Ewen told him why he should find it difficult, if not impossible, and why he dared not go to the change-house either. The farmer pronounced that he was right in the latter course, and then made the astonishing suggestion that ‘Jan Prescott here’ should run up to the house and bring the fugitive something to eat and drink. “Dunnot say who ’tis for, Jan; say Ah’ve a moind ti eat by river, if thou loikes.” And while Jan, with amazing docility, removed the birch twig which he had been twisting between his lips and betook himself up the bank, his companion questioned Ewen further as to the direction of his home.
“T’ other soide of t’ other river? T’ other river’s nobbut a couple of moiles away . . . Tell thee what, lad,” he exclaimed, slapping himself once more, “Ah’ll tak thee as far as t’ river on one of t’ nags. Happen thou canst sit a horse still?”
“Take me there!” Ewen could only stare in amazement.
“Aye. And when thou’st gotten to this river o’ thine, hoo medst thou cross it; happen there’s brig, or ferry?”
“No, there is a ford. The ford by which we all . . .” His voice died away. How long ago it seemed, that elated crossing last August after Glenfinnan!
“And when thou’rt on t’ other soide?” pursued Mr. Fosdyke.
“I’ll reach my home somehow, if I have to crawl there.”
“And who’lt thou foind theer—thy parents?”
“My aunt, who brought me up. My parents are dead.”
“No wife nor childer?”
“My wife is in France.” And why he added, “We were only married two days before parting,” Ewen did not know.
“Poor lad,” said Mr. Fosdyke. “Whoy didstna stop at home loike a wise man?”
Ewen, his head resting against the boulder, said, “That I could not do,” his eyes meanwhile fixed on the form of Mr. Jan Prescott, already descending the slope with a tankard in his hand and two large bannocks clasped to his person. Mr. Fosdyke turned and hailed him, and in another moment Ewen had started upon the bannocks, finding that he was famished, having tasted nothing solid since the halt at Laggan yesterday morning. And while he ate Mr. Robert Fosdyke unfolded his intention to his companion, who raised no objection, except to remark, “Happen thou’lt meet redcoats on t’ road.”
“Ah shall say t’ lad’s a drover o’ mine, then.”
“In yon petticoat thing?” queried Mr. Prescott, pointing at Ewen’s kilt.
“He shall have thy great-coat ti cover him oop.”
“Ah dunno hoo he’ll get intiv it, then,” returned Mr. Prescott. “See ye, Robert, Ah’d sooner he had a horse blanket than split ma coat.”
“He can have t’ loan of ma coat then,” said Mr. Fosdyke. “He’ll not split that.—Beasts all reet oop there?” he enquired.
“As reet as ivver they’ll be,” returned his partner with gloom.
“Ah knawed as we peed too mooch for them,” growled Mr. Fosdyke in a voice like subterranean thunder. “Goviment notice saays—well, nivver moind what, but ’twere main different fra what t’ cattle were loike. Hooivver, Ah weren’t comin’ all the way fra t’ other soide o’ York for nowt.”
“York?” asked Ewen with his mouth full, since this information seemed addressed to him. “You come from York, sir.”
“Fra near by. Dost thou knaw the toon?”
“No,” said Ewen.
“T’ sogers werena takin’ thee there yistiday?”
“It was Carlisle that I was going to in the end.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Fosdyke comprehendingly. “But some poor devils are setting oot for York, too, we hear. Thou’s best coom along wi’ us.” And giving his great laugh he began to embroider his pleasantry. “Thou doesna loike the notion? Whoy not? York’s a foine toon, Ah can tell thee, and more gates tiv it for setting rebels’ heads on than Carlisle. Ah lay we have a row o’ them ower Micklegate Bar come Christmas. And thou’st not wishful ti add thine?”
Ewen shook the imperilled head in question with a smile.
“No,” agreed Mr. Fosdyke, “best keep it ti lay on t’ pillow besoide they wife’s. If she’s in France, then thou’rt not a poor man, eh?”
“I am what you call a gentleman,” replied Ewen, “though I expect that I am poor enough now.”
“If thou’rt a gentleman,” pronounced Mr. Fosdyke, “then thou dost reet ti keep away fra York and Carlisle, aye, and fra Lunnon, too.—Noo, Jan, we’ll gan and see aboot t’ nags. Thou medst bide here, lad. Come on, Lassie.”
With tramplings and cracklings they were gone, dog and all, and, but for the yet unfinished food and drink, which were putting new life into Ewen, the whole encounter might have been a dream. As he waited there for their return he wondered whether Alison’s prayers had sent these good angels, which, to his simple and straightforward faith, seemed quite likely.
Presently the larger of the angels came back and helped him along the slope to the scene of his exploit at the bridge. Here was the satellite Jan with two stout nags, a flea-bitten grey and a black. A long and ample coat (certainly not Mr. Prescott’s) was provided for the Jacobite. “If thou wert clothed like a Christian there’d ha’ been no need for this,” said Mr. Fosdyke with frankness as he helped him into it; and then, the difficulty of getting into the saddle surmounted, Ewen found himself half incredulously riding behind the broad back of his benefactor over the brawling Spean, in his hand a stout cattle goad to assist his steps when he should be on his feet again.
In the two miles before they came to the river Lochy they had the luck to meet no one. There the clouds hung so low that the other side of the Great Glen was scarcely visible. When they came to the ford Ewen pulled up and made to dismount. But Mr. Fosdyke caught him by the arm. “Nay, if thou canst scarce walk on land, Ah doot thou’ll walk thruff water! Daisy will tak thee ower. Coom on, mare.”
The two horses splashed placidly through in the mist. On the other side Ewen struggled off, and got out of the coat.
“I cannot possibly recompense you, Mr. Fosdyke,” he began, handing it up to him.
“If thou offer me money,” said Mr. Fosdyke threateningly, “danged if Ah don’t tak thee back ti wheer Ah foond thee!”
“You can be reassured,” said Ewen, smiling, “for I have none. But in any case, money does not pass between gentlemen for a service like this. I only pray God that you will not suffer for it.”
“Ah’d loike ti see the mon that’s going ti mak me,” was the Yorkshireman’s reply. “And Ah feel noo as Ah’ve got even wi’ Goviment in t’ matter of t’ cattle,” he added with immense satisfaction. “And thou think’st me a gentleman? Well, Ah’m nobbut a farmer, but Ah’m mooch obliged ti thee for the compliment.” He shook Ewen’s hand. “Good luck ti thee, ma lad. . . . If thou lived a few hoondred moiles nearer, danged if Ah wouldna gie thee a pup o’ Lassie’s—but thou’rt ower far away, ower far!” He chuckled, caught the bridle of the grey, and the eight hoofs could be heard splashing back through the ford. Then silence settled down again, silence, and the soft folds of mist; and after a moment Ewen, leaning heavily on his goad, began his difficult pilgrimage.
