Mr. Cameron had taken up a fresh log, and now placed it carefully in position on the fire before answering. “I believe,” he said, with what certainly sounded like reluctance, “that there were not above a dozen there—to be precise, eleven men and a piper.”
Keith’s fingers closed on the arms of his chair. “Are you jesting, sir?”
“Not in the least,” replied the young man, without any trace either of amusement or of elation. “I know it to be a fact, because I spoke afterwards with their leader, MacDonald of Tiendrish. They used an old trick, I understand, to pass themselves off as more than they really were.”
He continued to look at the fire. Captain Windham, with a suppressed exclamation, had lowered his injured foot to the ground, and then remained silent, most horribly mortified. Two companies of His Majesty’s Foot turning tail before a dozen beggarly Highlanders with whom they had not even stayed to exchange shots! The solace, such as it had been, of reflecting that the recruits had in the end been surrounded and outnumbered, was swept clean away, for he knew now that they would never have come to this pass but for their initial poltroonery. Keith had lost all desire for further converse, and every instinct of patronage was dead within him. Why the devil had he ever asked that question?
“I think, sir,” observed his captor, turning round at last, “that it would be better, would it not, if you went to bed? I hope that you have been given everything that is necessary?”
“Everything, thank you,” replied Keith shortly. “And also, just now, something that I could well have done without.” He tried to speak lightly, yet nothing but vexation, he knew, sounded in his tone.
“I am sorry,” said the Highlander gravely. “I would not have told you the number had you not pressed me for it. Forget it, sir.” He went to the door. “I hope that your injured ankle will not keep you awake.”
That ill office was much more likely to be performed by the piece of news which he had presented to the sufferer. “Eleven men and a piper!” repeated Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots when the door was shut; and with his sound leg he drove his heel viciously into the logs of Highland pine.
Captain Keith Windham, unwillingly revisiting the neighbourhood of High Bridge, which was populated with leaping Highlanders about nine feet high, and permeated, even in his dream, with the dronings and wailings of the bagpipe, woke, hot and angry, to find that the unpleasant strains at least were real, and were coming through the window of the room in which he lay. He remained a moment blinking, wondering if they portended some attack by a hostile clan; and finally got out of bed and hobbled to the window.
In front of the house a bearded piper was marching solemnly up and down, the ribbons on the chanters of his instrument fluttering in the morning breeze. There was no sign of any armed gathering. “Good Gad, it must be the usual reveillé for the household!” thought the Englishman. “Enough to put a sensitive person out of temper for the rest of the day.” And he returned to bed and pulled the blankets over his ears.
At breakfast, an excellent meal, and a pleasant one also, where very civil enquiries were made concerning the night he had spent and the state of his injuries, Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he had not been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’spiobaireachd, adding that he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been. Keith was then thankful that he had not heard Angus.
When the meal was over he strayed to the window and looked out, wondering how he should occupy himself all day, but determined upon one thing, that he would not let these Camerons guess how bitterly he was mortified over the matter of the bridge. Outside the porch his host (save the mark!) was already talking earnestly to a couple of Highlanders, in one of whom Captain Windham had no difficulty in recognising the ‘cut-throat’ of the previous day; the other, he fancied, was the musician of the early morning. “I wish I could persuade myself that Mr. Cameron were putting a ban upon that performance,” he thought; but he hardly hoped it.
Presently the young laird came in. He was wearing the kilt to-day, and for the first time Keith Windham thought that there was something to be said for that article of attire—at least on a man of his proportions.
“Is not that your attendant of yesterday out there?” remarked the soldier idly.
“Lachlan MacMartin? Yes. The other, the piper who, I am afraid, woke you this morning, is his brother Neil.—Captain Windham,” went on the piper’s master in a different tone, “what I am going to tell you may be news to you, or it may not, but in either case the world will soon know it. To-day is Saturday, and on Monday the Prince will set up his standard at Glenfinnan.”
There was a second’s silence. “And you, I suppose, Mr. Cameron, intend to be present . . . and to cross the Rubicon in his company?”
“All Clan Cameron will be there,” was the reply, given with a probably unconscious lift of the head. “And as in consequence of this I shall be pretty much occupied to-day, and little at home, I would advise you, if I may, not to go out of sight of the house and policies. You might——” Ewen Cameron hesitated for a moment.
“I might find myself tempted to abscond, you were going to say?” struck in his captive . . . and saw at once, from the bleak look which came into those blue eyes, that his pleasantry did not find favour.
“I should not dream of so insulting you,” replied Ardroy coldly. “I was merely going to say that it might not be oversafe for you, in that uniform, if you did.” And as he was evidently quite offended at the idea that he could be supposed to harbour such a suspicion of his prisoner, there was nothing for the latter to do but to beg his pardon, and to declare that he had spoken—as indeed he had—in the merest jest.
“But perhaps this young mountaineer cannot take a jest,” he thought to himself when they had parted. “I’ll make no more—at least outwardly.” But he was not to keep this resolution.
And indeed he had little but occasional glimpses of young Ardroy or of any of the family that morning. The whole place was in a bustle of preparation and excitement. Tenants were (Keith surmised from various indications) being collected and armed; though only single Highlanders, wild and unintelligible persons, appeared from time to time in the neighbourhood of the house. Miss Cameron and Miss Grant seemed to be equally caught up in the swirl, and Mr. Grant was invisible. The only idle person in this turmoil, the captive Englishman, sat calmly on the grass plot at a little distance from the house, withThe History of the Adventures of Mr. Joseph Andrewsin his hand, half amused to see the inhabitants of this ant-heap—thus he thought of them—so busy over what would certainly come to nothing, like all the other Jacobite attempts.
And yet he reflected that, for all the futility of such preparations, those who made them were like to pay very dearly for them. Ewen Cameron would get himself outlawed at the least, and somehow he, whom Ewen Cameron had defeated yesterday, would be sorry. The young Highlander had certainly displayed towards his captive foe the most perfect chivalry and courtesy, and to this latter quality Keith Windham, who could himself at will display the most perfect rudeness, was never blind. And yet—a sardonically comforting reflection—a rebel must find the presence of an English soldier not a little embarrassing at this juncture.
It was partly a desire to show that he too possessed tact, and partly pure boredom, which caused Captain Windham, in the latter half of the afternoon, to disregard the warning given him earlier, and to leave the neighbourhood of the house. He helped himself to a stout stick on which to lean in case of necessity, though his ankle was remarkably better and hardly pained him at all, and started to stroll along the bank of the loch. Nobody had witnessed his departure. And in the mild, sometimes obscured sunshine, he followed the path round to the far side, thinking that could the little lake only be transported from these repellent mountains and this ugly purple heather into more civilised and less elevated surroundings, it would not be an ill piece of water.
Arrived on the farther side, he began idly to follow a track which led away from the lake and presently started to wind upwards among the heather. He continued to follow it without much thinking of what he was doing, until suddenly it brought him round a fold of the mountain side to a space of almost level ground where, beside a group of pine trees, stood three low thatched cottages. And there Captain Windham remained staring, not exactly at the cottages, nor at the score or so of Highlanders—men, women, and children—in front of these dwellings, with their backs turned to him, but at the rather puzzling operations which were going forward on top of the largest croft.
