CHAPTER XVIII

BALNILLO FINDS PERFECTION

A SCONCE of candles beside a window-recess shed a collective

illumination from the wall, and Christian Flemington stood full in

their light, contemplating the company with superb detachment, and

pervaded by that air, which never left her, of facing the world,

unaided and unabashed, with such advantages as God had given her. Her

neck, still white and firm, was bare, for she wore no jewels but the

ruby earrings which shot blood-red sparks around her when she moved.

Long necks were in fashion in those days, and hers was rather short,

but the carriage of her head added enough to its length to do more

than equalize the difference. Her hair was like massed silver, and her

flesh--of which a good deal could be seen--rose like ivory above the

wine-colour of her silk gown, which flowed in spreading folds from her

waist to the ground. A Spanish fan with carved tortoiseshell sticks, a

thing of mellow browns and golds, was half closed between her fingers.

When she opened it, it displayed the picture of a bull-fight.

"That is Mrs. Flemington--Madam Flemington, as I am told many people

call her--I presume, because she came to Scotland from France. You

should know her, my lord," she added, addressing Balnillo; "you are

from Angus."

But Balnillo was speechless.

Grange, who was transferring a pinch of snuff from his box to his

nose, paused, his hand midway way between the two.

"Is she the widow of Andrew Flemington, who was in France with King

James?"

"The same," replied Mrs. Cockburn, tossing her head.

She had small sympathy with the Stuarts.

"I had not expected to see the lady here. Not that I know aught about

her views. We have a bare acquaintance, and she is like yourself, Lord

Balnillo--just arrived in Edinburgh when our young hero has left

Holyrood."

"She has been a fine woman," said Lord Grange, his eye kindling.

"You may use the present tense, my lord," said Mrs. Cockburn.

"Aha!" sniggered Grange, who adhered to the time-honoured beliefs of

his sex, "you dare to show yourself generous!"

"I dare to show myself what I am, and that is more than all the world

can do," said she, looking at him very hard.

He shifted from foot to foot. At this moment the gallows, to which he

had condemned a few people in his time, struck him as a personal

inconvenience.

"Ma'am," said he, swallowing his rage, "you must present Davie, or he

will lose what senses he has."

"Come, then, my lord, I will befriend you," said she, glad of the

chance to be rid of Grange.

Balnillo followed her, unable to escape had he wished to do so.

Christian was a woman who stood very still. She turned her head

without turning her body as Mrs. Cockburn approached with her request,

and Balnillo saw her calm acquiescence.

His breath had been almost taken away as he learned the identity of

the stranger. Here was the woman who knew everything about that

astounding young man, his late guest, whose alarming illness had

recalled him, who had lived at St. Germain with the exiled queen, yet

who was the grandmother of a most audacious Whig spy! There was no

trace of recent ill-health here. He had pictured some faint, feeble

shred of old womanhood, not the commanding creature whose grey eyes

were considering him as he advanced under cover of her leisurely

consent. She seemed to measure him carelessly as he stood before her.

He was torn asunder in mind, awestruck, dragged this way by his

surprised admiration, that way by his intense desire to wring from her

something about Flemington. Here was a chance, indeed! But Balnillo

felt his courage drown in the rising fear of being unable to profit by

that chance. Admiring bewilderment overcame every other feeling. He no

longer regretted the price he had paid for the lace on his cravat.

His name had roused Madam Flemington, though she gave no sign of the

thrill that went through her as it fell from Mrs. Cockburn's lips. As

David stood before her in the correct yet sober foppery of his

primrose and mouse-colour, she regretted that she was quite ignorant

of the pretext on which Archie had left his picture unfinished, nor

upon what terms he had parted with the judge. She had no reason for

supposing Balnillo to be aware of the young man's real character. He

had been fighting with James Logie, according to Skirling Wattie, yet

there seemed to be no enmity in the business, for here was his

brother, Lord Balnillo, assiduous in getting himself presented to her.

Mrs. Cockburn had put her request with a smiling hint at the effect

she had produced on his lordship. Christian glanced at David's

meticulous person and smiled, arrogantly civil, secretly anxious, and

remained silent, ready to follow his lead with caution.

The shrewd side of Balnillo was uppermost to-night, stimulated perhaps

by the sight of society and by the exhilarating sound of its voice. He

recovered his momentarily scattered wits and determined to approach

his new acquaintance with such direct and simple questions as might

seem to her to be the natural inquiries of a man interested in

Flemington, and innocent of any mystery concerning him. It was quite

possible--so he reasoned--that she was unaware of the details of what

had happened on Inchbrayock Island. Archie had fled, and the search

for him had produced no result; he was unlikely to have made for his

own home if he did not wish to be found, and he and Madam Flemington

might not have met since the affair of the _Venture_. It should be

his--Balnillo's--task to convince her of his ignorance.

His intense curiosity about Archie was almost stronger than his wrath

against him. Unlike James, whose bitterness was too deep for words,

whose soul was driven before the fury of his own feelings like a

restless ghost, David still looked back with a certain pleasant

excitement to Flemington's meteoric flash through the even atmosphere

of his daily life. He would dearly have liked to bring him to justice,

but he was anxious to hear a little more of him first.

He had a curious mixture of feelings about him. There was no vainer

man in Scotland than Balnillo, and if the mental half of his vanity

had suffered from the deception practised on it, the physical half was

yet preening itself in the sunny remembrance of the portrait at

home--the portrait of David Balnillo as he would fain have had the

world see him--the portrait, alas and alas! unfinished. He could not

feel quite as James felt, who had opened his purse, and, more--far

more than that--had laid open the most sacred page of his life before

Flemington. He had placed his personal safety in his hands, too,

though he counted that as a matter of less moment.

"Madam," said Balnillo, "to see you is to rejoice that you have

recovered from your serious illness."

"You are very obliging, my lord. I am quite well," replied Christian,

concealing a slight surprise at this remark.

"I am most happy in being presented to you," he continued. "What news

have you of my charming friend Mr. Flemington, may I ask?"

"When I heard your name, my lord, I determined to be acquainted with

you, if only to thank you for your kindness to my boy. He could not

say enough of yourself and your brother. I hope Captain Logie is well.

Is he with you this evening?"

The mention of James acted on David as he had designed that the

mention of Archie should act on Madam Flemington. These two people who

were playing at innocence were using the names of their relations to

scare the enemy as savage tribes use the terrific faces painted on

their shields. Balnillo, in beginning the attack, had forgotten his

own weak point, and he remembered that he could give no satisfactory

account of his brother at the present moment. But his cunning was

always at hand.

"I had half expected to see him here," said he, peering round the

room; "there was some talk of his coming. I arrived somewhat late, and

I have hardly spoken to anyone but my Lord Grange and Mrs. Cockburn.

The sight of yourself, ma'am, put other matters out of my head."

"Ah, sir," exclaimed Christian, "I fear that your ardour was all on

behalf of Archie! But I am accustomed to that."

She cast a look of indolent raillery at him, drawing back her head and

veiling her eyes, fiery and seductive still, with the momentary sweep

of their thick lashes.

Balnillo threw out his chest like a pouter pigeon. He had not been so

happy for a long time. As he did so, she remembered Archie's account

of his silk legs, and his description of him as being "silly,

virtuous, and cunning all at once." Silly she could well believe him

to be; virtuous he might be; whether he was cunning or not, time would

show her. She did not mean to let him go until she had at least

attempted to hear more about James Logie.

"Madam," said he, "since seeing you I have forgotten Mr. Flemington.

Can I say more?"

So far she was completely puzzled as to how much he knew about Archie,

but it was beginning to enter her mind that her own illness, of which

she had just learned from him, had been the young man's pretext for

leaving his work when it was only begun. Why else had the judge

mentioned it? And who but Flemington could have put the idea into his

head?

She determined to make a bold attack on possibilities.

"Archie was distracted by my illness, poor boy, and I fear that your

lordship's portrait suffered. But you will understand his anxiety when

I tell you that I am the only living relation that he has, and that

his devotion to me----"

"He needs no excuse!" cried David fervently.

She laid her hand upon his arm.

"I am still hardly myself," she said. "I cannot stand long. Fetch me a

chair, my lord."

He skipped across the floor and laid hold upon one just in time, for a

gentleman was on the point of claiming it. He carried it back with the

air of a conqueror.