Twenty-four hours later, very nearly at the end of his tether, he was hobbling slowly along the last mile of that distance which ordinarily he could have covered between one meal and the next. So slow and painful had been his progress, and with such frequent halts, that it had been late afternoon before he reached Loch Arkaig. And there he had seen the pitiful charred remains left by vengeance of Lochiel’s house of Achnacarry, almost as dear to him as his own. In that neighbourhood above all others he had feared to come on soldiers, but the Campbells in Government pay who had burnt and ravaged here had long ago done their work, and the place was deserted; there was nothing to guard now, and none against whom to hold it. A poor Cameron woman, whose husband had been shot in cold blood as he was working in his little field, had given Ewen shelter for the night. She told him, what he expected to hear, that the house of Ardroy had been burnt down by a detachment of redcoats; this she knew because the soldiers had returned that way, and she had heard them boasting how they had left the place in flames. Of Miss Cameron’s fate she knew nothing; but then she never saw anyone now that her man was gone; the burnt countryside was nearly depopulated. That Ewen had seen for himself already. And she said with tears, as, thanking her from his soul for her hospitality, he turned away from her door in the morning grey, “Oh Mac ’ic Ailein, for the Chief and the Chief’s kin I’d give the last rag, the last mouthful that’s left to me—but I’m asking God why He ever let Prince Tearlach come to Scotland.” And Ewen had no heart to find an answer.
Against his will the question had haunted him as he hobbled on. Just a year ago he had had the news of that coming; yes, just a year ago he had sat with Alison by the loch and been happy—too happy perhaps. So his father’s house was gone! But all the more was his mind set to reach Ardroy, to find out what had befallen those who had remained behind there: Aunt Margaret first and foremost, the servants, old Angus and his grandchildren, the womenfolk, the fugitives from Drumossie Moor . . . And here at last he was, going incredibly slowly, and accompanied by a dull pain in the thigh which by this time seemed an inseparable part of himself, but come to the spot where, after crossing the Allt Buidhe burn, one used to discern the chimneys of the house of Ardroy between the pines of the avenue. Since he knew that he would never see them thus again, Ewen did not look up, but he thought, as he crossed the burn on the stepping-stones, nearly overbalancing from fatigue, that one thing, at least, would be the same, for not even Cumberland could set fire to Loch na h-Iolaire.
Then, unable for the moment to get farther, he sank down among the welcoming heather for a rest. That, just coming into bloom, was unchanged; ‘thou art the same and thy years shall not fail’—the words floated into his head and out again, as he felt its springy resistance give beneath his body. Then, half lying there, twisting a tuft round and round the fingers of one hand for the pleasure of feeling it again, Ewen let his eyes stray to the spot where his father’s house and his had stood. And so strong were habit and memory that he could see its roof and chimneys still. He put a hand over his eyes to rub away the false sight . . . but when he removed it the chimneys were still there, and from one there floated a wisp of smoke. . . . Trembling, he dragged himself clumsily to his feet.
Like a man who dreams the impossible he stood a little later outside the entrance door of Ardroy. The whole affair was like a dream; for fire had certainly passed upon the house, and yet it was unharmed. The lintel, the sides of the stone porch were blackened with smoke; the ivy was brown and shrivelled, but not even the woodwork was injured. The house seemed occupied; the door stood open as on fine days it was wont to do; but there was not a creature about. Where was Aunt Marget?
Slowly Ewen went over the threshold, feeling the stone and wood like a blind man to make sure that it was real. He could have kissed it—his house that was not burnt after all. The sun was pouring into the long room; there was a meal laid on the table—for Aunt Margaret? Then where was she? The place was very silent. Perhaps—a horrible notion—strangers held Ardroy now, enemies. He would rather it were burnt. . . . But had harm befallen Aunt Margaret? He must find her; shame on him to be thinking first of the house!
He was giddy with hunger and fatigue, but he had no thought of approaching the table; he left the room and, holding very tightly by the rail, went up the stairs. The door of Miss Cameron’s room was a little ajar, so he pushed it gently open, too confused to knock. Where, where was she?
And he stood in the doorway rooted, because, so unexpectedly, everything in that neat, sunny room which he had known from a child was just as he had always known it . . . even to Aunt Margaret herself, sitting there by the window reading a chapter in her big Bible, as she always did before breakfast. The surprise of its usualness after his experiences and his fears almost stunned him, and he remained there motionless, propping himself by the doorpost.
It was odd, however, that Aunt Marget had not heard him, for she had not used to be deaf. The thought came to Ewen that he was perhaps become a ghost without knowing it, and he seriously considered the idea for a second or two. Then he took a cautious step forward.
“Aunt Margaret!”
He was not a ghost! She heard and looked up . . . it was true that her face was almost frightened. . . .
“I have come back!” said Ewen baldly. “May I . . . may I sit on your bed?”
He crashed on to it rather than sat upon it, hitting his head against the post at the bottom, since all at once he could not see very well.
But Aunt Margaret did not scold him; in fact he perceived, after a little, that she was crying as she sat beside him, and attempting, as if he were a child again, to kiss his head where he had struck it. “Oh, Ewen, my boy—my darling, darling boy!”
“Then did that poor woman dream that the house was burnt down?” asked Ewen some quarter of an hour later, gazing at Miss Cameron in perplexity, as she planted before him, ensconced as he was in the easy-chair in her bedroom, the last components of a large repast. For allow him to descend and eat downstairs she would not; indeed, after the first questions and emotions were over, she was for hustling him up to the attics and hiding him there. But, Ewen having announced with great firmness that he was too lame to climb a stair that was little better than a ladder, she compromised on her bedchamber for the moment, and, with Marsali’s assistance, brought up thither the first really satisfying meal which Ewen had seen for more than three months.
In answer to his question she now began to laugh, though her eyes were still moist. “The housewasset fire to—in a way. Eat,Eoghain, for you look starving; and you shall hear the tale of its escape.”
Ewen obeyed her and was told the story. But not yet having, so it seemed to him, the full use of his faculties, he was not quite clear how much of the house’s immunity was due to chance, to connivance on the part of the officer commanding the detachment sent to burn it, and to the blandishments of Miss Cameron herself. At any rate, after searching, though not plundering, the house of Ardroy from top to bottom (for whom or what was not quite clear to Ewen, since at that date he was safely a prisoner at Fort Augustus), firing about half the crofts near, collecting what cattle they could lay their hands on, the most having already been sent up into the folds of the mountains, and slaying a dozen or so of Miss Cameron’s hens, they had piled wood against the front of the house, with what intention was obvious. It was a moment of great anguish for Miss Cameron. But the soldiers were almost ready to march ere the fuel was lighted. And as they were setting fire to the pine-branches and the green ash-boughs the officer approached her and said in a low voice, “Madam, I have carried out my instructions—and it is not my fault if this wood is damp. That’s enough, Sergeant; ’twill burn finely. Column, march!”
Directly they were out of sight Miss Cameron and Marsali, the younger maidservants and the old gardener, seizing rakes and brooms and fireirons, had pulled away the thickly smoking but as yet harmless branches. “And then I bethought me, Ewen, that ’twould be proper there should be as much smoke as possible, to convince the world, and especially the redcoats, should they take a look back. A house cannot burn, even in a spot so remote as this, without there being some evidence of it in the air. So we made a great pile of all that stuff at a safe distance from the house—and, my grief, the trouble it was to get it to burn! Most of the day we tended it; and a nasty thick reek it made, and a blaze in the end. That’s how the house was burnt. . . . What ails you, my bairn?”
But this time Ewen was able hastily to dash the back of his hand over his eyes. He could face her, therefore, unashamed, and reaching out for her hand, put his lips to it in silence.
Not infrequently in the past had Miss Margaret Cameron animadverted on the obstinacy which lay hidden (as his temper was hidden) under her nephew’s usually gentle speech and ways. And now, at the greatest crisis in his life, when that life itself might hang upon his prudence, poor Miss Cameron was faced in her young relative with a display of this quality which really distracted her.