At first Captain Windham thought that the man astride the roof and the other on the short ladder must be repairing the thatch, until he saw that, on the contrary, portions of this were being relentlessly torn off. Then the man on the roof plunged in his arm to the shoulder and drew forth something round and flat, which he handed to the man on the ladder, who passed it down. Next came something long that glittered, then another round object, then an unmistakable musket; and with that Keith realised what he was witnessing—the bringing forth of arms which should have been given up at the Disarming Act of 1725, but which had been concealed and saved for just such an emergency as the present.
Now there came bundling out several broadswords tied together and another musket. But a man in a bright scarlet coat with blue facings and long white spatterdashes is altogether too conspicuous a figure in a mountain landscape, and Keith had not in fact been there more than a minute before a boy who had turned to pick up a targe saw him, gave a yell, and pointing, screamed out something in Gaelic. Every face was instantly turned in the intruder’s direction, and moved by the same impulse each man snatched up a weapon and came running towards him, even he on the roof sliding down with haste.
Captain Windham was too proud to turn and flee, nor would it much have advantaged him; but there he was, unarmed save for a staff, not even knowing for certain whether these hornets upon whose nest he had stumbled were Mr. Cameron’s tenants or no, but pretty sure that they would not understand English, and that he could not therefore convince them of his perfect innocence. Deeply did he curse his folly in that moment.
He had at any rate the courage not to attempt to defend himself; on the contrary, he deliberately threw his stick upon the ground, and held out his hands to show that they were empty. The foremost Highlander, who was brandishing one of those unpleasant basket-hilted swords, hesitated, as Keith had hoped, and shouted something; on which the rest rushed round, and as many hands as possible laid hold of Captain Windham’s person. He staggered under the impact, but made no resistance, for, to his great relief, he had already recognised in the foremost assailant with the broadsword the scowling visage of Lachlan MacMartin, and beside him the milder one of his brother Neil, Mr. Cameron’s piper. Even if they did not understand English, these two would at least know who he was.
“I am your master’s prisoner,” he called out, wishing the others would not press so upon him as they clutched his arms. “You had better do me no harm!”
In Lachlan’s face there was a sort of sullen and unwilling recognition. He spoke rapidly to his brother, who nodded and gave what was presumably an order. Reluctantly the clutching hands released their grip of Keith, their owners merely glowering at him; but they did not go away, though the circle now opened out a little. A couple of women had joined the group, and a small child or two; all talked excitedly. Keith had never thought to feel gratitude towards the wolf-like Lachlan, but at this moment he could almost have embraced him, since but for him and Neil his own might well have been the first blood on those resuscitated claymores.
His preserver now advanced, his hand on his dirk, and addressed the soldier, rather to his surprise, in English. “You may pe the laird’s prisoner,” he said between his teeth, “but why did you come up here?—You came to spy, to spy!” He almost spat the words in the intruder’s face. “And with spiess, who haf seen what they should not haf seen, there iss a ferry short way . . . either thiss,” he unsheathed an inch or two of his dirk, “or the lochan down yonder with a stone round the neck!”
“I am not a spy,” retorted Captain Windham haughtily. “I knew nothing of there being cottages here; I was taking a walk, and came upon you entirely by accident.”
“A walk, when yesterday your foot wass so hurt that you must ride the laird’s horse!” hissed Lachlan, bringing out all the sibilants in this not ineffective retort. “All thiss way for pleasure with a foot that iss hurt! And then you will pe going back to thesaighdearan dearg—to the red soldiers—at Kilcumein and pe telling them. . . . Ach, it will certainly pe petter . . .” And his fingers closed round the black hilt at his groin; Keith had never seen fingers which more clearly itched to draw and use a weapon.
But at this point Neil the piper intervened, laying his hand on his brother’s arm, shaking his head, and speaking earnestly in their native tongue, and Keith, concluding that a professional musician (if that term could possibly be extended to one who produced sounds like this morning’s) would be a man of peace, felt more secure, not knowing that in a fray the piper habitually gave his pipes to his boy and fought with the best. But he heartily wished himself back at the house again; it would have been far better had he taken his host’s warning to heart instead of making a foolish jest about it.
During the colloquy, however, there approached the group a handsome, venerable old man whom Keith had not previously noticed. He came towards them tapping the ground with a long staff, as if of uncertain sight, and said something first to Lachlan and then to Neil. The piper appeared to listen with attention, and on that turned to the captive.
“My father iss asking you,” he said, in a manner which suggested that he was seeking for his words in an unfamiliar tongue, “to permit him to touch you, and to pe speaking with you. He iss almost blind. He hass not the English, but I will pe speaking for him.”
“Certainly, if he wishes it,” replied Captain Windham with resignation, thinking that ‘permission’ to touch him might well have been asked earlier, and not taken so violently for granted.
Neil took his father’s hand, and led him up to the interview. The old man, who was obviously not completely blind, peered into the Englishman’s face, while his hands strayed for a moment or two over his shoulders and breast. He then addressed a question to his elder son, who translated it.
“He asks if you wass meeting acurrayesterday?”
“If I had any notion what acurrawas,” returned Keith, “I might be able to satisfy your father’s curiosity. As it is——”
“Acurra,” explained Neil, struggling, “iss . . . a large bird, having a long . . . a long . . .”
“It iss called ‘heron’ in the English,” interposed Lachlan. And he added violently, “Mallachd ort! wass you meeting a heron yessterday?”
The Erse sounded like an objurgation (which it was) and the speaker’s eyes as they glared at Keith had turned to dark coals. It was evidently a crime in these parts to encounter that bird, though to the heron’s victim himself it wore rather the aspect of a calamity. Ignoring this almost frenzied query he replied shortly to the official interpreter: “Yes, unfortunately I did meet a heron yesterday, which by frightening my horse led to—my being here to-day.”
Lachlan MacMartin smote his hands together with an exclamation which seemed to contain as much dismay as anger, but Neil contented himself with passing on this information to his parent, and after a short colloquy turned once more to the Englishman. “My father isstaibhsear,” he explained. “That iss, he hass the two sights. He knew that the heron would pe making Mac—the laird to meet with you.”
“Gad, I could wish it had not!” thought Keith; but judged it more politic not to give this aspiration utterance.
“And he asks you whether you wass first meeting Mac ’ic Ailein near watter?”
“If that name denotes Mr. Ewen Cameron,” replied Keith, “I did. Near a good deal of ‘watter’.”
This was passed on to the seer, involving the repetition of a word which sounded to Captain Windham like “whisky,” and roused in his mind a conjecture that the old man was demanding, or about to demand, that beverage. None, however, was produced, and after thanking the Englishman, in a very courtly way, through the medium of his son, the soothsayer departed again, shaking his head and muttering to himself; and Keith saw him, when he reached the cottages, sit down upon a bench outside the largest and appear to fall into a reverie.
Directly he was safely there, Lachlan MacMartin reverted with startling suddenness to his former character and subject of conversation.
“You haf seen what you should not haf seen, redcoat!” he repeated fiercely. “Pefore you go away from thiss place you shall be swearing to keep silence!”
“That I certainly shall not swear to do,” replied Captain Windham promptly. “I am not accustomed to take an oath at any man’s bidding, least of all at a rebel’s.”