"Apart--by the curtain, if you please," said Christian, waving her

hand. "We can speak more comfortably on the fringe of this rout of

chattering people."

He set the chair down in a quiet place by the wall, and she settled

herself upon it, leaning back, her shoulder turned from the company.

Balnillo's delight deepened.

"And the portrait, my lord. He did not tell me what arrangement had

been made for finishing it," said Christian, looking up at him as he

stood beside her.

She seemed to be completely unconcerned, and she spoke with a

leisurely dignity and ease that turned his ideas upside down. He could

make nothing of it. She appeared to court the subject of Archie and

the picture. He could only guess her to be innocent, and his warm

admiration helped his belief. At no moment since he knew the truth

from his brother's lips had Archie's character seemed so black as it

did now. David's indignation waxed as he grew more certain that

Flemington had deceived the noble woman to whom he owed so much, even

as he had deceived him. He was becoming so sure of it that he had no

desire to enlighten her. He longed to ask plainly where Archie was,

but he hesitated. Even the all-wise Mrs. Cockburn was ignorant of this

lady's political sympathies, and knew her only as the widow of a loyal

exile. What might--what would be her feelings if she were to see her

grandson in his real character?

Righteous anger smouldered under Balnillo's primrose waistcoat, and

his spasmodic shrewdness began to doze in the increasing warmth of his

chivalrous pity for this new and interesting victim of the engaging

rogue.

"Mr. Flemington's concern was so great when he left my house that no

arrangement was made," said he. "I had not the heart to trouble him

with my unimportant affairs when so much was at stake."

Of the two cautious people who were feeling their way in the dark, it

was the judge who was the more mystified, for he had laid hold of a

definite idea, and it was the wrong one. Christian was merely putting

a bold face on a hazardous matter, and hoping to hear something of

Logie. She had not sought the introduction. David would have been the

butt of her amused scorn had she been free enough from anxiety to be

entertained. But she could not imagine on what footing matters really

stood, and she was becoming inclined to suspect the beggar's statement

that Flemington had been fighting with James. Her longing to see

Archie was great.

She loved him in her own way, though she had driven him from her in

her mortification and her furious pride. She had not believed that he

would really go there and then; that he, who had served her purposes

so gallantly all his life, would take her at her word. What was he

doing? Why had he gone to Edinburgh? Her own reason for coming had

been the hope of seeing him. She had been four days in the town now,

and she dared not make open inquiries for him, not knowing how far his

defection had gone. She had accused him of turning to the Stuarts, and

he had denied the accusation, not angrily, but with quiet firmness.

Two horrible possibilities had occurred to her: one, that he was with

the Prince, and might be already known to the Government as a rebel;

the other, that he had never reached Edinburgh--that his hurt had been

worse than the beggar supposed, and that he might be ill or dying,

perhaps dead. But it was only when she lay awake at night that she

imagined these things. In saner moments and by daylight she put them

from her. She was so well accustomed to being parted from him, and to

the knowledge that he was on risky business, that she would not allow

herself to be really disturbed. She assured herself that she must wait

and watch; and now she was glad to find herself acquainted with

Balnillo, who seemed to be the only clue in her hand. Mercifully, he

had all the appearance of being an old fool.

"I see that you are too modest to tell me anything of the picture,"

she began. "I hope it promised well. You should make a fine portrait,

and I believe that Archie could do you justice. He is at his best with

high types. Describe it to me."

David espied a vacant chair, and, drawing it towards him, sat down to

the subject with the same gusto that most men bring to their dinners.

He cleared his throat.

"I should have wished it to be full length," said he, "but Mr.

Flemington had no suitable canvas with him. I wore my robes, and he

was good enough to say that the crimson was appropriate and becoming

to me. Personally, I favour quiet colours, as you see, ma'am."

"I see that you have excellent taste."

He bowed, delighted.

"I remarked you as you came in," continued she, "and I asked myself

why these gentlemen looked so garish. Observe that one beside the door

of the card-room, my lord. I am sure that he chose his finery with

some care, yet he reminds me of a clown at a merrymaking."

"True, true--excellently true!"

"In my youth it was the man of the world who set the fashions; now it

is the tailor and the young sir fresh from his studies. What should

these persons know of the subject?"

Balnillo was in heaven; from force of habit he ran his hand down the

leg crossed upon his knee. The familiar inward curve of the slim silk

ankle between his fingers was like the touch of a tried and creditable

friend; it might almost be said that he turned to it for sympathy. He

would have liked to tell his ankle that to-night he had found a

perfection almost as great as its own.

Lord Grange, who had taken leave of his hostess and was departing,

paused to look at him.

"See," said he, taking an acquaintance by the elbow, "look yonder at

that doited Davie Balnillo."

"He is telling her about his riding of the circuit," said the other,

grinning.

"The circuit never made him smile like that," replied Grange

sardonically.

An hour later Christian Flemington stood at the top of the circular

staircase. Below it, Balnillo was at the entrance-door, sending

everyone within reach of his voice in search of her sedan chair. When

it was discovered, he escorted her down and handed her into it, then,

according to the custom of the time, he prepared to attend its

progress to her lodgings in Hyndford's Close. The streets were even

dirtier and damper than before, but he was as anxious to walk from

Lady Anne's party as he had been determined to be carried to it. He

stepped along at the side of the chair, turning, when they passed a

light, to see the dignified silhouette of Madam Flemington's head as

it appeared in shadow against the farther window.

Speech was impossible as they went, for avoidance of the kennel and

the worse obstacles that strewed the city at that hour, before the

scavengers had gone their rounds, kept David busy. The only profit

that a man got by seeing his admired one home in Edinburgh in 1745 was

the honour and glory of it.

When she emerged from the chair in Hyndford's Close he insisted upon

mounting the staircase with her, though its narrowness compelled them

to go in single file; and when they stopped halfway up at the door in

the towering 'land,' he bade her good-night and descended again,

consoled for the parting by her permission that he should wait upon

her on the following day.

Christian was admitted and sailed into her little room. A light was in

it and Archie was standing at the foot of the bed.

Surprises had been rolling up round Madam Flemington all the evening;

surprise at meeting Balnillo, surprise at his attitude; and this

crowning surprise of all. She was bewildered, but the blessing of

unexpected relief fell on her. She went towards him, her hands

outstretched, and Flemington, who was looking at her with a

wistfulness she had never seen in him before, took them and held them

fast.

"Oh, Archie!" she exclaimed.

She could say no more.

They sat down at the wide hearth together, the shadow of the great

carved bed sprawling over the crowded space between the walls and over

Christian's swelling silks. Then he told her the history of the time

since they parted in Ardguys garden; of his boarding of the _Venture_;

of the fight with the rebels at Inchbrayock; of his meeting with

Wattie; of how he had reached Aberbrothock half dead, and had lain

sick for two days in an obscure tavern by the shore; how he had

finally sailed for Leith and had reached Edinburgh.

Christian heard him, her gaze fixed upon the fire. She had elicited

nothing about James Logie from Balnillo, and there was no word of him

in Archie's story. She longed to speak of him, but would not; she

longed to know if the beggar had told the truth in saying that the two

men had actually fought, but she asked nothing, for she knew that her

wisest part was to accept the essentials, considering them as the

whole. She would ask no questions.

Archie had come back. She had forbidden Ardguys to him and he had

evaded her ban by coming here. Yet he came, having proved himself

loyal, and she would ignore the rest.

BOOK III

CHAPTER XIX

THE WINTER

APRIL is slow in Scotland, distrustful of her own identity, timid of

her own powers. Half dazed from the long winter sleep, she is often

bewildered, and cannot remember whether she belongs to winter or to

spring.

After the struggles and perplexities of the months that had elapsed

since Balnillo and Christian Flemington met in Edinburgh, she had come

slowly to herself amid storms of sleet. Beyond the Grampians, in the

North, her awakened eyes looked on a country whose heart had been

broken at Culloden. The ragged company that gathered round its Prince

on that Wednesday morning was dispersed among the fastnesses of the

hills, or lying dead and dying among the rushes and heather, whilst

Cumberland's soldiers finished their bloody business; the April snow

that had blown in the faces of the clansmen as they hurled their

unavailing valour on the Whig army had melted upon mounds of slain,

and in the struggle of an hour the hopes of half a century had

perished. Superior numbers, superior artillery, and superior

generalship, had done their work; when the English dragoons had

recovered themselves after the Highland charge, they pursued almost to

the gates of Inverness, returning again to the battlefield before

night should darken upon the carnage, to despatch the wounded wretches

who still breathed among their dead comrades.

