But it was pretty clear that he had finally consummated his own ruin, and when he heard the angry voice declaring its owner’s regret that he had overlooked his previous ill-conduct with regard to this misbegotten rebel, Keith fully expected the Duke to add that he intended to break him for his present. Perhaps that would come later; for the moment the Duke contented himself with requesting him, in language more suggestive of the guardroom than the palace, to take his —— face where he would never see it again. “And you need not think,” he finished, out of breath, “that you will save the rascally rebel who has suborned you from your duty; there are plenty other witnesses who will see to it that he hangs!”
But that Keith did not believe, or the Duke and Sir Everard would not have been so eager to secure his evidence. And as, at last, he saluted and rather dizzily left the tent where he had completed the wreck of his ambitions, it was resentment which burnt in him more fiercely than any other emotion. That it should be supposed that anyone—even a Prince of the blood—could bribe him into an action which revolted him!
Late as it was, he would much have preferred to start back to Inverness that evening, but his horse had to be considered. And, while he was seeing that the beast was being properly looked after, he was surprised to find himself accosted by an elegant young officer whom he recognised as one of the two aides-de-camp present at the recent scene.
“Major Windham, is it not? General Lord Albemarle requests that you will not leave the camp without further orders, and that you will wait upon him at some time after His Royal Highness’s departure to-morrow.”
“Do you mean, sir,” asked Keith bluntly, “that I am to consider myself under arrest?”
“Oh, my dear Major, by no means!” answered the young man, greatly shocked. “On the contrary! His Lordship—but I am being prodigious, indiscreet—recognised in you, it seems, an acquaintance, so do not fail to wait upon him to-morrow.”
“I will do so,” said Keith. “Meanwhile, can you tell me if a certain Major Guthrie of Campbell’s regiment is in camp?”
“Major Guthrie—la, sir, I’ve not the pleasure of his acquaintance. But stay, part of Campbell’s regiment marched the day before yesterday for Badenoch, so it is like the Major is gone with them.”
“If it be a question of further burnings and floggings, I am sure he will be gone with them,” commented Keith. “Perhaps it is as well. . . . Tell his Lordship that I will certainly obey his commands to-morrow.”
Once again he spent a night at Fort Augustus after a clash with authority. But this time it was a collision with a much more devastating force than Lord Loudoun. Cumberland was not likely to forget or forgive. And Keith felt quite reckless, and glad to be rid of the prudence which had shackled him since May. He had no more to lose now. If he could have shaken the life out of Guthrie it would have been some consolation. From Lord Albemarle’s message it did not seem as if he were going to be relieved of his commission after all; but, if he were, then, by God, he would get at Guthrie somehow, and challenge him!
When Cumberland first came to Fort Augustus he had been housed in a ‘neat bower’ which was specially constructed for him, and Lieutenant-General Lord Albemarle evidently preferred this abode of his predecessor’s to a tent. It was there, at any rate, that he received Major Windham next afternoon when the racket of the Duke’s departure was over.
William Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle, the son of King William’s Dutch favourite, was at this time forty-two years of age, but his portly habit of body made him look older. Plain as well as stout, he gave the impression of a kind but easily flustered nature.
“We met at Perth, did we not, Major Windham?” he asked, and as Keith bowed and assented the Earl said pleasantly, “I should like a few minutes’ conversation with you. You can leave us, Captain Ferrers.”
And when the elegant aide-de-camp had withdrawn, Albemarle, pacing up and down with short steps, his hands behind his broad back, began: “I must say that I am very sorry, Major Windham, that you felt constrained to take up such an attitude towards His Royal Highness yesterday.”
“So am I, my Lord,” returned the culprit, with truth. “But I had no choice. I hope your Lordship is not going to renew the same request, for there are some things which a man cannot do, and one of those is, to help hang a man who has spared his own life.”
“Is that so—the prisoner in question spared your life?” asked Albemarle with an appearance of surprise, though, thought Keith, unless he had not been listening he must have learnt that fact yesterday. “Surely you did not make that clear to His Royal Highness, who is as remarkable for clemency as for just severity!”
Keith looked at him askance; was my Lord Albemarle joking or sincere?
“No, Major Windham,” went on the new Commander-in-Chief, “I do not intend to renew the request, for I should not presume to flatter myself that I could succeed where one with so much stronger a claim on your obedience has failed. Your revealing this fact alters matters; I sympathise with your scrupulosity, and so must the excellent Prince have done had you but presented the case fairly to him. A pity, Major Windham!”
Keith inclined his head, but said nothing. A grim amusement possessed him, and he could not imagine why Lord Albemarle should be at pains to make this elaborate pretence.
“His Royal Highness’s zeal has been wonderful,” pursued the Earl. He sighed, sat down, and began to drum his fingers on the table beside him. “How I am expected to replace him I do not know. He has indeed accomplished most of his great task, but I am left with part of it still upon my hands—the capturing of the Pretender’s son, if indeed he has escaped the last search party of fifteen hundred men sent out from here and from Fort William three days ago. . . . And again, I fear that relations with the Scottish authorities may be sadly difficult.L’Ecosse est ma bête, Major Windham, as I think I said to you before, on a certain occasion when I was very indiscreet. Had I then had an indiscreet listener I might have harmed myself by my imprudence.” He stopped drumming and looked up. “I shall see what I can do for you, Major Windham,” he concluded, with a suddenness which took Keith’s breath away.
“Your Lordship . . .” he stammered, and found no more words. Albemarle smiled.