Again the dark flame shone in the Highlander’s eyes.
“And you think that we will pe letting you go, Sassenach?”
“I think that you will be extremely sorry for the consequences if you do not,” returned the soldier. “You know quite well that if you lay a finger upon me you will have to answer for it to your master or chief, or whatever he is!”
“We are the foster-brothers of Mac ’ic Ailein,” responded Lachlan slowly. (“What, all of you?” interjected Keith. “I wish him joy of you!”) “He knows that all we do iss done for him. If we should pe making a misstake, not knowing hiss will . . . or if you should fall by chance into the loch, we should pe sorry, but we could not help it that your foot should pe slipping, for it wass hurt yessterday . . . and you would nefer go back to Kilcumein to tell thesaighdearan deargwhat you haf peen seeing.”
He did not now seem to be threatening, but rather, with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, thinking out a plausible course of action with regard to the intruder, and it was a good deal more disquieting to the latter than his first attitude. So was the expression on the faces of the other men when Lachlan harangued them volubly in his own language. His brother Neil alone appeared to be making some remonstrance, but in the end was evidently convinced, and almost before the unlucky officer realised what was toward, the whole group had launched themselves upon him.
Keith Windham fought desperately, but he had no chance at all, having been surrounded and almost held from the outset, and in a moment he was borne down by sheer weight of numbers. Buttons came off his uniform, his wig was torn bodily from his head by some assailant who probably imagined that he had hold of the Sassenach’s own hair, he was buffeted and nearly strangled, and lay at last with his face pressed into the heather, one man kneeling upon his shoulders, while another tied his hands behind his back, and a third, situated upon his legs, secured his ankles. Outraged and breathless, the soldier had time for only two sensations: surprise that no dirk had yet been planted in him, and wonder whether they really meant to take him down and throw him into the lake.
The struggle had been conducted almost in silence; but conversation broke out again now that he was overpowered. Only for a moment, however; then, as suddenly, it ceased, and the heavy, bony knees on Captain Windham’s shoulder-blades unexpectedly removed themselves. A sort of awestruck silence succeeded. With faint thoughts of Druids and their sacrifices in his mind Keith wondered whether the patriarchal soothsayer were now approaching to drive a knife with due solemnity into his back . . . or, just possibly, to denounce his descendants’ violence. But he could not twist himself to look, for the man on his legs, though apparently smitten motionless, was still squatting there.
And then a voice that Keith knew, vibrating with passion, suddenly shouted words in Erse whose purport he could guess. The man on his legs arose precipitately. And next moment Ewen Cameron was kneeling beside him in the heather, bending over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Captain Windham, are you hurt? God forgive me, what have they been doing?Tied!” And in a moment he had snatched a little knife out of his stocking and was cutting Keith’s bonds. “Oh, why did I let you out of my sight! For God’s sake tell me that you are not injured!”
He sounded in the extreme of anxiety—and well he might be, thought the indignant Englishman, who made no haste to reply that, if exhausted, he was as yet unwounded. He made in fact no reply at all, while the young chieftain, white with agitation and anger, helped him to his feet. When at last he stood upright, hot and dishevelled, and very conscious of the fact, Captain Windham said, in no friendly tone:
“You were just in time, I think, Mr. Cameron—that is, if, now that you are here, your savages will obey you.”
From pale the young man turned red. “I warned you, if you remember,” he said rather low, and then, leaving Captain Windham to pick up his hat and wig and to restore some order to his attire, strode towards the silent and huddled group of his retainers, who had retreated in a body nearer to the crofts. Angry and humiliated as Keith felt, it was some consolation to him, as he brushed the pieces of heather off his uniform, and pulled his wig once more over his own short dark hair, to observe that, whatever their master was saying to them in the Erse, it seemed to have a most salutary and withering effect. Even the redoubtable Lachlan, who hoarsely uttered some remark, presumably an excuse, was reduced to complete silence, either by the very terse and vigorous reply which he drew upon himself, or by the threatening attitude of the speaker.
All this time the prophetic elder had sat at his cottage door listening, with his head tilted back in the manner of the blind, but taking no part in the reckoning which was falling upon the offenders, just as (presumably) he had sat throughout the assault. And having made short work of the culprits, the rescuer now seemed in haste to remove the rescued, and came towards him, his eyes still very blue and fierce.
“If you will allow me, Captain Windham, I will take you back to the house, away from these savages, as you rightly call them.”
“Thanks, I can return safely enough, no doubt,” replied Keith indifferently, pulling down his waistcoat. “There are no more encampments of them, I believe, on the way back.”
“I should prefer to escort you,” returned Ardroy, most acutely vexed, as was evident. And, since his vexation did not at all displease the Englishman, he picked up his staff and preceded him in silence off the plateau.
They had gone some way down the mountain path before Ewen Cameron spoke again.
“I had no right to accept your sword,” he said, in a voice still bitter with mortification, “if I could not protect you against my own followers. I would not have had this happen for a thousand pounds. I can offer you no apologies that are deep enough for such an outrage.”
“Except for the loss of some buttons, I am not much the worse,” replied Keith dryly without turning his head.
“But I am,” he heard the Highlander say behind him in a low voice.
Nothing more passed between them until they had arrived at the level of the loch, but by that time a rather remarkable change had come upon Keith. Much better and more dignified to make light of the outrage which he had just suffered than to exaggerate it by sulking over it. Besides, he was beginning to be sorry for the palpable distress of that punctilious young man, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy, who could not in very justice be blamed for what had happened.
So he stopped and turned round. “Mr. Cameron,” he said frankly, “I have no one but myself to thank for the rough handling I received up yonder. You warned me not to go far afield; and moreover I acted like a fool in staying there to watch. Will you forgive my ill-temper, and let me assure you that I shall think no more of the episode except to obey your warnings more exactly in future.”
Ardroy’s face cleared wonderfully. “You really mean that, sir?”
“Assuredly. I ran my head into the lion’s mouth myself. I shall be obliged if you will not mention my folly to the ladies; a soldier’s self-esteem, you know, is easily hurt.” His smile went up a little at the corner.
A sparkle came into Ewen Cameron’s eyes. “You are generous, Captain Windham, and I am not deceived by your plea for silence. I am so ashamed, however, that I welcome it for the sake of my own self-esteem.”
“But I mean what I say,” returned Keith. (He was quick enough in the uptake, this young chief of barbarians!) “It was the act of an utter fool for me, in this uniform, to stand gaping at . . . at what was going on up there. You know what it was, I presume?” he added, with a lift of the eyebrows.
“Naturally,” said Ewen without embarrassment. “It was that which brought me up there—most fortunately. But now,” he went on with a frown, “now I am not sure that I shall allow those arms to be carried by men in my tail who have so disgraced themselves and me.—Let us go on, if you will, for when I have escorted you to the house I shall return to deal with that question.”
“You seemed,” observed Keith, as they went on once more, “to be dealing with it pretty satisfactorily just now!” (So he proposed, as a punishment, to debar the offenders from the pleasures of armed rebellion!)
“At least, before I consent to their following me on Monday,” said the dispenser of justice, striding on, “they shall all beg your pardon!”