The country smelt of blood; reeked of it. For miles and miles round

Inverness, where the search for fugitives was hottest, burnt hovels

and blackened walls made blots upon the tardy green of spring. Women

went about, white-faced and silent, trying to keep from their eyes the

self-betraying consciousness of hidden terrors; each striving to

forget the peat-stack on the moor where some hunted creature was

lying, the scrub in the hollow that sheltered some wounded body, the

cranny in the hill to which she must journey painfully after dark with

the crusts in her apron.

The shot still rattled out over the countryside where the search was

going on, and where, when it had been successful, a few maimed and

haggard men stood along some shieling wall in front of a platoon of

Cumberland's musketry. All down the shores of Loch Ness and among the

hills above the Nairn water south-west of Culloden, the dark rocks

raised their broken heads to the sky over God knows what agonies of

suffering and hunger. The carrion-crow was busy in the land. One-fifth

of Prince Charles's army was dead upon the battle-field, and the

church and tolbooth of Inverness were full of wounded prisoners, to

whom none--not even the surgeons of their own party--were suffered to

attend.

And so April passed, and May was near her passing. Cumberland lay at

Fort Augustus, to which place he had retired with Kingston's Horse and

eleven battalions of foot. The victorious army was the richer by much

spoil, and money was free; the Duke's camp was merry with festivities

and races, and in the midst of it he enjoyed a well-earned leisure,

enlivened by women and dice. He had performed his task of stamping out

the danger that threatened his family with admirable thoroughness, and

he had, besides, the comfortable prospect of a glorious return to

London, where he would be the hero of the general rejoicing that was

to follow. He was rooted at Fort Augustus, a rock of success and

convivial self-satisfaction in the flood of tears and anguish and

broken aspiration that had drowned half Scotland.

The Prince had begun his wanderings in the West, hiding among the

hills and corries of the islands, followed by a few faithful souls,

and with a price of thirty thousand pounds on his head, whilst

Cumberland's emissaries, chief among whom was John Campbell of Mamore,

Commandant of the West Highland garrisons, searched the country in

every direction. The rank and file of his army--such of his men as

were not dead or in prison--were scattered to the four winds; and

those officers who had escaped after Culloden were in hiding, too,

some despairing, some holding yet to the forlorn hope of raising his

standard anew when the evil day should be over. Among these last was

James Logie.

He had come unhurt through the battle. Complete indifference about

personal issues had wrapped him round in a protecting atmosphere, as

it seems to enwrap and protect the unconcerned among men. He had left

the field in company with the Prince and a few friends, with whom he

reached the Ford of Falie on the Nairn River. They had held a rapid

council at this place, Prince Charles desiring that the remnant of his

army should rendezvous at Ruthven, in Badenoch, whilst he made his way

to France; for his hopes were living still, and he still looked for

support and supplies from the French king. He had taken leave of his

companions at the ford, and had set off with half a dozen followers

for the coast.

Logie turned his face towards Angus. He had been a conspicuous figure

in the Prince's immediate circle, and he knew that he had no time to

lose if he was to cross the Grampians alive. He thirsted to get back,

and to test the temper of the east coast after the news of the

reverse; like his master, he was not beaten yet. He did not know what

had become of Ferrier and the Angus men, for he had been on the

Prince's staff; but the friends had met on the night before the

battle, and it was a compact between them, that, should the day go

against them, and should either or both survive the fight, they were

to make for the neighbourhood of Forfar, where they would be ready, in

case of necessity, to begin on their task of raising new levies for

the cause.

He had reached the Spey, and had gained Deeside in safety by the

shores of the Avon, crossing the Grampians near the sources of the

Isla.

In the long winter that had passed since he joined the Prince in the

field, James had not forgotten Flemington. His own labours in Angus

and at the taking of the _Venture_, completely as they had filled his

mind in the autumn, had sunk back into the limbo of insignificant

things, but Archie was often in his thoughts, and some time before the

advance on Inverness he had heard with indescribable feelings that he

was intelligence officer to the Duke of Cumberland. The terrible thing

to Logie was that Archie's treachery seemed to have poisoned the

sacred places in his own past; when he turned back to it now, it was

as though the figure of the young man stood blocking his view, looking

at him with those eyes that were so like the eyes of Diane, and were

yet the eyes of a traitor.

He could not bear to think of that October morning by the Basin of

Montrose. Perhaps the story that a fatal impulse had made him lay bare

to his companion had been tossed about--a subject of ridicule on

Flemington's lips, its telling but one more proof to him of the folly

of men. He could scarcely believe that Archie would treat the record

of his anguish in such a way; but then, neither could he have believed

that the sympathy in Archie's face, the break in his voice, the

tension of his listening attitude, were only the stock-in-trade of a

practised spy. And yet this horror had been true. In spite of the

unhealed wound that he carried, in spite of the batterings of his

thirty-eight years, Logie had continued to love life, but now he had

begun to tell himself that he was sick of it.

And for another very practical reason his generous impulses and his

belief in Flemington had undone him. Perhaps if the young painter had

come to Balnillo announcing an ostentatious adherence to the Stuarts,

he might have hesitated before taking him at his own value; but his

apparent caution and his unwillingness to speak, and the words about

his father at St. Germain, which he had let fall with all the quiet

dignity of a man too upright to pass under false colours, had done

more to put the brothers on the wrong track than the most violent

protestations. Balnillo had been careful, in spite of his confidence

in his guest; but in the sympathy of his soul James had given

Flemington the means of future access to himself. Now the tavern in

the Castle Wynd at Stirling could be of use to him no longer, and he

knew that only the last extremity must find him in any of the secret

haunts known to him in the Muir of Pert.

Madam Flemington had never reopened the subject of James Logie with

Archie. In her wisdom she had left well alone. Installed in her little

lodging in Hyndford's Close, with her woman Mysie, she had made up her

mind to remain where she was. There was much to keep her in Edinburgh,

and she could not bring herself to leave the centre of information and

to bury herself again in the old white house among the ash-trees,

whilst every post and every horseman brought word of some new turn in

the country's fortunes.

News of the Highland army's retreat to Scotland, of the Battle of

Falkirk, of the despatch of the Duke of Cumberland to the North,

followed one another as the year went by, and still she stayed on.

With her emergence from the seclusion of the country came her

emergence from the seclusion she had made for herself; and on the

Duke's thirty hours' occupation of Holyrood, she threw off all

pretence of neutrality, and repaired with other Whig ladies to the

palace to pay her respects to the stout, ill-mannered young General

whose unbeguiling person followed so awkwardly upon the attractive

figure of his predecessor.

Now that Archie was restored to her, Christian found herself with

plenty of occupation. The contempt she had hitherto professed for

Edinburgh society seemed to have melted away, and every card-party,

every assembly and rout, knew her chair at its door, her arresting

presence in its midst. Madam Flemington's name was on a good many

tongues that winter. Many feared her, some maligned her, but no one

overlooked her. The fact that she was the widow of an exiled Jacobite

lent her an additional interest; and as the polite world set itself to

invent a motley choice of reasons for her adherence to the House of

Hanover--which it discovered before her reception by the Duke at

Holyrood made it public--it ended by stumbling on the old story of a

bygone liaison with Prince Charles's father. The idea was so much to

its taste that it was generally accepted; and Christian, unknown to

herself, became the cast-off and alienated mistress of that Prince

whom her party had begun to call 'The Old Pretender.' It was scarcely

a legend that would have conciliated her had it come to her ears, but,

as rumour is seldom on speaking terms with its victims, she was

ignorant of the interested whispers which followed her through the

wynds and up the staircases of the Old Town.

But the reflected halo of royalty, while it casts deep shadows,

reaches far. The character of royal light of love stood her in good

stead, even among those to whom her supposed former lover was an

abhorred spectre of Popery and political danger. The path that her own

personality would surely open for her in any community was illumined

and made smooth by the baleful interest that hangs about all kingly

irregularities, and there was that in her bearing which made people

think more of the royal and less of the irregular part of the

business. Also, among the Whigs, she was a brand plucked from the

burning, one who had turned from the wrong party to embrace the right.