On that joyful and wonderful morning of his return she had allowed him (she put it so) to retire to his own bed in his own room ‘just for the once’; the garrets, the cellar or a bothy on the braeside being designated as his future residences. Ewen did not argue—indeed he was not capable of it; he fell into his bed and slept for fourteen hours without waking.
Once he was there, and so obviously in need of rest and attention, Miss Cameron had not, of course, the heart to turn him out; but she kept a guard of young MacMartins and others round the house ready to give tongue in case of a surprise, and promised herself to banish the returned fugitive to more secluded regions directly he was able to leave his room. But when, after three days, Ewen did so, it was not to retire into this destined seclusion; on the contrary, he began at once to limp about, acquainting himself with what had happened to his tenants in his absence, trying to discover the fate of those who had never returned—among whom was Lachlan MacMartin—visiting the nearer crofts in person, and interviewing the inhabitants of the farther at the house. Presently, he said, he would ‘take to the heather,’ perhaps; but, as his aunt could see, he was yet too lame for it; and, as for the garrets or the cellar, he was just as safe in his own bedchamber as in those uncomfortable retreats.
Yielding on this point with what she hoped was the wisdom of the serpent, Miss Cameron then returned to a subject much nearer her heart: Ardroy’s departure for France or Holland, which he would attempt, she assumed, as soon as he could hear of a likely vessel and was fit to undertake the journey to the coast.
“France?” queried Ewen, as if he had heard this suggestion for the first time. It was the fifth evening after his return; Miss Cameron was sitting knitting in the long parlour, and he stretched in a chair opposite to her. The windows were closely curtained, and young Angus MacMartin and a still younger brother prowled delightedly in the avenue keeping watch. “France, Aunt Margaret? What put that into your head?”
Miss Cameron laid down her knitting. “Because you cannot stay here, Ewen. And France is in my head rather than Holland or Denmark because—well, surely you can guess—because your wife is there.”
Ewen got out of his chair and limped to one of the windows. “I am not leaving Scotland at present,” he said quietly, and drew aside the curtain. “We need not therefore discuss the claims of one country over another.”
“You cannot mean to stay here at Ardroy! Ewen, are you daft? And, in the name of the Good Being, don’t show yourself at a lighted window like that!”
“’Tis so light outside that the candles do not carry,” returned her nephew. Indeed but for Miss Cameron’s prudence they would not have been sitting thus curtained, but in daylight. “Moreover no one will come to look for me here; the house has been ‘burnt,’” he went on, using the argument he had already used half a dozen times. And he continued to look out; at least Margaret Cameron thought that he was looking out. In reality he had his eyes shut, that he might not see Alison’s face—a vain device, for he saw it all the clearer.
His aunt was silent for a moment, for he had implanted in her mind a most disturbing doubt.
“Well,” she said at last dryly, “I should think that if Major Windham, to whom you owe so much, knew of this freak of yours, he would regret the sacrifices which he had made in order to save you, when this is the use to which you put your liberty.”
“I think Major Windham would understand,” said Ewen rather shortly.
“Understand what?”
There was no answer. “Then I doubt if the ghost of poor Neil, who died for you, or of Lachlan, would understand!”
Ewen turned at that, but stayed where he was. “Poor Neil indeed; may his share of Paradise be his!” he said in a softened tone. “And Lachlan, too, if he be dead. Since you speak of my foster-brothers, Aunt Margaret, and reproachfully, then you must know that this is one reason why I do not wish to leave Ardroy, because it shames me to take ship for France myself and desert those others who cannot flee, for whose fate I am responsible. Moreover, I have started the rebuilding of the burnt crofts, and——”
“Trust a man to think that he is the only being who can oversee anything practical! I wonder,” observed Miss Cameron, “how much of rebuilding and repairs I have not ordered and supervised when you were nothing but a small wild boy, Ewen, falling into the loch and losing yourself on the braes above it!”
He hobbled over to her. “I know, I know. No laird ever had a better factor than you, Aunt Margaret!”
Miss Cameron’s knitting slid to the floor. “Had! Aye, I’m getting an old wife now, ’tis plain, that you dare not leave the reins to me for a year or so, while you take your head out of the lion’s mouth for a while.”
“No, no, you know that’s not my thought,” said Ewen, distressed. “I’d leave Ardroy to you as blithely as I did a year ago—I will so leave it . . . presently.”
“Aye, that you will do presently—but not by your own will. You’ll go off from this door as you left Fort Augustus a week ago, tied on a horse again, and your father’s house really in flames behind you—and all because you will not listen to advice!”
“You make me out more obstinate than I am,” said Ewen gently. “Your advice is excellent, Aunt Marget, but you do not know . . . all the circumstances.”
“That can easily be remedied,” said Miss Cameron with meaning. But to that suggestion Ewen made no reply.
Miss Cameron turned round in her chair, and then got up and faced him. “Ewen, my dear, what is wrong? What is it that is keeping you from getting out of the country? Surely it is not . . . that there is something amiss between you and Alison?”
Ewen did not meet her eyes. But he shook his head. “Alison and I——” he began, but never finished. How put into words what Alison was to him? Moreover, that which was keeping him back did stand between him and her—at least in his own soul. “Some day, perhaps, I will tell you, Aunt Marget,” he said quietly. “But I’d be glad if you would not discuss my departure just now.—You have dropped your knitting.”
He picked it up for her, and Margaret Cameron stood quite still, looking up uneasily at the height of him, at his brow all wrinkled with some pain of whose nature she was quite ignorant, at the sudden lines round his young mouth. She ended her survey with a sigh.
“And to think that—since we cannot get a letter to her—the lassie may be breaking her heart over there, believing that you are dead!”
Ewen took a step away, with a movement as though to ward off a blow. Then he translated the movement into a design to snuff the candles on the table behind him. After a moment his voice came, unsteady and hurt: “Aunt Margaret, you are very cruel.” And his hand must have been unsteady, too, for he snuffed the flame right out.
“’Tis for your own good,” replied Miss Cameron, winking hard at the engraving of King James the Third as a young man over the mantelshelf in front of her. Ewen relighted from another the candle he had slain, saying nothing, and with the air of one who does not quite know what he is doing. “At least, I’m sure ’tis not for mine,” went on Miss Cameron, and now, little given to tears as she was, she surreptitiously applied a corner of a handkerchief to one eye. “You cannot think that Iwantyou to go away again . . . and leave the house the . . . the mere shell of emptiness it is when you are not here!”
Ewen looked round and saw the scrap of cambric. In an instant, despite the pain it cost him, he had knelt down by her side and was taking her hands into his, and saying how sorry he was to grieve her, and assuring her that there was nothing, nothing whatever wrong between him and Alison.
Yet even then he made no promises about departure.
Nor had he made any a week later, when, one hot afternoon, he lay, reflecting deeply, on the bed in his own room, with his hands behind his head. Although his wounded leg was already much stronger, it rebelled with effect against unremitting use all day, and to Ewen’s intense disgust he found it imperative to spend a portion of the afternoon thus. He regarded this necessity as not only burdensome but disgraceful.
The wind soughed faintly through the pines of the little avenue, and then passed on to ruffle the ivy outside his open window. A little brown, some of them, after their fiery ordeal, the topmost of those tough leaves were still there, and made just the same rustling noise as of old. And there Ewen lay, apparently at peace; back in his own room, among his modest possessions, his life and liberty snatched from the enemy, his home unharmed after all, and over the seas his young wife waiting for him in safety, the call of the sword no longer keeping him back from her, since the sword was shattered.