“Oh, pray excuse them that!” exclaimed Keith, not at all welcoming the prospect. “I should be horribly embarrassed, I assure you. Moreover, I can almost sympathise with their zeal—now that there is no prospect of my being thrown into the lake here with a stone round my neck.”
His captor stopped. “Was that what they were going to do?” he asked in a horrified tone.
“They spoke of it, since I would not promise to keep silence on what I had seen. They were quite logical, you know, Mr. Cameron, for what I saw was certainly not meant for the eyes of an English officer!”
“You were my prisoner—my guest—they had no excuse whatever!” declared the young man, wrath beginning to seize on him again. “Neil and Lachlan knew that, if the others did not. And Angus—what was Angus about not to stop them?”
“Is that the blind veteran who takes such an interest in the natural history of these parts?”
“What do you mean?” asked his companion.
“Why,” answered Keith, who was after all enjoying a kind of secret revenge by quizzing him, “that he was particular to enquire, through his estimable son, your piper, whether I had encountered a heron before I made your acquaintance yesterday.”
The mention of that fowl appeared for the second time to startle his host (though until that moment Keith had forgotten its effect upon him last night). “Ah, my foster-father asked you that?” he murmured, and looked upon the Englishman with a rather troubled and speculative gaze. But Keith had found a new subject of interest. “Is the old gentleman really your foster-father?” he enquired. “But of course he must be, if his sons are your foster-brothers.”
“I think,” said the foster-son somewhat hastily, “that you can return safely from here, so, if you will excuse me, Captain Windham, I will now go back to Slochd nan Eun.”
“To execute judgment,” finished Keith with a smile. “Indeed, I am not so devoid of rancour as to wish to hinder you. But if you do condemn your foster-relations to stay at home,” he added rather meaningly, “you will be doing them a good turn rather than an ill one.”
It seemed doubtful, however, if Ewen Cameron had heard this remark, for he was already striding lightly and quickly back in the direction of the mountain path, his kilt swinging about his knees as he went.
It was an odd coincidence that at supper that evening, after Angus MacMartin’s name had come up in some talk between Miss Cameron and Mr. Grant, the former should turn to Captain Windham and ask if he had seen theirtaibhsearor seer? Seeing instantly from Ardroy’s face that he was regretting the introduction of his foster-father’s name into the conversation, Keith made malicious haste to reply that he had contrived to get as far as the soothsayer’s dwelling, and that his reception there had been a memorable experience. Immediately the ladies asked if Angus had ‘seen’ anything while the visitor was there, to which Keith, with a glance at his host, replied with great suavity that such might well have been the case, since he appeared, towards the end of the visit, to be entirely withdrawn from outward events.
“He left the honours to his interesting sons,” he explained with a smile, “who entertained me so . . . so wholeheartedly that if Mr. Cameron had not appeared upon the scene I might be there still.” But at this point Ewen, with a heightened colour, forcibly changed the conversation.
In spite of a certain amount of turmoil earlier in the day, almost the usual Sunday calm lay on the house of Ardroy between five and six that evening, and in it Alison Grant sat at one of the windows of the long living-room, her arms on the sill, her cheek on her joined hands. Her father had gone to Achnacarry, Ewen was she knew not where, her aunt, she believed, in her bedchamber. It would be better, Alison thought, if she were in hers, upon her knees.
But she could pray here, too, looking out on this blue and purple loveliness of distance, and here she might get a passing glimpse of Ewen, busy though he was, and would not thus be missing any of these precious last moments of him. The sands were slipping so fast now . . .
Alison pulled herself up. The sands were indeed running out, but towards how glorious an hour! Prayed for and wrought for with so much faith and selfless devotion (as well as with so much crooked counter-plot and intrigue), it was to strike to-morrow, when his banner would proclaim to all the winds that the fairy prince of the hopes of a generation was here at last on Scottish soil. And to-morrow Ewen would lay his sword at those long-expected feet. Happy Ewen—happy to be among the faithful, when many were forsworn; happy in that he was a man and could play a man’s part. For what could a woman do but hope, and what had she to give but prayers!
Again Alison checked her thoughts, or rather, a new thought came to her. Why,shegave what no one else in wide Scotland had to give—Ewen himself!
For a moment she saw herself, as it were, irradiated by the splendour of that priceless gift; then, with a sudden terror, she knew that her will was not to a gift, but to a loan. She was only lending Ewen to the Prince. A gift is gone from one’s hands for ever; a loan comes back. She made this loan willingly—more than willingly; but as a free gift, never to be resumed—no, no!
The door in the far corner of the room opened, and Alison swiftly withdrew the hands that she was pressing over her eyes. Miss Cameron came in, looking exactly as usual in her Sunday paduasoy, not a hair out of place beneath her cap, and no sign of agitation or excitement on her firm-featured, pleasant visage. By only one thing was this Sunday of last preparations marked off from any other, that she wore at her waist the capacious black silk pocket in which she kept the household keys.
“Ah, there you are, child! Your father is not returned, I suppose? Where is Ewen?”
“I do not know, Aunt Margaret.” Alison’s voice seemed to herself a little unsteady, so, with some idea of covering this deviation from the usual she added, “Nor do I know where Captain Windham is got to either.”
“Captain Windham is down by the loch, my dear; I saw him set out in that direction. And I have my reasons for thinking he’ll not have gone farther.” There was an odd tone in Miss Cameron’s voice, and a twinkle in her eye, as she sat down on the window seat by the girl, plunging her hand into that capacious pocket of hers.
“’Twas our redcoat that I came to speak to you about. Alison, do you know what these are?”
She laid on the window-sill between them two buttons covered with gold thread.
“They look,” said Alison, studying them, “like the buttons on the lapels of Captain Windham’s uniform. I noticed this morning that some were missing. How did you come by them, Aunt Margaret?”
“Neil MacMartin brought them to me about half an hour ago. Before that they were reposing in the heather up at Slochd nan Eun, where their owner also reposed, very uncomfortably, I fear, yesterday afternoon. I can’t keep from laughing when I think of it!” declared Miss Cameron. “And, Alison, are not men the sly creatures! To think that Ewen knew of this yesterday evening, and said never a word!”
“Knew of what, Aunt Margaret?”
“I will tell you,” said Aunt Margaret, with visible enjoyment of the prospect. “It seems that yesterday afternoon my fine Captain very incautiously walked up to Slochd nan Eun by his lane, and arrived there just as the arms were being taken out of Angus’s thatch. Not unnaturally the MacMartins and the others thought that he was a Government spy, so they fell upon him, tied him up, and might have proceeded to I know not what extremities if Ardroy had not appeared in the very nick of time.”
“Oh, what a dreadful thing!” said Alison, aghast.
“Exactly Ewen’s view, as you may imagine. He has not yet forgiven the two MacMartins, whom he holds most to blame. Neil, in the greatest despair, has just been to beg me to intercede for him and Lachlan, and seemed to think that the restoration of these buttons, torn off, so I gathered, in the struggle, would go to prove their penitence.”
“Was Captain Windham at all hurt, do you think?”
