combined, and his eyes fixed upon her as if they would never leave. But
Kelpie did not see this, for her own eyes were fixed defiantly upon
Argyll, waiting.
She had not long to wait. “The witch!” he whispered, and his eyes blazed
in pale fury. “And in her Ladyship’s stolen clothes!” he added with new
outrage.
Alex laughed, and his laughter was delighted, exasperated—and somehow
sad. He moved to stand beside Kelpie. “Och,” he said, “and isn’t
it just the way you will be overdoing things? I would have had you
remain unprincipled and live. I would have called you liar and saved
you yet. But you must appear in Lady Argyll’s stolen clothes and seal
your doom—and knowing it!” His eyes were stricken, exultant, tender;
but Kelpie only looked at him dazedly. All of it was beyond her
understanding, except that she had doomed herself irrevocably by her own
madness, and the thing inside said it must be so.
Argyll was breathing hard, taut with hatred; his menace was overwhelming.
“Shoot the man now,” he said between his teeth, “but bind the witch
and take her aboard the galley. I will try her and burn her when this
business with Montrose is over.”
And then all Lochaber seemed to explode at once. Shots echoed from Ben
Nevis just as Alex went quite berserk. His face was as she had seen it
in the witch-hunting town, jutted with sharp angles of rage. He hurled
himself against Argyll, the full force of his hard shoulder driving into
the Campbell’s midsection; and down they went. The others rushed forward
with yells, and from the castle came more yells and a new volley of shots.
Hamish was pulling his chief from under Alex and shouting, “The battle
has started!” Someone kicked Alex brutally in the head, and Kelpie flung
herself at the culprit, using both teeth and nails, and was herself
flung to the ground, while still another voice shouted, “Get you to the
galley, Mac Cailein Mor!”
Kelpie, dazed from her fall, saw Argyll, staggering and winded, clutching
his shoulder and croaking contradictions. “Shoot them! Take the witch on
board! I’ll burn them both! Shoot them at once!” Alex struggled up and
tried to shield Kelpie with his own body as someone raised a gun. She
heard a wild shriek of pipes from the direction of Ben Nevis, more shots
and more yells. And then came a blaze of pain, and nothing at all.
* * * * *
She lay for a while without opening her eyes, trying to decide whether
she was really alive. It seemed quite unlikely. But on the other hand,
except for a sore pain in her head and a hot, smoldering one in her body,
this did not seem like Hell. For one thing, she seemed to be in a soft
bed with sheets, and surely Hell would never provide such things. She
decided to open her eyes and find out.
Opening her eyes did not help much, but only added to her confusion. For
was not this one of the bedrooms at Glenfern, which she had helped often
enough to clean? And whatever could she be doing here at all? Clearly she
could not be here—but how was it that a stout and smiling Marsali seemed
to be feeding her beef broth? Och, it was too much effort to worry about
it! She swallowed the broth, closed her eyes, and slept again. The next
time she awoke, it was to morning light, and she felt much stronger.
There was a small movement to the left of the bed, and Kelpie slowly
focused her eyes toward it. A flower face lighted and moved closer. “Och,
my Kelpie!” whispered Wee Mairi, radiant. “You’ve come away back to me!”
Hot tears stung Kelpie’s eyes. She closed them and moved her left hand
gropingly and felt a small warm one creep into it. Och, the wee love! The
tears slid down her cheeks.
There was more movement presently, and then Ronald’s voice asking with
deep interest, “Is she awake yet?”
“Of course she is, or how else could she be weeping?” demanded his twin
scornfully. “Kelpie, is it hurting you are? Can you open your eyes,
Kelpie? Fiona, will you run to tell Mother she is awake?”
Kelpie opened her eyes mistily and saw the rosy, concerned faces over
her. Fiona, crossing herself as usual, appeared beyond them and then
disappeared again. Donald vanished too, while Kelpie—still gripping Wee
Mairi’s hand—closed her eyes again and tried to sort out the confusion of
her thoughts. Presently there was a slight denting of the bed near her
elbow.
“I’ve brought Dubh,” announced Donald cheerfully. “We decided before that
you were not a witch, but now Alex says you are, but a nice one; and I
was thinking, if Dubh is still liking you, perhaps Alex is right.”
Kelpie wrinkled her forehead as Dubh spat nastily at Donald. Alex? Alex
at Glenfern? Dubh regarded her with slitted yellow eyes and then draped
himself in a scraggy, purring fur piece across her shoulder. “Alex?” said
Kelpie aloud, puzzled.