But he was by no means at peace; there was unceasing war in his breast. The way to Alison was barred by a spectre which he could not lay. It was in vain to tell himself that, by God’s mercy, his most unwilling lapse at Fort Augustus had done no harm, that no one of his own party knew of it, that it was not even a complete revelation. To his acutely sensitive Highland pride the mere fact of the betrayal of his Chief’s trust was agony. Alison could not heal that wound, which, now that Ewen was back again in his old surroundings, almost in his old life, seemed to have broken out bleeding afresh. There was only one man who could draw the poison from it, and Ewen knew neither where he was nor how he could come at him.
And meanwhile his dreams were full of Alison; and a night or two ago he had even seemed to hear her voice in one, asking in so pitiful and faint an accent why he delayed to come to her, now that honour no longer forbade it. She was so lonely . . .
Ewen sighed deeply, and withdrew his hands from beneath his head. The double scar on his right palm caught his eye for an instant. He wondered, not by any means for the first time, whether Windham had heard of his escape; if he had, he would know that he had indeed given him his life—yes, even by his refusal to witness against him, since that was the direct cause of the prisoner’s being taken over the Spean, where he had met and seized his great opportunity. To judge by the Englishman’s palpable distress at their farewell interview, Windham would be exceedingly glad of the news of his escape. Some day, perhaps, he might contrive to get a letter conveyed to his hands. He would like to tell him in person. But he was never to see him again, so it seemed, for the five meetings were over. Again he counted them: here, at Edinburgh, on Beinn Laoigh, at Fort Augustus. And suddenly his pulse quickened with pleasure—that made four, only four! . . . No, of course, there had been two at Fort Augustus. . . . Yet what (save his own recapture) stood now in the way of their meeting again some day?
But the ivy leaves went on rubbing their hands together, and through the window at the other side of the room came the clucking of Miss Cameron’s remaining hens, drowsy sounds both, and Ewen, pondering this question, began to fall asleep. Yet, just before he lost consciousness, there shot through his mind, apparently from nowhere, a last flicker of Angus’s prediction of a year ago . . . something about twisted threads . . . a thread of one colour and a thread of another. It had meant nothing at the time and he had totally forgotten it since. Now, between the two worlds of sleep and waking, it not only came back to him, but, with the curious pictorial clarity sometimes vouchsafed in that state, he seemed to see what it meant. Then picture and meaning faded, and he slept.
He slept quietly for a while, and then dreamt that a man had come into the room and was standing looking down at him. Yet somehow he knew that it was not a dream, that there was really someone there. He tried to rouse himself, but could not; and then the man laid a hand on his wrist. And at that, still half in a dream, he began to struggle and to speak.
“Let go my arm, you damned torturer! . . . No, not if you cut me in pieces! . . . Ah, my God, but there’s another way . . . another way!”
The hand had left his wrist quickly, and now it was laid on his shoulder, and a voice—Lochiel’s voice—said, “Ewen, wake up. No one is hurting you.”
He woke instantly, crying, “Donald! Donald!” half sure, all the time, that it was but a dream. Then he caught his breath and lay staring upwards. It was not indeed Lochiel, but it was his brother who stood there, looking down at him with a good deal of attention.
“Archie!” he gasped in the most complete astonishment. “You here! Why?”
“Don’t you think you would be the better of a doctor, my dear Ewen?” enquired his cousin cheerfully. “That is why I am here.”
“But there’s a price on your head,” protested Ewen. “You should not, should not have come here!”
Archibald Cameron smiled his gentle, quizzical smile and sat down on the bed. “I understand from Miss Margaret that you daily affirm the house of Ardroy to be perfectly safe. Moreover, one does not dictate to a physician, my dear boy, how and when he shall visit his patients. I heard how you escaped as you were being carried to Fort William, and I did not believe that it was your body which was found some days after in one of the pools of Spean. (You do not know, perhaps, that that is what has been given out at Fort Augustus.) But I guessed that that same body needed attention, so, being yesterday in Glendessary, I made my way hither. Now, let me look at those wounds of yours.”
And, though Ewen protested that these were quite healed and that he was only a trifle lame, Dr. Cameron insisted. The extent of the lameness, very patent when he made the young man walk about the room, evidently displeased him.
“When you get to France, Ewen, you must have the care of a good surgeon. I greatly fear that an important muscle in the thigh has been severed; but with proper treatment it may reunite again.”
“I suppose you have been talking to Aunt Margaret,” remarked his patient, sitting down upon the bed. “But, as I have told her, I am not going to France—yet. The muscle must reunite at home.”
Archie looked at him keenly. Hehadbeen talking to Aunt Margaret. “I am not advising France solely in the interests of your lameness, Ewen.”
“Well I know that! But I shall stay in Scotland for the present.”
“Until you are captured again, I suppose?” said Dr. Cameron, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back against the post at the bottom of the bed. “But I do not know on what grounds you assume that you will have so lucky an escape a second time.”
“Oh, I shall not be captured here,” said Ewen carelessly. “And when I can walk a little better, I shall very likely take to the heather for a while—like you!” And as Archibald Cameron raised his eyebrows he said with more warmth, “My God, Archie, I’d rather skulk in sight of Loch na h-Iolaire with nothing but my plaid and a handful of meal, even were there a redcoat behind every whin-bush, than lie in the French King’s bed at Versailles!”
“No doubt,” responded his cousin, unmoved. “And so would I. Yet I shall certainly make for France—if God will—when my tasks here are done. I hope indeed that it may not be for long; who knows but next year may see another and a more successful effort, with support from the French. The Prince——”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ewen eagerly, “what of the Prince? My last news of him was from a fellow-prisoner at Fort Augustus, MacDonald of Kingsburgh, who, though he is Sleat’s factor, brought him to his own house in Skye disguised as the maidservant of one Miss Flora MacDonald, and was arrested in consequence. I heard much from him, and laughable some of it was, too, for Kingsburgh’s wife and daughter seem to have been frightened at the queer figure that His Royal Highness made in his petticoats. But you will have later news of him, Archie?”
“The Prince was at the end of July in Glenmoriston,” said Dr. Cameron, “but he is now, I think, in Chisholm’s country, farther north. There is so plainly a Providence watching over him that I have no doubt he will be preserved from his enemies to the end; and it is therefore the duty of his friends to preserve themselves, too. Yes, I am going to read you a lecture,Eoghain mhóir, so you had better lie down again; I shall not begin until you do.” He waited until Ewen had grumblingly complied, and then began, ticking off the points on his fingers.
“Imprimis, you stubborn young man, there is this house, almost miraculously preserved from destruction, and, if you keep clear of it, likely to continue immune. There is your good aunt, who can well continue to look after it, but who, if you are found under its roof, will certainly be driven out of it and very possibly imprisoned. You are not on the list of attainted persons, and you have the advantage at this moment of an official report declaring you drowned. Most of all, have you not someone already in France who is breaking her heart for a sight of you?”
Lying there, Ewen changed colour perceptibly, and it was only after a moment that he answered: “There are broken hearts in plenty, Archie, in Lochaber.”
“But I do not see, my dear lad, how they are to be mended by your offering up the fragments of Alison’s—and your own.”
Ewen uttered a sound like a groan, and, twisting over, buried his face in the pillow; and presently there emerged some muffled words to the effect that he longed to go to Alison, but that . . . and then something wholly unintelligible in which the word ‘honour’ was alone distinguishable.