“No, I do not think so, though I can quite believe that it was not his mother’s bosom he was in—you know the Erse saying. Neil admits that they had him on his face in the heather when they trussed him up, and that two of them sat upon him. Well, they are paying for it now. As you know, Ardroy is not in general easily angered, but when he is he is not easily pacified neither. Neil looks like a whipped dog; ’tis really comical, and I dare say Lachlan is ready to cut his own throat. I think you had best do the interceding, my dear; and you can give Ewen the buttons to return, for we women cannot restore them to Captain Windham without his knowing that his misadventure is no longer the secret that he and Ewen hoped it was.”
But Alison left the buttons on the sill as if she dreaded to touch them. “I wish, oh, I wish that mishap had not befallen Captain Windham!”
“Never fash yourself about Captain Windham, my lass; I warrant he can fend for himself. Ewen should not have brought him here at a moment so inopportune—just what a man would do, without thought of consequences! At the least he might have locked him up somewhere out of harm’s way, and not made all this parade of his being a guest and the like.”
“Ithink it fine of Ewen to have behaved so,” retorted Alison rather mutinously.
“Bless you, child,” said Miss Cameron, smiling, “so it is. I’d not have him a churl. But they must have made a compact, the two deceitful bodies, not to let us know. And to think that I asked the Captain at supper last night had he seen ourtaibhsear—do you mind of it? And he smiling and saying he was well entertained up at Slochd nan Eun!”
“But Ewen did not smile,” amended Alison. “He was displeased; I saw it, and wondered why.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember I saw him glower a wee. He’s not so deep as yon Englishman, I’m thinking. All the same, he can keep a secret. . . . Alison, my bonny lass, do you think he’ll have secrets from you when you are wed?”
“No,” said Alison, shaking her dark curls with a half-secret smile. “Or if he has, I’ll know ’tis something I had best be ignorant of.”
“Then you’ll make a dutiful wife, my dear,” pronounced Miss Cameron, smiling too.
“If ever I am a wife at all!” suddenly came from Alison with a catch of the breath, and she turned her head away.
Margaret Cameron, who was never known to show much emotion, who even now, at this last hour before what might prove so tremendous a dawn, seemed mainly occupied with amusement at Captain Windham’s misfortune, gazed at that little dark head, so beautifully and proudly set on its long neck, and a profound change came over her cheerful and practical face. Thirty years ago, in the Fifteen, she too had stood where Alison stood now, and had seen her lover go from her down the dark defile. She had never seen him return. . . . Alison did not know this, and even Ewen, though he had heard the story, thought that Aunt Margaret had long ago forgotten her tragedy.
“Oh, my dear, do not say that!”
Struck by the unfamiliar note in the elder woman’s voice, Alison turned her head quickly, and met the look in those eyes, nearly as blue as Ewen’s. It was a surprise to her, and yet—how could she have imagined that Aunt Margaret did not realise what she, Alison, risked . . . what they both risked!
“I did not mean that,” she exclaimed rather tremulously. “To be sure Ewen will come back, and we shall be wed some day; but I cannot help knowing, as he does, how even Lochiel himself has been torn in two by the Prince’s coming without the aid that was promised. But when Ewen goes to-morrow he shall never guess how cowardly my heart is.”
Miss Cameron bent forward and kissed her.
“That’s my brave lass! We shall both be as gay as the laverock, I dare say, till he’s fairly away, and then we can be as hare-hearted as we please, with no one to see. Hark, there’s the boy’s step! I’ll leave you, my dear; don’t forget to put in a word for poor Neil.”
‘Till he is fairly away.’ It echoed in the girl’s ears as Miss Cameron slipped from the room. Why, one could not even imagine what the house of Ardroy would be like without Ewen!
“Heart’s darling, are you there?” He had come in by the door from the hall, and now threw himself down beside her on the window seat. “Hardly a word have I had with you this livelong day! And now I must ride over to Achnacarry for Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh’s final orders, and shall not be back till late, I fear me. But all’s ready here, I think.”
“I wish I were more ready,” thought Alison, devouring him with her eyes. His bright hair grew down in such an enchanting square on his wide forehead, and a desire came upon her to pass her hand over some of its thick waves. “Ah, to see the Prince at last, at last, Ewen, with one’s own eyes!”
“You’ll see him yourself before long, Alison, I hope, in Edinburgh, or maybe Perth—or even, before that, at Achnacarry, if he honours it. Who knows? Meanwhile you can be practising your curtsy,m’eudail!”
“You do not know what His Royal Highness will do after the standard is set up?”
“I’ve not a notion. But I shall contrive to send you word of our movements, never fear. I suppose that somewhere or other we shall be obliged to try conclusions with Sir John Cope and the Government troops.”
The words reminded Alison of the commission just laid upon her. She took up the buttons from the window-sill and held them out towards him.
“Ewen, these have just been brought down from Slochd nan Eun.”
Her lover looked at them with a surprise not quite free from embarrassment. “They must have come off Captain Windham’s uniform,” he observed non-committally. “I will give them back to him.” And he took them from her.
“I must tell you that I have just heard how it was that he lost them,” confessed the girl.
Ewen’s mouth tightened. He laid the buttons on the sill again. “How came that? I had hoped——”
“Yes, dearest, I know; but the matter came out by reason of Neil’s bringing the buttons to Aunt Margaret this afternoon as a kind of peace-offering, it would seem. But, Ewen, what a shocking thing to have happened! I do not wonder that you were angry.”
By the laird of Ardroy’s looks, he was angry still. Alison trusted that he would never look at her, on her own account, in that stern way; and perhaps indeed Ewen realised that he was frowning on the innocent, for his brow relaxed and he took her hand into his as if in apology.
“Indeed, Alison, my heart was in my mouth when I came upon the MacMartins and the rest up there yesterday; for all I knew they had dirked Captain Windham. It seems they had thought of throwing him into the loch. He should not have gone so far from the house; I had warned him against it. But he behaved very well over the affair, and we agreed not to tell you or Aunt Margaret, so you must neither of you say a word to him about the matter this evening.”
“But he must have been greatly offended and incensed. It is true that he was very agreeable at supper, even though Aunt Margaret asked him had he seen Angus.” She paused, wrinkling her brows. “Ewen, do you think that he was only feigning?”
“No, I do not think so, although he was very angry at first—and naturally. Afterwards he made to treat the affair almost as a joke. But I do not think that in his heart he can have considered it as a joke. And considering that his person should have been held sacred, it was a very black disgrace for me, and I did well to be angry. I am still angry,” he added somewhat unnecessarily, “and I have not yet resolved whether I shall allow the two MacMartins to accompany me to-morrow.”
“Not take Neil and Lachlan to Glenfinnan—not take your piper and your right-hand man!” exclaimed Alison, almost incredulous. “But, Ewen, dearest, you will break their hearts for ever if you leave them behind! That punishment is too great! It was surely in ignorance that they sinned; you yourself said that Captain Windham should not have gone there, and in that uniform they must naturally have thought——”
“Neil and Lachlan didnotsin in ignorance,” interrupted Ewen sternly. “I had particularly told them that morning what was Captain Windham’s position here. The others, if you like, had more excuse, though why Angus did not prevent their setting upon him, as he could have done, I cannot think. The reason he gave was so——” He broke off, and pushed about the buttons on the sill for a moment or two, then, raising his head, said, “I have not yet told you, Alison, how Angus ‘saw’ last month that this fellow Windham and I would meet.”
“Angus ‘saw’ that you would meet!” repeated Alison, wide-eyed. “Oh, Ewen, why did you not tell me?”