“Ou, aye, and he sore hurt, too.” Ronald nodded. “But he is better now.
Kelpie, when you are well, will you tell us about your adventures? Why
were you leaving Glenfern at all, Kelpie? Do you _like_ your Grannie
Witchie, or was it that you were afraid of her, as Father said? Is she
truly a witch, Kelpie? Where is she the now? Are you going to stay with
us? Wee Mairi says you love her. Do you, Kelpie?”
The small hand in Kelpie’s stirred. “Aye so!” piped Wee Mairi
indignantly. “My Kelpie _does_ love me!”
“Aye,” confessed Kelpie, her defenses quite down. “But,” she went on
incredulously, “is Alex truly here? At Glenfern?”
“Of course,” said Donald. “He has been telling us of his adventures too,
and how Montrose was sending him on a special important mission to talk
to clan chiefs and see if Lochiel would join the army, and all; and that
was why he was alone and caught by the Campbells. But we do not know why
you were there at all.” He paused, head tilted hopefully to one side.
But Kelpie, more and more bewildered, was in no state to tell stories.
“Alex?” she repeated stupidly.
“Himself.” It was his voice, with something new in the laughter of it.
Suddenly the room was full of people. Eithne and Lady Glenfern smiled at
her from the foot of the bed, and Alex himself was coming slowly across
the floor. There was a bandage round his head, and he leaned heavily on
Glenfern and Ian.
Och, it made no sense at all! Kelpie closed her eyes again and moved her
head fretfully.
“Alex has told us what you did,” said Glenfern. “It is at such times that
a person’s true character comes forth.” He smiled down at her warmly.
“Let you know now, Kelpie, that you will always have a home at Glenfern,
and our love; and for saving Alex we owe you a debt that we can never
pay.”
Kelpie’s puzzlement deepened. _Dhé!_ It must be that Ian had never known
that it was Alex who struck him down! In the confusion, perhaps herself
was the only one who had really seen it. It must be so, for no other
explanation made sense. Perhaps Archie hadn’t known either, and she had
merely read meanings into his words that evening in the camp. Her blue
eyes flew open and met Alex’s quizzical ones. What an actor he was, then,
behaving as if nothing had happened! But _she_ could tell them what had
happened, and Alex knew it, and yet here he stood quite at ease.
They stared at each other for a long, searching moment, and a look of
baffled frustration came to both faces. And then Kelpie closed her eyes
once again, too weak to cope with such a puzzle or even to decide
whether or no she should tell Ian what his foster brother had done.
“_Dhé_, and she’ll be confused enough, poor water witch!” The old teasing
note in Alex’s voice overlaid a new tenderness. “Just be settling me in a
chair by the bed, and then away out, the rest of you, whilst I tell her
the end of our adventure.”
Presently the room was silent again, except for Dubh’s purring. Conscious
of a presence beside the bed, Kelpie opened a cautious eye again after a
minute and found the hazel eyes fixed on her broodingly.
“Och so,” he murmured, shaking his head sadly. “I had thought my cousin
Cecily unpredictable and you an open book, with your devious wiles, and
so candidly unprincipled. And then—you put a spell on me, with the ringed
witch-eyes in your head. You baffled me, you haunted me, you eluded me,
leaving me forever two jumps behind and never knowing what to think at
all. Aye me, I suppose I shall never understand you at all, and that is
my fate and destiny.”
Kelpie slowly progressed from bewilderment to indignation. Only the last
words had any meaning whatever, and that was little enough.
“_I!_” she fumed, causing Dubh to dig in a protesting claw. “It is you
who make no sense at all, and I never knowing what to think!”
Alex grinned ruefully. “At least we are even, then. Are you wanting to
know what has happened since Argyll’s men put bullets in the both of us?”
Kelpie nodded.
“Well, then, were you hearing the start of the battle, just as our own
wee war was getting exciting?” asked Alex. She nodded again, content to
lie still and listen. “Well,” he went on, “it was the battle that saved
us, for Argyll rushed off to the safety of his galley, and his men left
us for dead—and very nearly right they were. And so we lay unknowing
while Montrose won a great victory over an army twice his size. It was
another Tippermuir, and this time the fighting force of the Campbells
is crippled for years to come. Some say as many as fifteen hundred were
slain, and the rest taken prisoner or chased back to their own country,
and our men on their heels all the way to Lundavra. I think it will be
another generation, Kelpie, before Clan Campbell can come raiding other
clans again—and a good blow for the King’s cause as well,” he added,
almost as an afterthought. Loyal to the king though he was, Alex was a
Highlander, and Highland affairs were his closest concern.