Edinburgh, Whig at heart, in spite of its backslidings, admired Madam

Flemington.

And not only Edinburgh, but that curious fraction of it, David

Balnillo.

The impression that Christian had made upon the judge had deepened as

the weeks went by. By the time he discovered her true principles, and

realized that she was no dupe of Archie's, but his partisan, he had

advanced so far in his acquaintance with her, had become so much her

servant, that he could not bring himself to draw back. She had dazzled

his wits and played on his vanity, and that vanity was not only warmed

and cosseted by her manner to him, not only was he delighted with

herself and her notice, but he had begun to find in his position of

favoured cavalier to one of the most prominent figures in society a

distinction that it would go hard with him to miss.

He had begun their conversation at Lady Anne Maxwell's party by the

mention of Archie Flemington, but his name had not come up between

them again, and when his enlightenment about her was complete, and the

talk which he heard in every house that he frequented revealed her in

her real colours, he had no further wish to discuss the man into whose

trap he had fallen.

David Balnillo's discoveries were extremely unpalatable to him. If

Christian had cherished his vanity, she had made it smart, too. No

man, least of all one like the self-appreciative judge, can find

without resentment that he has been, even indirectly, the dupe of a

person to whom he has attached himself; but when that person is a

woman, determined not to let him escape from her influence, the case

is not always desperate. For three unblessed days it was wellnigh

desperate with Balnillo, and he avoided her completely, but at the end

of that time a summons from her was brought to him that his

inclination for her company and the chance sight of Lord Grange

holding open the door of her chair forbade him to disobey. She had

worded her command as though she were conferring a favour;

nevertheless, after an hour's hesitation, David had taken his hat and

repaired to Hyndford's Close, dragging his dignity after him like a

dog on a leash.

If she guessed the reason of his absence from her side she made no

remark, receiving him as if she had just parted from him, with that

omission of greeting which implies so much. She had sent for him, she

said, because her man of business had given her a legal paper that she

would not sign without his advice. She looked him in the face as

fearlessly as ever, and her glance sparkled with its wonted fire. For

some tormented minutes he could not decide whether or no to charge her

with knowledge of the fraud that had been carried on under his roof,

but he had not the courage to do so. Also, he was acute enough to see

that she might well reply to his reproaches by reminding him that he

had only himself to thank for their acquaintance. She had not made the

advances; his own zeal had brought about their situation. He felt like

a fool, but he saw that in speaking he might look like one, which some

consider worse.

He left her, assuring himself that all was fair in love and politics;

that he could not, in common good breeding, withhold his help from her

in her legal difficulty; that, should wind of Archie's dealings with

him get abroad in the town, he would be saving appearances in avoiding

a rupture with the lady whose shadow he had been since he arrived in

Edinburgh, and that it was his duty as a well-wisher of Prince Charles

to keep open any channel that might yield information about

Flemington's movements. Whatsoever may have been the quality of his

reasons, their quantity was remarkable. He did not like the little

voice that whispered to him that he would not have dared to offer them

to James.

There was no further risk of a meeting with Archie, for within a few

days of the latter's appearance in Hyndford's Close he had been sent

to the Border with instructions to watch Jedburgh and the

neighbourhood of Liddesdale, through which the Prince's army had

passed on its march to England. Madam Flemington knew that the coast

was clear, and David had no suspicion that it had been otherwise. Very

few people in Edinburgh were aware of Flemington's visit to it; it was

an event of which even the caddies were ignorant.

And so Balnillo lingered on, putting off his return to Angus from week

to week. His mouse-coloured velvet began to show signs of wear and was

replaced by a suit of dark purple; his funds were dwindling a little,

for he was not a rich man, and a new set of verses about him was going

the round of the town. Then, with January, came the battle of Falkirk

and the siege of Stirling Castle, and the end of the month brought

Cumberland and the mustering of loyal Whigs to wait upon him at

Holyrood Palace.

David departed quietly. He had come to Edinburgh to avoid playing a

marked part in Angus, and he now returned to Angus to avoid playing a

marked part in Edinburgh. He was behaving like the last remaining king

in a game of draughts when he skips from square to square in the safe

corner of the board; but he did not know that Government had kept its

eye on all his doings during the time of his stay. Perhaps it was on

account of her usefulness in this and in other delicate matters that

Madam Flemington augured well for her grandson, for when the Whig army

crossed the Forth, Archie went with it as intelligence officer to the

Duke of Cumberland.

CHAPTER XX

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

JULY spread a mantle of heather over the Grampians. In Glen Esk, the

rough road into the Lowlands, little better than a sheep-track, ran

down the shore of Loch Lee, to come out at last into the large spaces

at the foot of the hills. The greyness of the summer haze lay over

everything, and the short grass and the roots of bog-myrtle and thyme

smelt warm and heady, for the wind was still. The sun seemed to have

sucked up some of the heather-colour out of the earth; the lower

atmosphere was suffused with a dusty lilac where, high overhead, it

softened the contours of the scattered rocks. Amongst carpets of rush

and deep moss, dappled with wet patches, the ruddy stems of the

bog-asphodel raised slim, golden heads that drooped a little, as

though for faintness, in the scented warmth. An occasional bumble-bee

passed down wind, purposeful and ostentatious, like a respectable

citizen zealous on the business of life.

No one looking along the windings of the Glen, and drawing in the

ardent quietness of the summer warmth, would have supposed that fire

and sword had been through it so lately. Its vastness of outline hid

the ruined huts and black fragments of skeleton gable-ends that had

smoked up into the mountain stillness. Homeless women and children had

fled down its secret tracks; hunted men had given up their souls under

its heights. The rich plainland of Angus had sent its sons to fight

for the Prince in the North, and of those who survived to make their

way back to their homes, many had been overtaken by the pursuit that

had swept down behind them through the hills. No place had a darker

record than Glen Esk.

Archie Flemington rode down the Glen with his companion some little

way in front of the corporal and the three men who followed them. His

left arm was in a sling, for he had received a sabre-cut at Culloden;

also, he had been rolled on by his horse, which was killed under him,

and had broken a rib. His wound, though not serious had taken a long

time to heal, for the steel had cut into the arm bone; he looked thin,

too, for the winter had been a time of strenuous work.

One of the three private soldiers, the last of the small string of

horsemen, had a rope knotted into his reins, the other end of which

was secured round the middle of a short, thickset man who paced

sullenly along beside the horse. The prisoner's arms were bound at his

back, his reddish beard was unkempt, and his clothes ragged; he made a

sorry figure in the surrounding beauty.

Nearly two months had gone by since the Battle of Culloden, and the

search for fugitives was still going on in remote places. Cumberland,

who was on the point of leaving Fort Augustus for Edinburgh on his way

to London, had given orders for a last scouring of Glen Esk. The party

had almost reached its mouth, and its efforts had resulted only in the

capture of this one rebel; but, as there was some slight doubt of his

identity, and as the officer who rode beside Archie was one whose

conscience ranked a great way above his convenience, the red-bearded

man had fared better than many of those taken by Cumberland's

man-hunters. If he were the person they supposed him to be, he was an

Angus farmer distantly related to David Ferrier, and he was now being

brought to his own country for identification.

Captain Callandar, the officer in command, was a long, lean, bony man

with a dark face, a silent, hard-bitten fellow from Ligonier's

regiment. He and Archie had met very little before they started south

together, and they had scarcely progressed in acquaintance in the few

days during which they had ridden side by side. They had shared their

food on the bare turf by day, lain down within a few yards of each

other at night; they had gone through many of the same experiences in

the North, and they belonged to the same victorious army, yet they

knew little more of each other than when they started. But there was

no dislike between them, certainly none on Archie's side, and if the

other was a little critical of the foreign roll of his companion's

_r's_, he did not show it.

Archie's tongue had been quiet enough. He was riding listlessly along,

and, though he looked from side to side, taking in the details of what

he saw from force of habit, they seemed to give him no interest. He

puzzled Callandar a good deal, for he had proved to be totally

different from anything that he had expected. The soldier was apt to

study his fellow-men, when not entirely swallowed up by his duty, and

he had been rather pleased when he found that Cumberland's brilliant

intelligence officer was to accompany him down Glen Esk. He had heard

much about him. Archie's quick answers and racy talk had amused the

Duke, who, uncompanionable himself, felt the awkward man's amazement

at the readiness of others, and scraps of Flemington's sayings had

gone from lip to lip, hall-marked by his approval. Callandar was

taciturn and grave, but he was not stupid, and he had begun to wonder

what was amiss with his companion. He decided that his own society

must be uncongenial to him, and, being a very modest man, he did not

marvel at it.