“Because I forgot all about it till last Friday night. Yes, and what is more, it appears that we are to keep on meeting, confound him!”
“Do you then dislike Captain Windham so much?” asked Alison quickly.
“I do not dislike him at all,” Ewen assured her, “though I confess that I cannot quite make him out. But I have no desire for the continual rencontres with him which Angus promises me. And I am sure that Captain Windham cannot possibly view me with anything but dislike for capturing him—and now comes yesterday’s affair.—Don’t look so troubled, my heart!”
“Tell me what Angus said.”
Ewen looked at her a moment as if considering. “But you must not believe it too implicitly, darling; I do not. Though I admit,” he added, as though wishing to be quite just, “that the old man’s predictions have sometimes fulfilled themselves in an extraordinary way. . . . This one began by something about a heron.”
“That, then, was why you were so much surprised on Friday evening,” interpolated Alison in a flash. “I mean, when Captain Windham said that a heron had brought down his horse. I saw it, Ewen. But how——”
“I will tell you from the beginning,” said her betrothed. He got up and put a knee on the window seat. “It was that day at the end of last month when Lochiel’s message came about the Prince’s landing—you remember? Early that morning Lachlan had been very troublesome, wanting to shoot the heron that lives on the island in the loch, because his father had been having a vision about one. I forbade him to do it.—That reminds me, I have not seen the bird of late, but I do not think that Lachlan dare have disobeyed me.—After I had taken leave of you that evening, darling, and was just about to set off to Achnacarry, I met Angus by the Allt Buidhe burn. He had come down from Slochd nan Eun on purpose to see me, and he told me very solemnly that I should soon meet with a man whose destiny would in some unknown way be bound up with mine, and that I should meet him through the agency of a heron. Angus went on to say, ‘And as the threads are twisted at your first meeting, foster-son, so will they always shape themselves at all the rest—a thread of one colour, a thread of another.’ I said on that, ‘At all the rest, Angus? How many more, then?’ and he thought a while and answered, ‘I saw you meeting five times. The first time and the last were by water . . . but always the place changed. Oh, my son, if only I could know what it means!’ I asked then whether I ought to avoid this man, and Angus said, ‘You will not be able to avoid him; the heron by the waterside will bring you to him.’ ‘Ah,’ said I, ‘that then is why Lachlan wanted to shoot thecurrathis morning!’ But Angus shook his head and muttered, ‘A man cannot change the future in that way. What is to be will be.’
“I thought at the time, Alison,” went on Ewen explanatorily, looking down at her intent face, “that I should come on this man some day, if ever I did, when I was out with a fowling-piece, or something of the sort, and then, to tell truth, I forgot all about the matter in the stir of the news from Moidart; and thus it never crossed my mind when I encountered Captain Windham that he could be the man . . . till he mentioned the heron which startled his horse, and so indirectly—or directly, if you will—led to my overtaking him by Loch Oich, and our fight.”
“And is that all that Angus said?” asked Alison breathlessly.
“There was one thing more, I remember, for when, after he had assured me that I should not be able to avoid this man, I said, ‘He is an enemy, then?’ Angus replied, ‘That I cannot see. He will do you a great service, yet he will cause you bitter grief. It is dark.’ You know how vexatious it is when one with the two sights cannot see any more. It is like beginning to read a book of which the last pages are lost.”
“I do not think that I should wish to read any more,” said the girl, shivering a little, and she too got up from the window seat. “I have never before met anyone who had the gift so strongly as Angus, and indeed it is not canny. You are used to it, Ewen, since you have known him all your life, and I think you do not believe in it very much, either.”
“No, I do not,” admitted her lover. “But it would not be kind to tell my foster-father so.”
Alison looked out of the window for a moment, biting her lip hard. “Ewen, when ataibhsear‘sees’ any person it is nearly always a warning of that person’s imminent death!”
Ewen put his arm round her. “No, you are wrong, my dear. Ataibhsearhas been known to see a man’s future wife—sometimes, indeed his own. I wonder Angus never ‘saw’ you, sitting by the hearth here in the days when you were in Paris . . . long days those were for me,mo chridhe! Moreover, in this matter of the heron he ‘saw’ two people, and neither Captain Windham nor I can be going to die very soon, can we, if we must meet each other four times more?”
She looked up and met his expression, tender but half quizzical. “No, that is true.”
“Angus said nothing about death,” went on Ewen reassuringly. “And he seemed completely puzzled by his vision—or visions. If it were not for that heron by Loch Oich, I vow I should think that he had dreamed the whole business.”
“Have you told Captain Windham any of this?” asked Alison.
“Not I. He would only laugh at it, and I am sure, too, that he has no desire to meet me again, so that I should not be telling him anything to pleasure him.”
“Do you think,” suggested Alison slowly, “that Angus did not hinder his sons and the others from attacking Captain Windham because he thought that he would be better out of the way—on your account?”
Her lover looked down at her with a rather startled expression. “I never thought of that. . . . But no, I do not believe that was the reason—it could not have been, unless he was lying over the reason he gave me.”
“And what was that?”
“It was outrageous enough. He said that there was no cause for interference, because he knew that thesaighdear deargand I had yet several times to meet, so he would take no harm! What do you think of that? Had he not been an old man, and nearly blind, and my foster-father to boot, I declare that I could have shaken him when I went back to Slochd nan Eun and upbraided him and was given that for justification. It might very well have been Captain Windham’s wraith that I was to tryst with!” He glanced at the clock. “I must go, darling.”
“What will become of Captain Windham to-morrow?” asked Alison with a tiny frown.
“I do not know; it is a question I have to ask Lochiel.”
“One thing more, Ewen; did not Angus, after he had seen Captain Windham in the flesh yesterday, as I suppose he did—did he not tell you any more about him and . . . and the future?”
“Not a word. No, as I say, the last pages of the book are torn out . . . but then it is so with every book in which our lives are written.”
He had both his arms round her now, and Alison hid her eyes against his breast, for he was so tall that even the top of her head was scarcely level with his chin.
“Why do you say that, Ewen? Oh, Ewen, why do you say that?”
“What ails you, heart’s darling?” he asked, looking down at that dark head tenderly. “It is true. You’re not thinking, surely, that at the end of the book I can care for you any less, little white love? That’s impossible . . . and I think it’s impossible that I should care for you more, either,” he added, and put a kiss on the soft hair.
Alison clung to him, saying nothing, mindful of her proud promise to Aunt Margaret, but shaken with the knowledge of the red close of many a life across whose pages the name of Stuart had been written. Devotion to that name and cause was the religion in which she had been reared; but the claims of religion can sometimes make the heart quail . . . and Ewen was so splendid, so real and so dear! She forced a smile and raised her head; her eyes were quite dry. “I must not keep you from Lochiel; but when you return, Ewen, will you not tell your foster-brothers that you have remitted their punishment?”
“For your sake, Alison?”
“No, for his who is waiting for them! Is he not needing every sword that we can bring him?”
Ewen smiled down at her appreciatively. “You find clever arguments, miss! I never said that they should not join me later.”
“As ghosts? You may find yourselves trysting with wraiths, as you spoke of doing a while ago! Are they not capable of drowning themselves in the loch, particularly Lachlan, if you put that shame upon them, Ewen?”