Kelpie found herself wondering suddenly about Morag Mhor and Rab, Archie,
and the others. “And had we many killed?”
Alex shook his head. “It was a rout,” he said. “They tell me there
are some two hundred or more wounded, but scarce over a dozen killed
outright. It seems fair unbelievable.”
Kelpie assimilated this and then returned to another matter of interest.
“What of Mac Cailein Mor?” she demanded vindictively. “And what was
happening to us, after all?”
“Och, the great General Campbell was away down the loch in his galley
before the fight was yet over, hero that he is!” Scorn was bright in
Alex’s voice. “But as for us, we lay until some of our men found us and
recognized my tartan, so they took us up to the castle with the other
wounded. There were plenty of the army who knew me—and you, too, it
seems, for there was a hulking great man named Rab and a huge fierce
woman called Morag Mhor nearly come to blows over which could be doing
most for you.” His eyes crinkled at her with approval and amusement. “So
it was soon enough that my brother and Ian both found us. And when we
were fit to be carried, they brought us here.”
“Here!” echoed Kelpie, renewed bafflement upon her. Forgetting her
wounds, she tried to sit up and then changed her mind. Wincing, she lay
back again, and her ringed eyes stared beneath lowered brows at Alex.
Dubh, his nap disturbed, glared with equal fierceness, and Alex found the
combination disconcerting.
“You would be coming _here_?” Kelpie spat. “You, with all your prating of
loyalty and the laws of hospitality and this principles thing? And you
have not even good sense, for here am I, and whatever makes you think I
will not be telling? And yet you have not even tried to threaten me.”
Complete bewilderment was on Alex’s face. “Either your wits or mine are
wandering entirely,” he said. “What are you talking about? Tell what?”
“That you tried to kill Ian!” answered Kelpie.
“_What?_” He was utterly dumfounded, and Kelpie’s conviction wavered, but
only briefly. She knew what she had seen!
“Do not be denying it, for I saw it myself, and twice over—once with the
Second Sight, which never lies, and again when it happened.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, as if he had begun to see a clue to
some deep puzzle. “You were saying something of the sort back at yon
cave,” he said. “It made no sense, but I had already given up expecting
to understand you, and there were other urgent matters on my mind.
Tell me now: What was it that you saw twice over? Tell me exactly, for
although the Second Sight never lies, sometimes the reading of it can be
wrong. What was it you were seeing, water witch?”
Kelpie frowned. “It was the crowd of witch-hunters, although the first
time I did not know who or where, or that it was me they were going to
burn. But I saw Ian coming through them, and you after him with a black
anger on your face. And when you reached him, you raised your sword and
brought it down on him, and he dropped like a stone and out of sight.”
She glared at him defiantly.
A whole series of expressions chased one another across Alex’s face, but
they were not quite the ones Kelpie had expected. Wonder and relief and
joy surely had no place there!
“My sorrow,” he whispered, closing his eyes for an instant. “And is
it for that you’ve hated me so darkly this long while? No wonder!” He
looked at her suddenly with new delight. “And for Ian too, though you
tried so hard to admit no loyalty or friendship, and I believed you!
Think carefully,” he commanded as Kelpie was about to burst out at him in
frustration and fury. “Were you actually _seeing_ my sword _strike_ Ian?”
“Aye so—” began Kelpie hotly, and then paused. “Well, and there was a
head in the way for a wee moment,” she conceded, conjuring up the vivid
picture and looking at it carefully. “Your sword is striking him just
behind the head—the other head, I mean—but now Ian is falling straight
away, and so—”
“Look again!” interrupted Alex. “Look closely, Kelpie, and do not judge
too quickly. For my sword was falling on the man who was in the act of
dirking Ian, and they went down at the same moment. Little _amadain_,
how could you be thinking I would turn on my foster brother, dearer than
kin, for whom I would give my heart’s blood?”
Kelpie scowled in sudden, unreasoning resentment, but he leaned forward
to place his hand on her arm where it lay outside the covers. “Look in
your heart for the truth,” he commanded urgently. “Ask it of your reason
as well. You _must_ know that I did not do it.”
It was true. She did know it. She felt slightly dizzy, as if the sun had
spun round suddenly and begun rising in the west. And was it a mistake
that she had hated Alex this long time? Och, no! Had he not always
infuriated her with his mockery and scorn and his uncanny knowledge of
what she would think and do next? But whatever had possessed the both of
them that dawn in the shelter, each offering his own life to save the
other? She could hardly believe that it had really happened.