But the sources of Archie's discomfort lay far, far deeper than any

passing irritation. It seemed to him now, as he reached the mouth of

the Glen, that there was nothing left in life to fear, because the

worst that could come upon him was looming ahead, waiting for him,

counting his horse's steps as he left the hills behind.

An apprehension, a mere suggestion of what might be remotely possible,

a skeleton that had shown its face to him in sleepless or overwrought

moments since Cumberland's victory, had become real. To most people

who are haunted by a particular dread, Fate plays one of the tricks

she loves so much. She is an expert boxer, and whilst each man stands

up to her in his long, defensive fight, his eye upon hers, guarding

himself from the blow he expects to receive in the face, she hits him

in the wind and he finds himself knocked out.

But she had dealt otherwise with Archie; for a week ago he had been

specially detailed to proceed to Angus to hunt for that important

rebel, Captain James Logie, who was believed to have made his way

southward to his native parts.

At Fort Augustus it was felt that Flemington was exactly the right man

to be entrusted with the business. He was familiar with the country he

had to search, he was a man of infinite resource and infinite

intelligence; and Cumberland meant to be pleasant in his harsh,

ungraceful manner, when he gave him his commission in person, with a

hint that he expected more from Mr. Flemington than he did from

anybody else. He was to accompany Captain Callandar and his three men.

The officer, having made a last sweep of Glen Esk, was to go on by

Brechin to Forfar, where he would be joined by another and larger

party of troops that was on its way down Glen Clova from Braemar, for

Cumberland was drafting small forces into Angus by way of the

Grampians, and the country was filling with them.

He had dealt drastically with Montrose. The rebellion in the town had

been suppressed, and the neighbourhood put under military law. This

bit of the east coast had played a part that was not forgotten by the

little German general, and he was determined that the hornet's nest he

had smoked out should not re-collect. Whilst James Logie was at large

there could be no security.

Of all the rebels in Scotland, Logie was the man whom Cumberland was

most desirous to get. The great nobles who had taken part in the

rising were large quarry indeed, but this commoner who had worked so

quietly in the eastern end of Angus, who had been on the Prince's

staff, who had the experience of many campaigns at his back, whose

ally was the notorious Ferrier, who had seized the harbour of Montrose

under the very guns of a Government sloop of war, was as dangerous as

any Highland chieftain, and the news that he had been allowed to get

back to his own haunts made the Whig generals curse. Though he might

be quiet for the moment, he would be ready to stir up the same

mischief on the first recrudescence of Stuart energy. It was not known

what had happened to Ferrier, for although he was a marked man and

would be a rich haul for anybody who could deliver him up to

Cumberland, he was considered a less important influence than James;

and Government had scarcely estimated his valuable services to the

Jacobites, which were every whit as great as those of his friend.

Lord Balnillo was a puzzle to the intelligence department. His name

had gone in to headquarters as that of a strongly suspected rebel; he

was James's brother; yet, while Archie had included him in the report

he had entrusted to the beggar, he had been able to say little that

was definite about him. The very definite information he had given

about James and Ferrier, the details of his pursuit of the two men and

his warning of the attack on the _Venture_, had mattered more to the

authorities than the politics of the peaceable old judge, and

Balnillo's subsequent conduct had been so little in accordance with

that of his brother that he was felt to be a source of small danger.

He had been no great power on the bench, where his character was so

easy that prisoners were known to think themselves lucky in appearing

before him. No one could quite account for his success in the law, and

the mention of his name in the legal circles of Edinburgh raised

nothing worse than a smile. He had taken no part in the rejoicing that

followed James's feat at Montrose, but had taken the opportunity of

leaving the neighbourhood, and during his long stay in Edinburgh he

had frequented Whig houses and had been the satellite of a conspicuous

Whig lady, one who had been received by Cumberland with some

distinction, the grandmother of the man who had denounced Logie. The

authorities decided to leave him alone.

When the hills were behind the riders and the levels of the country

had sunk and widened out on either hand, they crossed the North Esk,

which made a shallow curve by the village of Edzell. The bank rose on

its western side, and the shade of the trees was delightful to the

travellers, and particularly to the prisoner they carried with them.

As the horses snuffed at the water they could hardly be urged through

it, and Callandar and Archie dismounted on the farther shore and sat

on a boulder whilst they drank. They watched them as they drew the

draught up their long throats and raised their heads when satisfied,

to stare, with dripping muzzles, at distant nothings, after the

fashion of their kind. The prisoner's aching arms were unbound that he

might drink too.

"Egad, I have pitied that poor devil these last miles," said Archie,

as the man knelt at the brink and extended his stiffened arms into a

pool.

The other nodded. Theoretically he pitied him, but a rebel was a

rebel.

"You have no bowels of compassion. They are not in your instructions,

Callandar. They should be served out, like ammunition."

Callandar turned his grave eyes on him.

"The idea displeases you?" said Archie.

"It would complicate our duty."

He spoke like a humourless man, but one side of his mouth twitched

downwards a little, and Flemington, who had the eye of a lynx for

another man's face, decided that the mere accident of habit had

prevented it from twitching up. He struck him as the most repressed

person he had ever seen.

"There would not be enough at headquarters to go round," observed

Archie.

Callandar's mouth straightened, and, like the horses, he looked at

nothing. Criticism was another thing not in his instructions.

"They have drunk well," he said at last. "An hour will bring us to the

foot of Huntly Hill. We can halt and feed them at the top before we

turn off towards Brechin. You know this country better than I do."

"Wait a little," said Archie. "I am no rebel, and you may have mercy

on me with a clear conscience."

He had slipped his arm out of the sling and was resting it on his

knee.

"You are in pain?" exclaimed Callandar, astonished.

Archie laughed.

"Why, man, do you think I ride for pleasure with the top half of a

bone working east and the bottom half working west?"

"I thought----" began Callandar.

"You thought me churlish company, and maybe I have been so. But this

ride has been no holiday for me."

"I did not mean that. I would have said that I thought your wound was

mended."

"My flesh-wound is mended and so is my rib," said Flemington, "but

there are two handsome splinters hobnobbing above my elbow, and I can

tell you that they dance to the tune of my horse's jog."

Callandar's opinion of him rose. He had found him disappointing as a

companion, but Archie had hid his pain, and he understood people who

did that.

The Edzell villagers turned out to stare at them as they passed a

short time later, when they took the road again. After the riders left

its row of houses their way ran from the river-level through fields

that had begun to oust the moor, rising to the crest of Huntly Hill,

on the farther side of which the southern part of Angus spread its

partial cultivation down to the Basin of Montrose. Archie's discomfort

seemed to grow; he shifted his sling again and again, and Callandar

could see his mouth set in a hard line. Now and then an impatient

sound of pain broke from him. They rode on, silent, the long rise of

the hill barring their road like a wall, and the stems of the

fir-strip that crowned it beginning to turn to a dusky black against

the sky, which was cooling off for evening. Flemington's horse was a

slow walker, and he had begun to jog persistently. His rider, holding

him back, had fallen behind. Callandar rode on, preoccupied, and when,

roused from his thoughts, he turned his head, Archie waved him on,

shouting that he would follow more slowly, for the troopers moved at a

foot's pace because of their prisoner, and he stayed abreast of them.

As Callandar passed a green sea of invading bracken that had struggled

on to the road his jaw dropped and he pulled up. Behind the feathering

waves an individual was sitting in a wooden box on wheels, and four

dogs, harnessed to the rude vehicle, were lying on the ground in their

leathern traces. He noticed with astonishment that the man had lost

the lower parts of his legs.

"You'll be Captain Callandar," said Wattie, his twinkling eyes on the

other's uniform; "you're terrible late."

"What do you want?" said the officer, amazed.

The beggar peered through the fern and saw the knot of riders and

their prisoner coming along the road some little way behind.

"Whaur's yon lad Flemington?" he demanded.

"What do you want?" exclaimed Callandar again. "If you are a beggar

you have chosen a strange place to beg in."

