almost frightened.

For Mr. Buchanan, who might otherwise have been the donor, had gone

away three days ago.

But her plundered companion was plainly making preparations for one of

the most resonant howls of his short life. “There, there, darling,”

said Alison hastily, going down on her knees and restoring him his

token. “I am not going to take it away. But who in God’s name gave it

to you?”

It required time for the little boy to master his emotion, but when

this was done he embarked upon another tortuous narrative, from which

a close attention could gather that a strange gentleman had come and

asked for Madame Cameron and had presented him with this earnest of

his regard.

“And where is the gentleman now?” asked Alison breathlessly.

Philippe turned his rotund person and pointed up the stairs with the

teacup.

Next moment he was alone in the middle of the courtyard, alone with

the pigeons and the cat and Madame Cameron’s abandoned basket, and

Alison was flying up those stairs to her room. But half-way she

stopped, with her hand to her heart, for her own light footfalls had

not prevented her from hearing those others going impatiently to and

fro above her—unknown steps, belonging to a man with a halt in his

walk.

No, of course she had been too sanguine. It was not Ewen. The tumult

of her heart died down again to the old sad patience. Yet it must be

someone from Scotland, someone from the Highlands, too, for the token

proved that; and if he asked for her it was because he came with news

of Ewen, or of Hector.

And perhaps because at the bottom of her heart she trembled to think

what that news might be, Alison turned and went down the stairs again

and picked up her basket from the courtyard (and none too soon, for it

had already riveted Philippe’s attention as well as the cat’s) and

went a great deal more soberly up the stairs once more, and opened the

door.

* * * * * *

It was she who recovered speech the first, but scarcely coherent

speech.

“Oh, Ewen, darling of my heart . . . you look so thin, so ill! And why

are you lame? I thought it could not be you. . . . I knew you would

come. . . . Sit down, for pity’s sake!” She dragged him to a chair.

“Are you hungry—when did you eat? I must get you——”

But she was powerless in the arm he put about her, though the arm was

trembling a little, and she fell on her knees beside the chair and

cried into his coat; and then Ewen dried her eyes by a method which he

had just discovered.

“I am neither thin, nor ill, nor lame, nor hungry, and I have all I

want. Open your eyes and look at me like that again!”

His dear voice, at least, was not altered. “I shall tell Madame

Grévérend, when she returns, to make ready——”

“How concerned are women with food! I have no wish to eat at present;

I only want to be sure that I am here,” said her husband, half

laughing. “If you go away to give orders, _m’eudail_, I may perhaps

fancy I am back on the sea again, or . . . back on the sea,” he

repeated rather hastily, turning his head a moment aside.

“You _are_ here,” said Alison earnestly, as if he really needed the

assurance; “you are here, Ewen, heart’s dearest, and I always knew

that you would come!”

* * * * * *

Long, long afterwards, that is to say, when Philippe and the pigeons

had gone to roost, and the windy day had flamed itself out in a royal

sunset, Alison, in her husband’s arms, where she had been clasped for

fully five minutes without stirring or speaking, fingered the back of

his hand and said half-dreamily, “How came you by this strange ring,

dear heart?”

Ewen moved abruptly; something like a shudder ran through him. “I will

tell you some time,” he said hesitatingly, “but not yet. Oh, Alison, I

cannot speak of it yet. . . .”

Some dreadful remembrance of the defeat, she thought pitifully, then,

seeing how pale he had become, slipped off his knee, and, bending over

him, drew his head with a lovely gesture to her breast. And Ewen hid

his eyes there like a child.

But leagues on leagues away the tide from the Outer Isles was

beginning to fill the silver cup of Morar, and he stood there once

again, helpless and heartbroken, looking down at Lachlan’s handiwork.

Not even Alison, whose arms held him close, whose cheek was pressed on

his hair, not even Alison could stand with him in that place, where

Keith Windham had come to the last of their meetings, and the bitter

grief of Angus’s prediction had reached its real fulfilment.

Yet he must not sadden Alison on this, of all days. It was Keith who

had given it to him.

He lifted his head from its resting-place. “_My dearest on earth,_” he

said, but not as he had said it a year ago, for the gift he asked

meant even more now,—“_my dearest on earth, give me your kiss!_”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Printing errors have been corrected as follows:

Title page: single quote changed to double before _But the heron’s

flight_

p. 57: _replied Keith. “I did._ changed to _replied Keith, “I did._

p. 88: _your commanding officer’s ’ wisdom_ changed to _your

commanding officer’s wisdom_

p. 108: single quotation mark changed to double before _like the

rest of the ladies_

p. 121: comma added after _the back of the Canongate_

p. 155: _he said gleefully. “’Tis a good word_ changed to _he said

gleefully, “’Tis a good word_

p. 165: _nor had be broached the project_ changed to _nor had

he broached the project_

p. 194: _hever lost himself_ changed to _never lost himself_

p. 223: _said Keith,” and then_ changed to _said Keith, “and then_

p. 375: _lous d’or_ changed to _louis d’or_; _like-will-of-the-wisps_

changed to _like will-of-the-wisps_

Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors are preserved.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the

public domain.