“Yes,” said Ewen after a moment’s silence, “I’ll not deny that Lachlan, at least, might throw himself into Loch na h-Iolaire. I suppose that I must allow them to come with me, and if you see them before my return, you can tell them so, rose of my heart.”
The room was empty once more, almost as empty as it would be to-morrow. And, since there was no one to see, Alison put her head down upon her arms on the window-sill.
When she raised it again after some moments a small object rolled off the sill and fell tinkling to the floor—one of Captain Windham’s unfortunate buttons, which Ewen had forgotten after all to take with him. As Alison stooped to recover it the thought of its owner came sharply and forbiddingly into her mind, accompanied by all that she had just heard about him. Ewen’s destiny bound up with his . . . and he, yesterday, disgracefully handled by Ewen’s followers! Surely, however he had passed it off, he must retain a grudge about that, and it might be that in the future he would seize an opportunity of repaying the outrage. Alison wished for a moment that she were not Highland, and that belief in second sight did not run so in her blood. She could not shake from her mind the conviction that for old Angus to have seen the doubles of Ewen and the English officer meant the death of one or both of them within the year. It was true that the prediction had not seemed to trouble Ewen much, but he was a man, and had his head full of Glenfinnan at present. Yet there was Captain Windham, with nothing to do but to brood over the injury. Already, as Ewen had felt, he might well have a dislike to his captor. And did it not seem as though he had a horrid gift for dissimulation if, so soon afterwards, he could pretend to find amusement in the mortifying thing which had happened to him? What sort of a man was he really, this stranger who was to cause her Ewen bitter grief?
Alison jumped to her feet and stood with clasped hands. “I’ll go along the loch side, as though I were taking a walk, and if he is still there I’ll engage him in talk, and perhaps I can find out a little about him.” For in the house she could not so easily get speech with him alone, and to-morrow he would surely be gone altogether. Yes, she would do that; Captain Windham would never guess that she had come on purpose. She slipped the buttons into her pocket and left the room.
It was not difficult to find Captain Windham by the loch, for the delicate veils of birch foliage made no effective screen for his strong scarlet. Alison saw him, therefore, before he was aware of her presence. He was sitting a yard or two from the edge of Loch na h-Iolaire, on the stump of a felled pine, with his arms folded on his breast, staring at the water. Was he thinking of yesterday—meditating some revenge? She would never know, because she dared not refer, even indirectly, to that unlucky contretemps. The buttons were in her pocket only for safe keeping.
Alison came very slowly along the ribbon of track through the heather, her eyes fixed on the soldier’s unconscious figure. Ewen’s destiny inhishands! No, Angus had not said that exactly. Nor had Angus said that he was an enemy; on the contrary, he was to render Ewen a great service. . . . Technical enemy of course he was. She had his profile now, clear against a reddish pine-trunk; he looked rather sad. He was an enigma, neither friend nor enemy, and she would find out nothing, do no good . . . and wished she had not come.
Then the best was to turn and go back again. No, it was too late for that now. At that very moment Captain Windham must have heard her step, for he turned his head, sprang up, and, uncovering, came towards her between the pines.
“Pray do not let me drive Miss Grant away,” he said civilly.
“I . . . I fear I disturb you, sir,” said Miss Grant, really discomposed.
“Disturb me! But I was not asleep, I assure you, and in breaking into my meditations you may have been doing me a service.”
He smiled a little as he said it, but Alison looked at him warily, wondering what he meant by that remark. Here they were, alone together, and neither could see what was uppermost in the other’s mind.Hedid not know that strange thing prophesied of him, linking him to an enemy, nor could she in the least read what were his feelings with regard to Ewen, although it was a matter which concerned her so vitally. But, notwithstanding that she had a moment ago turned away like a coward from this interview, now she resolved to pursue it. Surely her wits could point out some road by which she might arrive at Captain Windham’s real sentiments?
Quite close to her was another convenient pine-stump, so she sank down upon it murmuring something about resting for a moment. Captain Windham stood beside her, his hands behind his back and his head bent, and before she had settled upon her own line of attack startled her by saying slowly, and even a trifle hesitatingly, that he had for the last hour been greatly wishing for the privilege of a few minutes’ conversation with her.
Considerably surprised at this reversal of parts, Alison glanced up at him. Was this remark a prelude to compliments or gallantry of some kind? No; Captain Windham’s manner quite disposed of that idea. Yet he said again, gravely, “I desire to ask a favour of you, Miss Grant.”
“Pray ask it, sir,” replied Alison, just a little stiffly.
There was a moment’s pause. “I believe that Mr. Cameron—Ardroy, I suppose I should say—has ridden off to see his Chief, has he not?” said the soldier.
“Yes,” said Alison, still less encouragingly.
“And by this time to-morrow——” Captain Windham left the sentence unfinished, and, to her surprise, walked away from her with bent head and stood at a little distance carefully pushing two or three fallen pine-cones together with his foot. Finally he stooped, picked one up, and came back, twirling it in his fingers.
“Miss Grant,” he said, studying it with apparent absorption, “I wish that I could make Ardroy some return for his generous treatment of me. This is not a mere figure of speech; I am in complete earnest. But the only return that I can make he would never take at my hands.” He raised his eyes and looked at her musingly. “What I wonder is, whether he would take it at yours.”
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Alison, lifting her head a trifle haughtily. Surely he was not going to offer Ewen money! She must prevent that at all costs, or Heaven knew what might happen!
Captain Windham threw away the fir-cone. “Will you believe, Miss Grant, that in what I am going to say I speak as a friend might (though I dare not presume to call myself one) and that I have but one aim in speaking—Mr. Cameron’s good and yours?”
Alison met his eyes, and they convinced her of his sincerity. She had scarcely time to be amazed. “Yes, I do believe it,” she said in a softened tone. “Please say what you wish, Captain Windham.”
“Then let me ask you,” said the Englishman earnestly, “whether you and Ardroy realise on what a hopeless adventure he is embarking? Is it possible that, on the strength of having captured two wretched companies of raw recruits—for indeed they were no more than that—the clans of these parts think that they will be able to defy the whole military force of the Crown? Yes, Miss Grant, it is advice that I should like to give Mr. Cameron, if he would only take it. Cannot you use your interest with him? Forgive me if I trespass on delicate ground, but . . . this is to be your home together, is it not? Think again before you let him stake it on so hazardous a throw! You know what happens to the property of a declared rebel. And he stakes more than his property, Miss Grant!”
His voice was very grave. Alison, who had heard him through, answered firmly, “Yes, I know that.” But the lovely colour was gone from her cheeks, and her hands were holding each other tightly.
“It is not too late, even now,” urged her companion. “If I choose to suppress the fact that I was brought here as Mr. Cameron’s prisoner, who is to gainsay my assertion that I came as a guest? Only keep him back from this crazy rendezvous to-morrow, which can but herald disaster, and he may be able——”
“Keep him back!” exclaimed Alison. She had got up from her tree-stump. “Do you suppose that I could? Do you suppose that if I could, I would?” Her voice trembled a little.