For answer Wattie pulled up his sliding panel and took out two sealed

letters, holding them low in the shelter of the fern, as if the

midges, dancing their evening dance above the bracken-tops, should not

look upon them. Callandar saw that one of the letters bore his own

name.

"Whisht," said the beggar, thrusting them back quickly, "come doon

here an' hae a crack wi' me."

As Callandar had been concerned exclusively with troops and fighting,

he knew little about the channels of information working in the

country, and it took him a moment to explain the situation to himself.

He dismounted under the fixed glare of the yellow dog. He was a man to

whom small obstacles were invisible when he had a purpose, and he

almost trod on the animal, without noticing the suppressed hostility

gathering about his heels. But, so long as his master's voice was

friendly, the cur was still, for his unwavering mind answered to its

every tone. Probably no spot in all Angus contained two such steadfast

living creatures as did this green place by the bracken when Callandar

and the yellow dog stood side by side.

The soldier tethered his horse and sat down on the moss. Wattie laid

the letters before him; the second was addressed to Archie. Callandar

broke the seal of the first and read it slowly through; then he sat

silent, examining the signature, which was the same that Flemington

had showed to the beggar on the day when he met him for the first

time, months ago, by the mill of Balnillo.

He was directed to advance no farther towards Brechin, but to keep

himself out of sight among the woods round Huntly Hill, and to watch

the Muir of Pert, for it was known that the rebel, James Logie, was

concealed somewhere between Brechin and the river. He was not upon the

Balnillo estate, which, with Balnillo House, had been searched from

end to end, but he was believed to be in the neighbourhood of the

Muir.

"You know the contents of this?" asked Callandar, as he put away the

paper inside the breast of his coat.

"Dod, a ken it'll be aboot Logie. He's a fell man, yon. Have ye na got

Flemington wi' ye?"

Callandar looked upon his companion with disapproval. He had never

seen him, never heard of him before, and he felt his manner and his

way of speaking of his superiors to be an outrage upon discipline and

order, which were two things very near his heart.

He did not reply.

"Whaur's Flemington?" demanded the beggar again.

"You make very free with Mr. Flemington's name."

"Tuts!" exclaimed Wattie, ignoring the rebuke, "a've got ma orders the

same as yersel', an' a'm to gie yon thing to him an' to nae ither

body. Foo will a dae that if a dinna ken whaur he is?"

His argument was indisputable.

"Mr. Flemington will be with me in a moment," said Callandar stiffly.

"He is following."

The sound of horses' feet was nearing them upon the road, and

Callandar rose and beckoned to Archie to come on.

"Go to the top of the hill and halt until I join you," he told the

corporal as the men passed.

As Archie dismounted and saw who was behind the bracken, he recoiled.

It was to him as if all that he most loathed in the past came to meet

him in the beggar's face. Here, at the confines of the Lowland

country, the same hateful influences were waiting to engulf him. His

soul was weary within him.

He barely replied to Wattie's familiar greeting.

"Do you know this person?" inquired Callandar.

He assented.

"Ay, does he. Him and me's weel acquaint," said Wattie, closing an

eye. "Hae, tak' yon."

He held out the letter to Flemington.

The young man opened it slowly, turning his back to the cart, and his

brows drew together as he read.

His destiny did not mean him to escape. Logie had been marked down,

and the circle of his enemies was narrowing round him. Flemington was

to go no farther, and he was to remain with Callandar to await another

message that would be brought to their bivouac on Huntly Hill, before

approaching nearer to Brechin.

He stood aside, the paper in his hand. Here was the turning-point; he

was face to face with it at last. He could not take part in Logie's

capture; on that he was completely, unalterably determined. What would

be the end of it all for himself he could not think. Nothing was

clear, nothing plain, but the settled strength of his determination.

He looked into the mellowing light round him, and saw everything as

though it were unreal; the only reality was that he had chosen his

way. Heaven was pitiless, but it should not shake him. Far above him a

solitary bird was winging its way into the spaces beyond the hills;

the measured beat of its wings growing invisible as it grew smaller

and smaller and was finally lost to sight. He watched it, fascinated,

with the strange detachment of those whose senses and consciousness

are numbed by some crisis. What was it carrying away, that tiny thing

that was being swallowed by the vastness? His mind could only grasp

the idea of distance . . . of space. . . .

Callandar was at his elbow, and his voice broke on him as the voice of

someone awakening him from sleep.

"These are my orders," he was saying, as he held out his own letter;

"you know them, for I am informed here that they are the duplicate of

yours."

There was no escape. Callandar knew the exact contents of both papers.

Archie might have kept his own orders to himself, and have given him

to suppose that he was summoned to Forfar or Perth, and must leave

him; but that was impossible. He must either join in hunting Logie, or

leave the party on this side of Huntly Hill.

"We had better get on," said Callandar.

They mounted, and as they did so, Wattie also got under way. His team

was now reduced to four, for the terrier which had formerly run alone

in the lead had died about the new year.

He took up his switch, and the yellow cur and his companions whirled

him with a mighty tug on to the road. He had been waiting for some

time in the bracken for the expected horseman, and as the dogs had

enjoyed a long rest, they followed the horses at a steady trot.

Callandar and Flemington trotted too, and the cart soon fell behind.

Beyond the crest of Huntly Hill the Muir of Pert sloped eastwards

towards the coast, its edges resting upon the Esk, but before the road

began to ascend it forked in two, one part running upwards, and the

other breaking away west towards Brechin.

"Callandar, I am going to leave you," said Archie, pulling up his

horse.

"To leave?" exclaimed the other blankly. "In God's name, where are you

going?"

"Here is the shortest way to Brechin, and I shall take it. I must find

a surgeon to attend to this arm. There is no use for me to go on with

you when I can hardly sit in my saddle for pain."

"But your orders?" gasped Callandar.

"I will make that right. You must go on alone. Probably I shall join

you in a few days, but that will depend on what instructions I get

later. If you hear nothing from me you will understand that I am busy

out of sight. My hands may be full--that is, if the surgeon leaves me

with both of them. Good-bye, Callandar."

He turned his horse and left him. The other opened his mouth to shout

after him, ordering him to come back, but remembered that he had no

authority to do so. Flemington was independent of him; he belonged to

a different branch of the King's service, and although he had fought

at Culloden he was under different orders. He had merely accompanied

his party, and Callandar knew very well that, though his junior in

years, he was a much more important person than himself. The nature of

Archie's duties demanded that he should be given a free hand in his

movements, and no doubt he knew what he was about. But had he been

Callandar's subordinate, and had there been a surgeon round the

nearest corner, his arm might have dropped from his shoulder before

the officer would have permitted him to fall out of the little troop.

Callandar had never in all his service seen a man receive definite

orders only to disobey them openly.

He watched him go, petrified. His brain was a good one, but it worked

slowly, and Archie's decision and departure had been as sudden as a

thunderbolt. Also, there was contempt in his heart for his softness,

and he was sorry.

Archie turned round and saw him still looking after him. He sent back

a gibe to him.

"If you don't go on I will report you for neglect of duty!" he

shouted, laughing.

CHAPTER XXI

HUNTLY HILL

CALLANDAR rode up Huntly Hill. The rose-red of the blossoming briar

that decks all Angus with its rubies glowed in the failing sunlight,

and the scent of its leaf came in puffs from the wayside ditches; the

blurred heads of the meadow-sweet were being turned into clouds of

gold as the sun grew lower and the road climbed higher. In front the

trees began to mantle Huntly Hill.

He had just begun the ascent at a foot's pace when he heard the whirr

of the beggar's chariot-wheels behind him, then at his side, and he

turned in his saddle and looked down on his pursuer's bald crown.

Wattie had cast off his bonnet, and the light breeze springing up

lifted the fringe of his grizzled hair.

"Whaur awa's Flemington?" he cried, as he came up.

The other answered by another question; his thoughts had come back to

the red-haired prisoner at the top of the hill, and it struck him that

the man in the cart might recognize him.

"What's your name?" he asked abruptly.

"Wattie Caird."

"You belong to these parts?"

He nodded.

"Then come on; I have not done with you yet."

"A'm asking ye whaur's Flemington?"