Dr. Cameron looked down at the back of the uneasy auburn head with the affectionate tolerance which one might display to the caprices of a younger brother. “No, Ewen, to my mind honour points to your going—aye, and duty and common sense as well. You cannot help your tenants by remaining here; Miss Cameron can now do that much more effectively—so long as you do not compromise her by your presence. You cannot help the Cause or the Prince; you cannot help Lochiel;”—the head gave a sudden movement—“he is for France with me when the opportunity comes. Another day—that is a different tale; but ’tis likely there will never be another day for you if you persist in remaining here now. . . . And there is another point, which I hope you will pardon me for mentioning: is your wife going to bear you a child, Ewen?”
“How do I know?” answered Ewen in a stifled voice from the pillow. “Our happiness was so short . . . and I have had no letter.”
“Then, before you throw your life uselessly away,” said Archibald Cameron gravely, “it is your duty to make sure that there will be a son to follow you here, Mac ’ic Ailein. Do you wish your ghost to see strangers at Ardroy?”
No Highlander could ever affect to disregard that argument, and Ewen remained silent.
“And Alison—do you suppose that she found her wedded happiness any longer or more satisfying than you did? God knows, my dear Ewen, I hold that neither wife, children, nor home should stand in a man’s way when duty and loyalty call him—for, as you know, I have turned my back on all mine—but when duty and loyalty are silent, then he does very wrong if he neglects those ties of nature.”
And on that Archibald Cameron, conceiving that he had preached long enough, got up from the bed. Ewen was still lying with his face hidden: was there something on his mind, as Miss Cameron affirmed? The doctor went and looked out of the far window, and saw the lady in question scattering meal to her hens.
“Archie,” came from the bed after a moment or two, “if I go, it is only on one condition, which you can grant.”
“I?” said Dr. Cameron, turning round, rather surprised. Ewen had raised himself on to an elbow. He looked oddly pale and strained. “What is the condition,’ille?”
“That I see Lochiel first.” And over his fair skin there swept a wave of red.
It occurred to Dr. Archibald then how strange it was that Ewen, for all his intense devotion, had not yet asked news of his kinsman and Chief. But he looked doubtful. “I am afraid that would be difficult, because you are both disabled; you cannot travel to him, nor he to you.”
“Yes, I had thought of that,” said Ewen, now quite pale again. “But I must contrive it somehow.” And as Archie was silent, reflecting, he added, with a sharp note in his soft voice, “Is there any other reason why I should not?”
“Of course not—save that you will meet in France, please God.”
“That will not serve. I must see him before I leave Scotland. I know that he is no longer in Lochaber.” The short phrases were jerked out; even more so the last one: “Archie, whereishe?”
“He——” Archie was beginning, when unfortunately he heard Miss Cameron calling to him from below, possibly uttering a warning of some kind. He turned sharply to the window and never finished. But on Ewen the effect was of a man who has second thoughts about answering a question, and is not only mute, but turns his back upon the questioner.
In his present state of mind, it was quite enough, and next moment, to his visitor’s amazement, he had thrown himself off the bed with such violence that he staggered. “I knew it!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You will not tell me where he is because you have heard what I did at Fort Augustus—because Lochiel has heard it. I am not to be trusted! That is why you came, I believe—why you want me gone at any price from Scotland!” And as Archibald Cameron, already swung round again from the window, stared at him in consternation, Ewen added, clenching his hands, “I’ll not go! I’ll not be got rid of like that! I’ll get myself killed here in Lochaber . . . the only thing I can do in expiation.” And with that he sank down on the side of the bed and hid his face in his hands.
Dr. Cameron hastily left the window, but before his amazement allowed him words, Ewen was adding, in a strangled voice, “You are quite right, from your point of view, neither to let me see him nor to tell me where he is. But, Archie, I swear to you by my father’s memory that I did not do it willingly! How can he believe that of me!”
His cousin stooped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ewen,” he said with great gentleness, “I have not the least notion what you are talking about. What did you do at Fort Augustus? Nothing, I’d stake my soul, that your father’s son need ever be ashamed of. You would have let yourself be ‘cut in pieces’ first, eh? I was just on the point of telling you where Lochiel was; he is in Badenoch, hiding in a hut on Ben Alder with Macpherson of Cluny. Now,” he sat down and slipped his arm completely along the bowed shoulders, “will you tell me what is on your mind, and why you must see him?”
Thinking it over afterwards, Ewen knew why it had been such a comfort to tell Archie; it was that Dr. Cameron seemed to understand so well what he had suffered that he never tried to belittle the cause of it. Instead of attempting to minimise this he said that he would have felt exactly the same had such a terrible mischance befallen him. Only how could Ewen at any stage have imagined that Donald, if he heard of his lapse, would ever believe that he had made a disclosure willingly?
“I blame you for that, my poor Ewen,” he said, shaking his head. “You must surely have known that he would as soon suspect me as you, who have been like an elder son to him, who so nearly threw away your life for him at Fort William. . . . I think that’s the worst part of your confession, but as you say that I am not to suppress anything I must tell him that too, though it will hurt him.”
Ewen raised his colourless face, to which, however, a measure of tranquillity had already returned. “I am sorry for that; but you must not keep back a word. Tell him how I allowed myself to fall asleep when I suspicioned it might be dangerous; tell him that I insulted Lord Loudoun somewhat unworthily—hewould not have done that—tell him everything. You are only a proxy, you know, Archie—though a very satisfactory one,” he added gratefully. “There’s no other man save Lochiel that I could have told.Dhé, but I feel as if Ben Nevis had been lifted off me!”
Archibald Cameron gave his arm a little pressure. “Now ’tis my turn to make a confession to you. When I first came into this room I found myself emulating that Captain Greening of yours—whom, by the way, I should rejoice to meet on some good lonely brae, with a precipice near by. But, like your talking, my dear lad, my overhearing was accidental.”
“Do you mean that I was saying things in my sleep again? Archie, this is intolerable!”
“You bade me loose your arm when I touched you, and spoke of preferring to be ‘cut in pieces’ and of ‘another way’. You have just told me what that ‘other way’ was. Ewen, what was the first way, and who took it with you? You have not told me everything, after all.”
The young man was looking on the floor, and there was colour enough in his face now. “I do not very much wish to revive that memory. . . . But if you must know, I was near being flogged by order of the Lowland officer who captured me. He had been going to shoot me first—I’ll tell you of that anon. It was because he wanted . . . what they wanted and got at Fort Augustus.—No, do not look so horrified, Archie; he did not carry it out (though I’ll admit I believed he was going to). It was only a threat.”
“Then, if it was only a threat,” remarked Dr. Cameron, looking at him closely, “why did you call me a ‘damned torturer’ when I touched you?”
“I . . . Really, Archie, I cannot be responsible for everything I say in my sleep. I apologise, but if you were worth your salt you would give me some drug to cure me of the cursed habit!”
“I’m afraid the drug does not exist, my dear boy. When your mind is at peace you will not do it any more. And don’t you think that it would conduce to that state if you told me why you called me so unpleasant a name?”
Ewen gave him a little shake. “Mo thruaigh, Archie Cameron,” he said with vivacity, “I begin to think it was because you merit it with this persistence of yours! If I said that, I suppose I must have been remembering that when one has had a bayonet through one’s arm not long before, it is conveniently sensitive, that is all. But after a few experiments, Major Guthrie found that it was not sensitive enough. They knew better how to do things at Fort Augustus.”