“But, Miss Grant, consider! If this young man, this Prince of yours, had come with an army——”
“Then it would have been safe to declare for him!” broke in Alison, and her dark eyes flashed. “Oh, if that is the English way of thinking, it is not the Highland! Because he comes alone, and trusts himself to us, is not that the best of reasons why we should follow him who has the right, Captain Windham, and who may yet prove to have the might also?”
There was a short silence between them. On the other side of the loch a curlew uttered its plaintive, liquid cry. Captain Windham drew himself up a little.
“If you feel thus about the matter, Miss Grant,” he said rather dryly, “there is no more to be said. I see that you will not take my offering. The best I can wish you, then, is that the affair may burn itself out as quickly as possible, for the longer it lasts the more victims there are likely to be . . . afterwards. And I would give much, believe me, to know that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy will not be among them.”
Alison held out her hand impulsively. And she had been thinking that he was brooding on revenge! “I thank you for those words, sir,” she said with great sweetness, “because I believe that you mean them. But, though I shall not easily forget your kindness, it is—forgive me—useless to discuss the matter further.”
Captain Windham kissed her hand in silence, and offered her his arm back to the house, if she were returning thither. Alison took it readily enough, and as they left the loch, conversing on indifferent topics, she had time to taste the surprise and relief which had come to her there. If Fate’s chosen instrument—supposing he were really that—were so well disposed towards Ewen, how could he in the future be used against him?
And yet, later in the evening, waiting for Ewen’s return, she found that, unreasonably perhaps, she disliked Captain Windham’s presumption that she could, if she tried, influence her lover to betray his convictions even more than the supposition that she could be induced to try. She felt that the soldier understood neither Highlanders nor Jacobites. But for his kindly and even generous intentions she had nothing but gratitude.
As for Keith Windham, whose meditations by Loch na h-Iolaire had moved him to an effort which surprised him, he told himself that he had never expected any other result. They were all blinded and besotted, these Jacobites. He wondered whether Miss Grant would tell her betrothed of his attempt. With Ardroy himself he naturally should not think of expostulating; to do so would be mere waste of breath.
There was no Ardroy at supper, though it appeared that he was expected back at any moment, and Keith shortly afterwards excused himself and withdrew to his own bedchamber, having no wish to be an intruder on the lovers’ last hours together, rebels though they were. But it was too early to go to bed, so once more he pulled a couple of books at random from the shelf on the wall, and settled down by the window to read. One of them he opened before he realised what it was, and found himself staring at ‘Most heartily do we beseech Thee with Thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord King——’ but ‘James’ had been neatly pasted over the ‘George’.
Captain Windham smiled. He held in his hand the Book of Common Prayer as used and amended by the nonjuring Episcopalian Jacobites, and saw with his own eyes the treason to which his ears might have listened earlier in the day. For though, on rising, he had forgotten that it was Sunday, this was a fact of which he had not long been suffered to remain ignorant, since after breakfast Miss Cameron had said to him in matter-of-fact tones—they were alone for the moment: “I doubt you will wish to attend Morning Prayer with us, Captain Windham, even if you be an Episcopalian, like most of the English, for I must not disguise from you that we pray, not for King George, but for King James.”
“‘Morning Prayer,’” Keith had stammered. “Is—do you—I had thought that you were all Presbyterians hereabouts . . . or Papists,” he added, suddenly remembering the old woman on Friday.
“Ah, not at all,” replied Miss Cameron composedly. “The MacDonalds of the mainland and the most of the Frasers indeed are Papists, but we Camerons are Episcopalians, and so are our neighbours, the Stewarts of Appin. But we can get to kirk but rarely, and to-day in especial, being, as you will understand, somewhat throng, we shall be obliged to worship at home.”
“And who——”
“Why, my nephew the laird, naturally,” replied Miss Cameron. “Though as Mr. Grant is with us, ’tis possible he may read the service to-day.”
“Leaving your nephew free to preach, no doubt?” suggested Keith, trying to control a twitch of the lip.
“Now you are laughing at us, sir,” observed Miss Cameron shrewdly, but with perfect good humour. “No, Ardroy does not preach. But I have the habit of reading a sermon to myself of a Sunday afternoon, and if you scoff any more ’tis likely the same exercise would benefit you, and I’ll be happy to lend you a volume of some English divine—Bishop Jeremy Taylor, for instance.”
Keith bowed and gravely assured her that if she saw fit to do this he would duly read a homily. But he had gone out into the garden smiling to himself. That model young man—he could not be more than five- or six-and-twenty—reading the Church service every Sunday to his household! He thought of the young men of his acquaintance in the army or in the fashionable world of London, the careless, loose-living subalterns, the young beaux of White’s. Ye gods, what ribald laughter would have gone up at the tale! . . . Yes, but not one of those potential mockers could have beaten Ardroy in stature or looks or at swordplay. Keith would not forget Loch Oich side in a hurry.
But he had not attended Morning Prayer.
Now he was rather wishing that he had done so, for he supposed that he would never again have the chance of seeing a young man who could fight in that style acting as chaplain. But perhaps Mr. Grant had superseded him; Keith had not enquired. At any rate Ewen Cameron was not engaged on particularly prayerful business at this moment, over at his Chief’s house, nor would he be on his knees to-morrow. Afterwards . . . well, it was likely that his relatives would have need to pray forhim!
He turned over the Prayer Book idly, and it opened next at the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the words of the Gospel leapt at him: ‘Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake . . .’
Though not much of a churchgoer himself, Captain Windham was shocked at the analogy which occurred to him, and closing the Prayer Book hastily, fell to wondering what was going to be done with him to-morrow; also, whose hand had retrieved and laid upon his dressing-table the two missing buttons from his uniform which he had found there a short while ago.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the beat of hoofs. They stopped in front of the porch, but he did not look out. Someone dismounted, then Keith heard Miss Grant’s voice, with her heart in it: “Ewen, you are come at last; it has been a long evening!”
“And will be a short night, Alison,” came the half-exultant reply. “We march at daybreak for Glenfinnan.” And from the sudden silence Keith guessed that the girl was in her lover’s arms. He moved away from the window and began to pace up and down. So there was to be no holding back. Ah, what a pity, what a pity!
Half an hour later he was back in his old place reading, but with a lighted candle at his elbow now, when there was a knock, and Ardroy himself came in, a big branched candlestick in his hand.
“You are not abed, Captain Windham! I must apologise, none the less, for so late a visit.”
There was a kind of suppressed elation about him, and his eyes were as blue as the sea.
“Your Highland nights are so light,” returned Keith, as he rose to his feet, “that it is hard to believe it late.” Why should he, who cared for no human being, feel regret that this young man was going to destruction?
“My excuse,” went on Ewen, setting down the light he carried, “is that I leave this house again in a few hours, and must speak with you first on a matter that concerns you.”
“You will be setting out for—the rendezvous of which you told me?”
“Yes. And before I go——”
“Mr. Cameron,” broke in the Englishman, “you gave me a warning yesterday to which I should have done well to listen. I suppose it is too much to hope that, at this eleventh hour, you will listen to one from me?”
As he said it he knew that he was a fool for his pains; that his words, uttered on that astonishing impulse, so contrary to his intention, were as useless as the little puff of air which at that moment entered by the open window and set the candles a-quiver. And over the bending flames the Highlander, looking very tall, gazed at him straight and unyieldingly.