If Callandar had pleased himself he would have driven Wattie down the

hill at the point of the sword, his persistence and his pestilent,

unashamed curiosity were so distasteful to him. But he had a second

use for him now. He was that uncommon thing, a disciplinarian with

tact, and by virtue of the combination in himself he understood that

the troopers in front of him, who had been looking forward eagerly to

getting their heads once more under a roof that night, would be

disgusted by the orders he was bringing. He had noticed the chanter

sticking out from under Wattie's leathern bag, and he thought that a

stirring tune or two might ease matters for them. He did not see his

way to dispensing with him at present, so he tolerated his company.

"Mr. Flemington has a bad wound," he answered. "He has gone to Brechin

to have it attended to."

"Whaur did he get it?"

"At Culloden Moor."

"They didna tell me onything aboot that."

"Who tells you anything about Mr. Flemington? What do you know about

him?"

"Heuch!" exclaimed Wattie, with contempt, "it's mysel' that should

tell them! A ken mair aboot Flemington than ony ither body--a ken fine

what's brocht yon lad here. He's seeking Logie, like a'body else, but

he kens fine he'll na get him--ay, does he!"

Callandar looked down from his tall horse upon the grotesque figure so

close to the ground. He was furious at the creature's assumption of

knowledge.

"You are a piper?" said he.

"The best in Scotland."

"Then keep your breath for piping and let other people's business be,"

he said sternly.

"Man, dinna fash. It's King Geordie's business and syne it's mine. Him

and me's billies. Ay, he's awa', is he, Flemington?"

Callandar quickened his horse's pace; he was not going to endure this

offensive talk. But Wattie urged on his dogs too, and followed hard on

his heels.

All through the winter, whilst the fortunes of Scotland were deciding

themselves in the North, he had been idle but for his piping and

singing, and he had had little to do with the higher matters on which

he had been engaged in the autumn, whilst the forces of the coming

storm were seething south of the Grampians. He had not set eyes on

Flemington since their parting by the farm on Rossie Moor, but many a

night, lying among his dogs, he had thought of Archie's voice calling

to Logie as he tossed and babbled in his broken dreams.

He had long since drawn his conclusion and made up his mind that he

admired Archie as a mighty clever fellow, but he was convinced that he

was more astute than anybody supposed, and it gave him great delight

to think that, probably, no one but himself had a notion of the part

Flemington was playing. Wattie was well aware of his advancement, for

his name was in everybody's mouth. He knew that he was on Cumberland's

staff, just as Logie was on the staff of the Prince, and he wagged his

head as he thought how Archie must have enriched himself at the

expense of both Whig and Jacobite. It was his opinion that, knowledge

being marketable, it was time that somebody else should enrich himself

too. He would have given a great deal to know whether Flemington, as a

well-known man, had continued his traffic with the other side, and as

he went up the hill beside the dark Whig officer he was turning the

question over in his mind.

He had kept his suspicions jealously to himself. Whilst Flemington was

far away in the North, and all men's eyes were looking across the

Grampians, he knew that he could command no attention, and he had

cursed because he believed his chance of profit to be lost. Archie had

gone out of range, and he could not reach him; yet he kept his

knowledge close, like a prudent man, in case the time should come when

he might use it. And now Flemington had returned, and he had been sent

out to meet him.

The way had grown steep, and as Callandar's horse began to stumble,

the soldier swung himself off the tired beast and walked beside him,

his hand on the mane.

Wattie was considering whether he should speak. If his information

were believed, it would be especially valuable at this time, when the

authorities were agog to catch Logie, and the reward for his services

must be considerable if there was any justice in the world. They would

never catch Logie, because Flemington was in league with him. Wattie

knew what many knew--that the rebel was believed to be somewhere about

the great Muir of Pert, now just in front of them, but so far as he

could make out, the only person who was aware of how the wind set with

Archie was himself.

What he had seen at the foot of Huntly Hill had astonished him till he

had read its meaning by the light of his own suspicions. Though he had

not been close enough to the two men to hear exactly what passed

between them when they parted, he had seen them part. He had seen

Callandar standing to look after the other as though uncertain how to

act, and he had heard Archie's derisive shout. There was no sign of a

quarrel between them, yet Callandar's face suggested they had

disagreed; there was perplexity in it and underlying disapproval. He

had seen his gesture of astonishment, and the way in which he had sat

looking after Flemington at the cross roads, reining back his horse,

which would have followed its companion, was eloquent to the beggar.

Callandar had not expected the young man to go.

Wattie did not know the nature of the orders he had brought, but he

knew that they referred to Logie. He understood that those who

received them were hastening to meet those who had despatched them,

and would be with them that night; and this proved to him how

important it was that the letters should be in the hand of the riders

before they advanced farther on their way. He had been directed to

wait on the northern side of Huntly Hill, and had been specially

charged to deliver them before Callandar crossed it. He told himself

that only a fool would fail to guess that they referred to this

particular place. But the illuminating part to Wattie was the speech

he had heard by the bracken: it was all that was needed to explain the

officer's stormy looks.

"These are my orders," Callandar had said, "but you know them, for I

am informed that they are the duplicate of yours."

Archie had disobeyed them, and Wattie was sure that he had gone,

because the risk of meeting Logie was too great to be run. Now was the

time for him to speak.

He had no nicety, but he had shrewdness in plenty. He was sudden and

persistent in his address, and divining the obstacles in Callandar's

mind, he charged them like a bull.

"Flemington 'll na let ye get Logie," said he.

He made his announcement with so much emphasis that the man walking

beside him was impressed in spite of his prejudices. He was annoyed

too. He turned on him angrily.

"Once and for all, what do you mean by this infernal talk about Mr.

Flemington?" he cried, stopping short. "You will either speak out, or

I will take it upon myself to make you. I have three men in the wood

up yonder who will be very willing to help me. I believe you to be a

meddlesome liar, and if I find that I am right you shall smart for

it."

But the beggar needed no urging, and he was not in the least afraid of

Callandar.

"It's no me that's sweer to speak, it's yersel' that's sweer to

listen," said he, with some truth. "Dod, a've tell't ye afore an' a'm

telling ye again--_Flemington 'll no let ye get him!_ He's dancin' wi'

George, but he's takin' the tune frae Chairlie. Heuch! dinna tell me!

There's mony hae done the same afore an' 'll dae it yet!"

The officer was standing in the middle of the road, a picture of

perplexity.

"It's no the oxter of him that gars him gang," said Wattie, breaking

into the broad smile of one who is successfully letting the light of

reason into another's mind. "It's no his airm. Maybe it gies him a

pucklie twist, whiles, and maybe it doesna, but it's no that that gars

the like o' him greet. _He wouldna come up Huntly Hill wi' you, for he

ken't he was ower near Logie._ It's that, an' nae mair!"

Callandar began to think back. He had not heard one complaint from

Archie since the day they rode out of Fort Augustus together, and he

remembered his own astonishment at hearing he was in pain from his

wound. It seemed only to have become painful in the last couple of

hours.

"It is easy to make accusations," he said grimly, "but you will have

to prove them. What proof have you?"

"Is it pruifs ye're needin'? Fegs, a dinna gang aboot wi' them in ma

poke! A can tell ye ma pruifs fine, but maybe ye'll no listen."

He made as though to drive on.

Callandar stepped in front of the dogs, and stood in his path.

"You will speak out before I take another step," said he. "I will have

no shuffling. Come, out with what you know! I will stay here till I

get it."

CHAPTER XXII

HUNTLY HILL (_continued_)

CALLANDAR sat a little apart from his men on the fringe of the

fir-wood; on the other side of the clearing on which the party had

bivouacked Wattie formed the centre of a group. It was past sunset,

and the troop-horses, having been watered and fed, were picketed

together. Callandar's own horse snatched at the straggling

bramble-shoots behind a tree.

The officer sat on a log, his chin in his hand, pondering on the

amazing story that the beggar had divulged. It was impossible to know

what to make of it, but, in spite of himself, he was inclined to

believe it. He had questioned and cross-questioned him, but he had

been able to form no definite opinion. Wattie had described his

meeting with Archie on the day of the taking of the ship; he had told

him how he had accompanied him on his way, how he had been forced to

ask shelter for him at the farm, how he had lain and listened in the

darkness to his feverish wanderings and his appeals to Logie. If the

beggar's tale had been true, there seemed to be no doubt that the

intelligence officer whose services were so much valued by Cumberland,

had taken money from the rebels, though it seemed that he had

hesitated over the business. His conscience must have smitten him even

in his dreams. "I will say nothing, but I will tell you all!" he had

cried to Logie. "I shall know where you are, but they shall never

know!" In his delirium, he had taken the beggar for the man whose

fellow-conspirator he was proving himself to be, and when

consciousness was fighting to return, and he had sense enough to know

that he was not speaking to Logie, it was his companion's promise to

deliver a message of reassurance that had given him peace and sleep.