Archibald Cameron still gazed at him, compressing his lips. “So the Lowlander tried ‘experiments’, did he? And do you still consider yourself a traitor, Ewen? I’d give you a rather different name, and so, I fancy, will Lochiel.”
“But I don’t mean you to tell Lochielthat! No, Archie, that was not confession—you got it out of me unfairly!”
“Unfortunately you made me promise to tell him everything,” retorted his cousin, smiling. “To turn to another aspect of this matter, then,” for Ewen was really looking unhappy, “it was, I suppose, to this Major Guthrie with a fancy for experiments that you were betrayed by the English officer who was your prisoner here—I might almost say your guest—last August. I hope that he did not go so far as to take part in these proceedings, too?—Bless us, what is wrong now?”
For this partial change of topic had proved far from soothing. With a sharp exclamation Ewen had got up from the bed.
“Good God, Archie, how did you hear that story? It’s not true—Major Windham did not betray me—he saved me!”
“Did he? Well, I’d far liefer hear that than the other thing. But that was what Lachlan MacMartin told us, when he came hotfoot to us at Achnacarry at the beginning of May.”
“Lachlan—Lachlanwent to Achnacarry!” exclaimed Ewen in amazement.
“Yes, he appeared there one day nearly crazy with rage and remorse because you had been captured while he had left you in order to get food. He wanted Donald to march against Fort Augustus and deliver you.”
Ewen had begun to limp distractedly about the room. “I did not know that. But, great heavens, what a story to get abroad about Major Windham! Archie, he saved my life at the last minute; I was actually up against the wall before the firing-party when he dashed in between at the risk of his own. I should not be here now for you to bully but for him. It is true that I, too, God forgive me, was deluded enough for a short time to think his goodness calculated treachery, but at least I did not spread it abroad. And that is only part of what he has done and given up for me.” He gave his cousin a sketch of the rest. “I cannot think how Lachlan got such a mistaken notion into his head, for he was not there when I was found and taken, and he can hardly have met with that scoundrel Guthrie, who is capable of any lie.”
“What has become of Lachlan—is he here at Ardroy?”
“No, he has never returned, and no one knows anything of him; he has undoubtedly been either captured or killed, and much more probably killed, I fear. But I wish he had not spread this slander; ’tis at least to be hoped that no word of it reaches poor Windham!”
“I like to see in you, Ewen,” said his cousin, “the same concern for another man’s honour as for your own. But you know the Erse proverb, ‘A lie goes but on one leg’.”
“Like me,” commented Ewen with a smile. “Yet you think that in France I may go on two again?”
“You will certainly have a better chance of it. Then I may tell Lochiel, when I get back to Badenoch, that you consent to be reasonable?”
“Yes, thanks to you, I will go—since he is going. But I must wait a chance of getting off.”
“There’s a chance now,” said his cousin quickly; “but you must start for the coast to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” Ewen’s face fell. “So soon!” His glance swept round the room and lingered for a moment on the heathery distances visible through the window. “Very well,” he said with a little sigh. “Tell me what I must do—no,” he caught himself up, “first tell me a little about Donald. Those wounds of his, are they healed? Archie, I hope due care is being taken of him on Ben Alder?”
“You look as if you think I ought not to have left him,” said Dr. Cameron, smiling. “But he has had Sir Stuart Threipland of Edinburgh with him, and the wounds are healing, though slowly. And I assure you that I have been too busy following Mercury of late to pay much attention to Æsculapius; I have been to and fro in Lochaber and Moidart a great deal more regularly than the post. More by token I am become a sort of banker. For I suppose you did not hear in your captivity, Ewen, that at the beginning of May two French ships landed six barrels of gold—forty thousand louis d’or—in Moidart for the Prince; and with some ado, owing to the reluctance of Clanranald’s people to lose sight of it, I got it conveyed to Loch Arkaig, and it has been buried there against future requirements.—I know what you are going to say, ‘If only we had had that money earlier, when we needed it so!’”
Those were indeed the words which leapt to the young man’s lips. Yet since over the ruined fortunes of to-day there still danced, like will-of-the-wisps, the hopes of to-morrow, he fell to discussing the possible uses of this money with the man to whose endeavours (as he soon discovered) it was due that the French had not carried it off again when they heard the news of the disaster at Culloden. Archibald Cameron had indeed played post and banker to some purpose! Ewen looked at him with admiration not free from concern.
“Archie, are you duly careful of your own safety in these constant journeyings of yours, seeing that you are proscribed by name?”
His cousin smiled. “You may be sure that I am careful. Am I not pre-eminently a man of peace?”
Nevertheless not even Balmerino, the dauntless old soldier, was to make a more memorable end on the scaffold than Archibald Cameron. But his time was not yet—not by seven years; though, all unknowing, he had just been talking of what was to bring him there—the belated French treasure, fatal as the fabled gold of the river maidens to nearly every man who touched it.
“Now, for your getting off to France,” he resumed. “There has lately been a French privateer off Loch Broom, and she may very well be hanging off the coast farther south, therefore you should start for Moidart without a day’s delay. Since the twenty-fifth of July the coast is not so closely watched for the Prince as it was; the cordon of sentries has been removed. Make for Arisaig or Morar; at either you will be able to find a fisherman to take you off at night to the French vessel if she is still there. You speak French, so the rest should be easy.”
“And will Lochiel and the Prince try to leave by her?”
“I doubt it, for I fear she will be gone by the time Donald could reach the coast, or His Royal Highness either. But do not delay your departure on that account, Ewen, for the larger the party getting off from shore the more hazardous is the attempt—at least, if there are any soldiers left in those parts now. (There cannot, at any rate, be many.) Now I must be getting on my way.”
“You will not pass the night with us?” suggested Ewen. “Aunt Margaret seems to have a high opinion of the garrets as a refuge.”
Dr. Cameron shook his head. “I must push on; ’tis only five o’clock. God bless you, my dear Ewen, and bring us to meet again—even though it be not in Scotland!”
“I wish I were coming with you to Ben Alder,” said Ewen rather wistfully, halting after his visitor down the stairs.
“Trust me to do your business with Donald as well as you could do it yourself—nay, better, for I suspect that you would leave out certain episodes.—You’ll be rid of this fellow at last, Miss Margaret,” he said to the figure waiting at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve sorted him!”
“’Tis you have the skill, Archibald Cameron,” replied the lady, beaming on him. “None ofmyprayers would move him. You’ll drink a health with us before you go?”
And under the picture of King James the Third and Eighth the three of them drained their glasses to the Cause which had already taken its last, its mortal wound.
Next day Ewen kept his word, and set about his departure. A garron was found for him to ride, and two of his men who had followed him through the campaign were to accompany him to the coast. Yielding to pressure, he had agreed to take young Angus MacMartin with him to France as his personal servant. He could not refuse it to Neil’s memory and to old Angus’s prayers that a MacMartin should be about him still.
He was to leave at dusk, since travelling by night would be less hazardous, and a little before sundown he went up to Slochd nan Eun to take leave of his foster-father, with whom he had had little converse since his return, for Angus had been ill and clouded in mind. But he had borne the loss of his two sons with an almost fierce resignation; it seemed as if he had asked no better fate for them, especially for Neil. He had recovered from his illness now, but he was rather frail and still at times a little confused. A daughter looked after him in the old cottage which had once rung with the laughter of many children, and with Ewen’s own; but the old man was alone, crouched over the fire, with a plaid across his knees when Ewen, helping himself on the ascent with a staff, arrived at the door.