The eyes she raised to Alex were night-blue with wonder. “You knew I
was hiding behind the wall! Why didn’t you save yourself by telling Mac
Cailein Mor it was I sent the message? And especially when you thought
that I had betrayed you to the Campbells? _Why?_”
There was sudden gladness on Alex’s lean face. “Kelpie!” he fairly
shouted. “You didn’t betray me, then?”
She shook her head irritably and immediately wished she hadn’t. “I _told_
you I did not dare! And now you know why, with Mac Cailein Mor already
wanting me for a witch, and I with his wife’s clothing on my back. ’Twas
the smoke from your fire betrayed you, fool that you were!” She glared
at him. “But you were _believing_ it was I, and you needing only a word
to save yourself and settle all accounts. Why did you not tell?” she
demanded angrily.
Alex grinned flippantly at her, but the angles of his face seemed
softened, and his voice as well. He seemed to be laughing at her and at
himself too. “Perhaps, _mo chridhe_, it was for the same reason that you
spoke out when you needed only to stay still. Can you answer me your own
question, Kelpie? Why did you come forth?”
“I was daft, just!” she retorted promptly. “And,” she added, remembering,
“there was a thing in me pushing where I was not wanting to go.” She
frowned.
“There has been a thing in me too, this long while,” said Alex softly,
and for an instant he saw her as she had appeared from the shadows to
face Argyll—intense then too, but heartbreakingly brave, nearly tearing
him apart with joy for her gallantry and with despair for its result. And
he had not known, then, the full horror of what she was facing, that she
was giving herself up to be burned as a witch.
She was regarding him with annoyance. “I think it was a spell, whatever,”
she announced accusingly.
Alex looked at her oddly. “Aye so, a spell,” he muttered with a wry twist
to his mouth. “And I with a fondness for merry, fair-haired lassies, like
my sweet Cecily in Oxford. And now she will have to marry Ian, just,
though perhaps neither of them will mind much. I have _never_ cared for
witches!” he told her plaintively. “And especially not black-haired ones,
with dark, pointy faces, all uncanny eyes. It’s never a moment’s peace I
shall have again; but ’tis a terrible, strong spell you have put on me,
and I cannot break it. Och, there’s no way at all out of it, but I shall
have to marry you, just!”
“Marry me!” Kelpie’s shock reached to the very soles of her feet.
“Ou, aye,” answered the outrageous lad, wagging his head sadly. “And a
dreadful life it will be, never a doubt of it, wed to a wild wee water
witch. But marry you I must, for I cannot help myself.”
“_I_ can, then!” Kelpie sizzled with outrage. “Did you never think of
consulting _me_? Were you thinking I would—_Dhé!_ I’d sooner be wedding
the sea horse in Loch Ness, or Argyll himself! And the very conceit of
you to be thinking it! ’Tis a spell indeed I’ll be putting on you! Wait
until I learn the Evil Eye, and then see will you not be begging my
mercy, and with the horrid spots all over you, and—”
Alex silenced her by the simple expedient of putting his lips firmly over
hers. When at last he lifted them, it was to laugh into her startled and
indignant eyes with the old mockery.
“I’m thinking,” he said, just as if she had never uttered a word of
her last speech, “that I shall have to be taking you out of Scotland
altogether, or sooner or later it would be to the stake with the both of
us. And in any case, what else could I be doing with the gypsy wanderlust
in your feet?”
“The gypsies _stole_ me, I tell you!” retorted Kelpie automatically.
He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “And did they so, truly? Well, and what
does it matter? You could never be finding your parents now, nor fit into
their life if you did. And in any case, you’re going to marry me, and
we’ll away to the New World. A grand wilderness it is, they say, with all
the space needed for wandering in and out of trouble.”
He bent toward her again, and reached for her hand, as Kelpie opened a
mutinous mouth. Dubh, who had patiently endured the last disturbance of
his nap, opened one yellow eye, saw Alex’s hand approaching, and slashed
it. Then he rearranged himself across Kelpie’s neck and went back to
sleep.
Kelpie laughed at Alex, who was also laughing and sucking at his torn
finger. “You see?” he said. “The Red Indians and wild animals will never
have a chance against you with your dark power over man and beast, witch
that you are. I wonder, would next week be too soon for the wedding?”
“Sssss!” said Kelpie contentedly.
[Illustration: PHOTO BY LARRY WAY
_Sally Watson in costume for the Highland Games competition_]