"Tell him that he can trust me," he had said. What puzzled Callandar

was the same thing that had puzzled Wattie: Why had these two men,

linked together by a hidden understanding, fought? Perhaps Flemington

had repented of the part he was playing, and had tried to cut himself

adrift. "Let me go!" he had exclaimed. It was all past Callandar's

comprehension. At one moment he was inclined to look on Wattie as an

understudy for the father of lies; at another, he asked himself how he

could have had courage to invent such a calumny--how he had dared to

choose a man for his victim who had reached the position that Archie

had gained. But he realized that, had Wattie been inventing, he would

hardly have invented the idea of a fight between Flemington and

Captain Logie. That little incongruous touch seemed to Callandar's

reasonable mind to support the truth of his companion's tongue.

And then there was Flemington's sudden departure. It did not look so

strange since he had heard what the beggar had to say. He began to

think of his own surprise at finding Archie in pain from a wound which

seemed to have troubled him little, so far, and to suspect that his

reliable wits had been stimulated to find a new use for his injured

arm by the sight of Huntly Hill combined with the news in his pocket.

His gorge rose at the thought that he had been riding all these days

side by side with a very prince among traitors. His face hardened. His

own duty was not plain to him, and that perturbed him so much that his

habitual outward self-repression gave way. He could not sit still

while he was driven by his perplexities. He sprang up, walking up and

down between the trees. Ought he to send a man straight off to Brechin

with a summary of the beggar's statement? He could not vouch for the

truth of his information, and there was every chance of it being

disregarded, and himself marked as the discoverer of a mare's nest.

There was scarcely anything more repugnant to Callandar than the

thought of himself in this character, and for that reason, if for no

other, he inclined to the risk; for he had the overwhelmingly

conscientious man's instinct for martyrdom.

His mind was made up. He took out his pocket-book and wrote what he

had to say in the fewest and shortest words. Then he called the

corporal, and, to his extreme astonishment, ordered him to ride to

Brechin. When the man had saddled his horse, he gave him the slip of

paper. He had no means of sealing it, here in the fir-wood, but the

messenger was a trusted man, one to whom he would have committed

anything with absolute conviction. He was sorry that he had to lose

him, for he could not tell how long he might be kept on the edge of

the Muir, nor how much country he would have to search with his tiny

force; but there was no help for it, and he trusted that the corporal

would be sent back to him before the morrow. He was the only person to

whom he could give the open letter. When the soldier had mounted,

Callandar accompanied him to the confines of the wood, giving him

instructions from the map he carried.

Wattie sat on the ground beside his cart; his back was against a

little raised bank. Where his feet should have been, the yellow dog

was stretched, asleep. As Callandar and his corporal disappeared among

the trees, he began to sing 'The Tod' in his rich voice, throwing an

atmosphere of dramatic slyness into the words that made his hearers

shout with delight at the end of each verse.

When he had finished the song, he was barely suffered to take breath

before being compelled to begin again; even the prisoner, who lay

resting, still bound, within sight of the soldiers, listened, laughing

into his red beard. But suddenly he stopped, rising to his feet:

"A lang-leggit deevil wi' his hand upon the gate,

An' aye the Guidwife cries to him----"

Wattie's voice fell, cutting the line short, for a rush of steps was

bursting through the trees--was close on them, dulled by the

pine-needles underfoot--sweeping over the stumps and the naked roots.

The beggar stared, clutching at the bank. His three companions sprang

up.

The wood rang with shots, and one of the soldiers rolled over on his

face, gasping as he tried to rise, struggling and snatching at the

ground with convulsed fingers. The remaining two ran, one towards the

prisoner, and one towards the horses which were plunging against each

other in terror; the latter man dropped midway, with a bullet through

his head.

The swiftness of the undreamed-of misfortune struck panic into Wattie,

as he sat alone, helpless, incapable either of flight or of

resistance. One of his dogs was caught by the leaden hail and lay

fighting its life out a couple of paces from where he was left, a

defenceless thing in this sudden storm of death. Two of the remaining

three went rushing through the trees, yelping as the stampeding horses

added their share to the danger and riot. These had torn up their

heel-pegs, which, wrenched easily from a resistance made for the most

part of moss and pine-needles, swung and whipped at the ends of the

flying ropes behind the crazy animals as they dashed about. The

surviving trooper had contrived to catch his own horse, and was riding

for his life towards the road by which they had come from Edzell. The

only quiet thing besides the beggar was the yellow cur who stood at

his master's side, stiff and stubborn and ugly, the coarse hair rising

on his back.

Wattie's panic grew as the drumming of hoofs increased and the horses

dashed hither and thither. He was more afraid of them than of the

ragged enemy that had descended on the wood. The dead troopers lay

huddled, one on his face and the other on his side; the wounded dog's

last struggles had ceased. Half a dozen men were pursuing the horses

with outstretched arms, and Callandar's charger had broken loose with

its comrades, and was thundering this way and that, snorting and

leaping, with cocked ears and flying mane.

The beggar watched them with a horror which his dislike and fear of

horses made agonizing, the menace of these irresponsible creatures,

mad with excitement and terror, so heavy, so colossal when seen from

his own helpless nearness to the earth that was shaking under their

tread, paralyzed him. His impotence enwrapped him, tragic, horrible, a

nightmare woven of death's terrors; he could not escape; there was no

shelter from the thrashing hoofs, the gleaming iron of the shoes. The

cumbrous perspective of the great animals blocked out the sky with its

bulk as their rocking bodies went by, plunging, slipping, recovering

themselves within the cramped circle of the open space. He knew

nothing of what was happening, nor did he see that the prisoner stood

freed from his bonds. He knew James Logie by sight, and he knew

Ferrier, but, though both were standing by the red-bearded man, he

recognized neither. He had just enough wits left to understand that

Callandar's bivouac had been attacked, but he recked of nothing but

the thundering horses that were being chased to and fro as the circle

of men closed in. He felt sick as it narrowed and he could only

flatten himself, stupefied, against the bank. The last thing he saw

was the yellow coat of his dog, as the beast cowered and snapped,

keeping his post with desperate tenacity in the din.

The bank against which he crouched cut the clearing diagonally, and as

the men pressed in nearer round the horses, Callandar's charger broke

out of the circle followed by the two others. A cry from the direction

in which they galloped, and the sound of frantic nearing hoofs, told

that they had been headed back once more. The bank was high enough to

hide Wattie from them as they returned, but he could feel the earth

shake with their approach, which rang in his ears like the roar of

some dread, implacable fate. He could see nothing now, as he lay

half-blind with fear, but he was aware that his dog had leaped upon

the bank behind him, and he heard the well-known voice, hoarse and

brutal with defiant agony, just above his head. All the qualities that

have gone to make the dog the outcast of the East seemed to show in

the cur's attitude as he raised himself, an insignificant, common

beast, in the path of the great, noble, stampeding creatures. It was

the curse of his curship that in this moment of his life, when he

hurled all that was his in the world--his low-bred body--against the

danger that swooped on his master, he should take on no nobility of

aspect, nothing to picture forth the heart that smote against his

panting ribs. Another moment and the charger had leaped at the bank,

just above the spot where Skirling Wattie's grizzled head lay against

the sod.

The cur sprang up against the overwhelming bulk, the smiting hoofs,

the whirl of heel-ropes, and struck in mid-air by the horse's knee,

was sent rolling down the slope. As he fell there was a thud of

dislodged earth, and the charger, startled by the sudden apparition of

the prostrate figure below him, slipped on the bank, stumbled, sprang,

and checked by the flying rope, crashed forward, burying the beggar

under his weight.

James and Ferrier ran forward as the animal struggled to its feet,

unhurt; it tore past the men, who had broken their line as they

watched the fall. The three horses made off between the trees, and

Logie approached the beggar. He lay crushed and mangled, as quiet as

the dead troopers on the ground.