Half blind though he was, Angus’s hearing was as keen as ever, and, even with the unfamiliar halt in it, he knew his foster-son’s step.
“Mac ’ic Ailein, is it you? Blessings on your head! You have come to say farewell to me, who shall never see you again.”
Tremblingly and slowly he arose, and embraced the young man. “Neil and Lachlan shall go with you, son of my heart, that you take no harm before you embark on the great water.”
“Neil is dead, foster-father, do you not remember?” asked Ewen gently. “He gave his life for me. And Lachlan—I fear Lachlan is dead also.”
“It is true that I do not see them any more,” replied the old man, with a singular detachment, “for I grow blinder every day; yet I hear Neil’s pipes very well still, and when the fire burns up I know that Lachlan has put on a fresh peat for me. Good sons both, but I have between my hands a son who is dearer, though I did not beget him—O my tall and beautiful one, glad was the day when you came back after the slaughter, but gladder this day, for you carry your head out of reach of your foes!” He passed his hand lingeringly over the bright locks. “And yet . . . all is not well. I do not know why, but all is not well. There is grief on the white sand . . . grief and mourning, and a sound of tears in the wind that blows there.”
“Indeed there is grief,” said Ewen sighing, “grief enough in my heart at going, at leaving Alba and my father’s house. I was almost for staying, Angus, did I take to the heather; but the brother of Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has been here, and he bids me go. The Chief himself is going. But we shall return——”
“Some will return,” broke in Angus, sinking his head upon his breast. “Aye, some will return.” Sitting there, he stared with his almost sightless eyes into the fire.
Ewen stood looking down at him. “ShallIreturn?” he asked after a moment.
“I shall not see you, treasure of my heart . . . But these eyes will see my own son come back to me, and he too grieving.”
“But I fear that Lachlan is dead, foster-father,” repeated Ewen, kneeling on one knee beside him. “Is it not his wraith that puts the peats on the fire for you?”
“It may be,” answered the old man. “It may well be, for when I speak to him he never answers. Yet one night he stood here in the flesh, and swore the holy oath on his dirk to be avenged on the man who betrayed you to thesaighdearan dearg. My own two eyes beheld him, my two ears heard him, and I prayed the Blessed One to give strength to his arm—for it was then that you were gone from us, darling of my heart, and fast in prison.”
“But you surely do not mean, Angus,” said his foster-son, puzzled, “that Lachlan came back here after I was captured? You mean that you saw histaibhs. For in the flesh he has never returned to Slochd nan Eun.”
“Yes, for one night he returned,” persisted the old man, “for one night in the darkness. None saw him but I, who opened to him; and he would not go near the house of Ardroy, nor let any see him but his father, because he was sick with grief and shame that he had left you on Beinn Laoigh to the will of your enemy. Ah, Mac ’ic Ailein, did I not feel that many things would come upon you because of the man to whom the heron led you! But that I never saw—that he would betray you to thesaighdearan dearg! May Lachlan soon keep his oath, and the raven pick out the traitor’s eyes! May his bones never rest! May his ghost——”
Ewen had sprung up, horrified. “Angus, stop! What are you saying! That man, the English officer, did not betray me: he saved me, at great risk to himself. But for him the redcoats would have shot me like a dog—but for him I should not have escaped from their hands on the way to Inverlochy. Take back that curse . . . and for Heaven’s sake tell me that you are mistaken, that Lachlan did not swear vengeance onhim, but on the man who took me prisoner, a Lowland Scot named Guthrie. That is what you mean, Angus, is it not?”
But Angus shook his grey head. “My son swore vengeance on the man who was your guest, the English officer who found you in the bothy on Beinn Laoigh, and delivered you up, and told the soldiers who you were. Lachlan found this out from the talk as he skulked round the Lowlander’s camp in the dark. Vengeance on the Lowlander he meant to have if he could, but he swore it for certain against the other, the English officer, because he had broken your bread. So he took oath on the iron to rest neither day nor night till that evil deed was repaid to him—he swore it here on thebiodagon which you both saw blood that day by the lochan, and which you bade him not throw away. I think he meant to hasten back and lie in wait for the English officer as he returned over the pass of Corryarrick, and to shoot him with the musket which he had stolen from one of the redcoats. But whether he ever did it I do not know.”
Bewildered, and with a creeping sense of chill, Ewen had listened mutely in order that he might, perhaps, contrive to disentangle the true from the false in this fruit of the old man’s clouded brain. But with these last words came a gleam of comfort. No, Lachlan had not succeeded in any such attempt, thank God. And since then—for it was in May that Windham had returned over the Corryarrick—his complete disappearance pointed to but one conclusion, that he was gone where he could never keep his dreadful and deluded vow. Ewen drew a long breath of relief; yet it was rather terrible to hope that his foster-brother was dead.
Still, he would take what precaution he could.
“If, when I am gone, Angus,” he said, “Lachlan should return here, charge him most straightly from me that he abandon this idea of vengeance; tell him that but for the English officer I should be lying to-day where poor Neil is lying.—I wonder if anyone gave Neil burial,” he added under his breath.
But Angus heard. He raised himself. “Lachlan buried him when he came there after yourself,Eoghain, and found you gone, and was near driving the dirk into his own heart, as he told me. Yes, he stayed to bury his brother; and so when he came to the camp of the redcoats they had taken you to Kilcumein. But all night long he prowled round the tents, and heard the redcoats talk—he having the English very well, as you know—and tried to get into the tent of their commander to kill him while he slept, and could not. So he hastened to Achnacarry, and found Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, and besought him to go with the clan and besiege the fort of Kilcumein and take you out of it; but the Chief had not enough men. So Lachlan came here secretly, to tell me that he had not been able to stay the redcoats from taking you, and that Neil had been happier than he, for he had died outside the door before they entered to you; and all that was left for him was to slay the Englishman—and so he vowed. But now, it seems, the Englishman is not to be slain?”
“A thousand times, no!” cried Ewen, who had listened very attentively to this recital, which certainly sounded as if it had come originally from Lachlan’s own lips, and some of which, as he knew from Archie, was true. “Remember that, if Lachlan should come here.—But I cannot understand,” he went on, frowning, “how, if Lachlan overheard so much of the soldiers’ talk, he did not overhear the truth, and learn how Major Windham ran in and saved me from being shot. Surely that is the matter which must most have engaged their tongues, and in that there was no question of delivering me up.”
“I do not know what more my son heard,” said Angus slowly, “but, when a man hates another, does not his ear seek to hear the evil he may have done rather than the good?”
“Yes, I suppose he did hate Major Windham,” said Ewen thoughtfully. “That was the reason then—he wanted a pretext. . . . Indeed I must thank God that he never got a chance of carrying out his vow. And, from his long absence, I fear—nay, I am sure—that he has joined poor Neil. Alas, both my brothers slain through me, and Neil’s children fatherless!”
“But AngusOggoes with you, is it not, son of my heart, that he too may put his breast between you and your foes?”
‘That he shall never do’, thought Ewen. “Yes, he goes with me. Give me your blessing, foster-father; and when I come again, even if your eyes do not see me, shall your hands not touch me, as they do now?” And he guided the old hands to his shoulders as he knelt there.
“No, I shall not touch you, treasure of my heart,” said Angus, while his fingers roved over him. “And I cannot see whether you will ever come back again, nor even whether you will sail over the great water away from your foes. All is dark . . . and the wind that comes off the sea is full of sorrow.” He put his hands on Ewen’s head. “But I bless you, my son, with all the blessings of Bridget and Michael; the charm Mary put round her Son, and Bridget put in her banners, and Michael put in his shield . . . edge will not cleave thee, sea will not drown thee. . . .” He had slid into reciting scraps of asianor protective charm, but he did not go through to the end; his hands fell on to his knees again, and he leant back and closed his eyes.
Ewen bent forward and threw some peats on to the fire. “Tell me one thing, foster-father,” he said, looking at him again. “Even if I never leave the shores of Moidart, but am slain there, or am drowned in the sea, which is perhaps the meaning of the wind that you hear moaning, tell me, in the days to come shall a stranger or a son of mine rule here at Ardroy?”
Angus opened his eyes; but he was so long silent that Ewen’s hands began to clench themselves harder and harder. Yet at last the old man spoke.
“I have seen a child running by the brink of Loch na h-Iolaire, and his name is your name.”
Ewen drew a long breath and rose, and, his foster-father rising too with his assistance, he kissed him on both cheeks.
“Whatever you have need of, Angus, ask of Miss Cameron as you would of me.”
“You are taking away from me the only thing of which I have need,” said the old man sadly. “Nevertheless, it must be. Blessings, blessings go with you, and carry you safely away from the white sands to her who waits for you . . . and may my blessings draw you back again, even though I do not greet you at your returning.”
When Ewen came slowly down the path again he found himself thinking of how he had descended it last August behind Keith Windham, nearly a year ago. The story of Lachlan’s vow had perturbed him, but now he saw it in a far less menacing light. Either his foster-brother’s unquiet spirit was by this time at rest, or the whole thing was a dream of that troubled imagination of the old seer’s, where the distinction between the living and the dead was so tenuous.
Soon he forgot Keith Windham, Angus and everyone. Loch na h-Iolaire lay before him under the sunset, a sunset so tranquil and so smiling that in its sleepy brightness, which mirrored all the mountains round, the loch seemed to hold the very heart of content. Ewen had the sensation that his heart, too, was drowned there. And by his own will he was saying farewell to loch and mountain, island and red crag. He remembered how Alison had said that he would be hard put to it to choose between her and them. Was she right?
There was a place where for a little there was no bank, but marshy ground, and where the water came brimming into the reeds and grasses, setting them faintly swaying. He went to it, and, stooping with difficulty, dipped a cupped hand into the water and raised it to his lips. Perhaps that sacramental draught would give him to see this scene as bright and sharp in dreams, over there in the land of exile whither, like his father, like all who had not counted the cost, he was going.
As he drank there was a loud croak over his head, and, looking up, he saw a heron winging its slow, strong way over the loch towards the sunset. It might almost have been the same heron which he and Alison had watched that evening last summer, when it had seemed to arrive from the western coast like a herald from him who had landed there. Now it was going towards the coast once more, as he, the outlaw, was going, and as his Chief and his fugitive Prince would soon be going. In a little year, between two flights of a heron seen over Loch na h-Iolaire, the whole adventure of ruin had been begun and consummated.
Well, if one’s life remained to one it was in order to come back some day and renew the struggle. Ewen took off his bonnet. “God save King James!” he said firmly, and turned away from the mirrored mountains to take the same path as the heron.
This sea-fog, Keith Windham decided, was worse than the inland mist; thicker, more woolly, more capricious. Yesterday, for instance, one had wakened to it, and all day it had cloaked sea and shore and the wild, tumbled mountains of the ‘Rough Bounds’. Yet towards evening it had suddenly lifted, and the night had been clear and moonlit. But this morning the white veil was down again, and only now, some hours after sunset, was it clearing away.
And this was all the more vexatious because in the silver clearness of last night he had distinctly made out a strange vessel—a Frenchman, he was sure—anchored somewhere off the isle of Rum. But in the day, thanks to that muffling fog, who knew whether she was still off the coast or no! Yet in a few minutes more, when the moon came up from behind the mountains, he hoped to be able to see as far as her anchorage; meanwhile, followed by his orderly, he rode slowly along the flat shore in the direction of Morar.[1]
[1]Pronounced Mórar.
No one could accuse Major Keith Windham of neglecting Lord Albemarle’s instructions; if anything, he went beyond them in his ceaseless vigilance. Quartered himself at Arisaig, he thence patrolled the coast in both directions, from Loch nan Uamh, the Adventurer’s original landing-place, to Morar of the white sands on the other, and had his grumbling men out in all weathers, at all hours of the day and night, and for any kind of false alarm. But he spared himself still less than them, taking little sleep and covering miles every day, often on foot. If fatigue, like virtue, were its own reward, then he had that recompense. And so far it was his only one.
But at least Keith felt tolerably certain that no fugitives had yet made their escape from his strip of coast, no fugitives of any kind. For, apart from using every endeavour to secure the person of the Pretender’s son, he had been instructed to prevent all communication with French vessels, of whom one or two might always be hovering off the coast. These nights, therefore, that this ghostly ship was visible, it naturally behoved him to be extraordinarily vigilant, since it was unlikely that she was there by chance; she was probably hanging about in hopes of taking off the prize that he was after, and he was duly grateful to the moon last night for showing her to him. And surely it was time for the moon to appear now! Keith put his hand impatiently into the breast of his uniform for a little almanac which he carried there, and, encountering a packet which he also carried, was swept at the touch of it away for a moment from shore and ship and moonrise.
Having left Fort Augustus for the coast so soon after Ewen Cameron had confided to his care the letter to his wife, Keith had had no opportunity of despatching it; moreover, why send that farewell letter now that its writer had escaped? So not knowing where else to dispose it, he still carried the packet with the lock of hair upon him, a material token of the tie between him and the foe who had captured him a year ago, and had held him in a species of bondage ever since. The thought had never formulated itself so definitely until to-night, but, by gad, it was true!
He had been hard put to it to conceal his exultation when, just before setting out from Fort Augustus for Moidart, he had heard of Ewen’s escape and disappearance; and this news had, ever since, been a source of the most unfeigned pleasure to him. His sacrifices had not been in vain; they had been well worth the making. He thought of Ewen back at Ardroy—hisdoing, that! Ewen would recognise it, too. He had not failed in everything!
And now he pictured Ewen lying hid in the mountains round Loch na h-Iolaire until the worst of the storm had blown over. He could not imagine him leaving Ardroy unless he were obliged, and surely, not being on the list of proscribed, he could contrive to elude capture in those wilds. His wife would doubtless get news of him somehow, return to Scotland and visit him secretly; and in the end, when the price had been paid by those who had not had his good fortune, and there was for the others an amnesty or some act of indemnity, he might be able to occupy his home again in peace. It had so happened, Keith believed, after the Fifteen.
Was then his hope that they should meet again some day so impossible of fulfilment now? It was true that if he himself succeeded in capturing the ‘Prince’, Ewen would not readily take his hand. However, no need to face that dilemma yet. But, in a sense, every day that ‘the young gentleman’ was still in Scotland brought nearer the hour when he must try to leave it, and if Lord Albemarle were right in supposing that he would make for this stretch of coast, already familiar to him, he must soon approach the snare laid for him there.
And the presence of that unknown ship last night seemed to indicate that the actual moment of that approach was very near. Ah! now at last he would be able to look for her, for the moon had pushed up over the craggy eastern summits at his back into a cloudless sky.