“The opportunity may shortly present itself of employing you. I must see. Meanwhile I wish you to remain here; I will arrange that with Major-General Blakeney and your colonel.”
And Keith murmured he knew not what. It seemed impossible that at Perth he should have made an impression so deep as to lead to this; and in a moment it appeared that there was another factor in the case, for Lord Albemarle, fidgeting with the sandbox on the table, revealed it.
“Years ago,” he said reflectively, “when I was a younger man, I used to know a lady—the most beautiful, I think, whom I have ever met in my life. Perhaps you can guess whom I mean? . . . I did not know when you brought me the despatch at Perth, Major Windham, that Lady Stowe was your mother; I have learnt it since. It would give me pleasure to extend to her son a trifle of help at a crisis in his fortunes.—No, say no more about it, Windham; ’tis but the payment of a debt to Beauty, who allowed unreproved worship at her shrine!”
And he raised his eyes to the roof of the neat bower, apparently absorbed in sentimental retrospect, while Keith, startled, grateful, yet rather sardonically amused, tried to picture this plain and unwieldy Anglo-Dutch peer paying his devoirs to a lady who had almost certainly made game of him behind his back. Or had she found him useful, like Lord Orkney, who, when Keith was a mere boy, had promised the pair of colours in the Royal Scots which had saved his mother so much trouble and expense—and had deprived him of any choice in the matter of a regiment.
But the adorer in question at this moment had now brought his eyes to the ordinary level again.
“You are not like the Countess, Major Windham,” he observed.
“My Lord, I am only too well aware of that. My half-brother Aveling resembles her much more closely. He is a very handsome youth.”
“I must make Lord Aveling’s acquaintance some day,” said the Earl rising. “Commend me meanwhile to Lady Stowe.”
“I shall not fail to do so, my Lord,” replied Keith, preparing to withdraw, but hesitating. Yes, this unlooked-for and melting mood was certainly that in which to proffer his request. “Your Lordship’s extreme generosity towards a disgraced man,” he went on, “emboldens me to ask a small favour, which is, that I may see Cameron of Ardroy once before he goes south to his trial—giving my most sacred word of honour that nothing shall pass between us relative to escape. I desire only to say farewell to him, and your Lordship, who has shown yourself so sensible of my obligation towards him——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted his Lordship, putting up a plump hand. “Yes, before he goes you shall see him, I promise you, Major Windham. But not at present—not at present,” he added, as if he felt that the line of his complaisance must be drawn somewhere. “Send me in Captain Ferrers, if you please, as you go out.”
So Keith left, meditating on the hopeful change in his outlook. It was strange that Lord Albemarle did not fear Cumberland’s wrath, if the Duke ever learnt of the favour shown to a man under his extremest displeasure. If it was solely for the sake of the beautiful Countess of Stowe that his Lordship was braving this possibility, the situation was still more ironical, for Keith knew well that his mother would not feel any particular gratitude for this clemency towards her elder son. She would rather that some special token of favour had fallen on the head of his young half-brother, who had no need of it.
The next few days went slowly by, and Keith began to wonder whether Lord Albemarle’s lenity were not going to end in nothing but the assurance to him of an idle existence at Fort Augustus. He was glad, however, to be there, for he could fairly well assure himself that Ardroy was not taken away without his knowledge. Enquiries revealed the fact that old Sergeant Mullins was no longer his gaoler, but Keith got speech with his successor, a Scot, and learnt that Ewen was to be taken on the twenty-fifth of the month to Fort William to be identified. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, fearing to wait any longer, he sought out the exquisite Captain Ferrers and begged him to recall to Lord Albemarle’s mind his promise that he should see the prisoner before departure; and in the afternoon was duly handed a signed order permitting an interview.
In thinking of Ewen, Keith had always pictured him where last he had seen him, in the upper room, light and wind-blown, and when he was conducted to the regions under the remains of the fort, he realised with something approaching dismay that Ardroy’s quarters had not been changed for the better. And as the door was opened, and he saw before him, down a few steps, a sort of cellar which seemed darker than it really was, and which smelt of damp, he was horrified, though in reality, the fort being of quite recent construction, its ‘dungeons’ were not nearly as noisome as their name suggested.
There was one small grated window, high up, and under this Ewen was sitting on a stool with his back to the door, reading, though there hardly appeared sufficient light for it. He did not turn his head. “Is that supper already, Corporal?” he asked. “What time is it then?”
“No, Mr. Cameron, nae supper, but an officer tae veesit ye.—Hae a care o’ yon steps, sir!”
But Ewen had turned on his stool, had seen who his visitor was, and was getting to his feet. He clashed as he moved, for he was in irons.
“Windham!” he exclaimed with an accent of surprise and pleasure. “This is very good of you! Where have you come from?”
And as Keith, distressed by everything, the darkness, the want of accommodation and the chains, stood rooted, Ewen, with more jangling, limped towards him, holding out a fettered hand. He was blanched by two months of semi-darkness, worn down by illness and insufficient food to the framework of himself, but he was shaven and respectably clothed, and he had all his old erectness of poise.
Keith took the proffered hand. “How long have you hadthoseon?” was his first question.
“These irons? Only for a few days. They have just come off a man imprisoned for a short time with me who had the distinction of helping the Prince to escape when he was in Skye, MacDonald of Kingsburgh, and when he was carried to Edinburgh they put them on me. I was flattered, not having the same qualification for them. Sit down, Major, on the stool he had, which still remains to me—or take mine, if you consider that less treasonable. Faith, no, I suppose Kingsburgh, who was never ‘out’, is less of a rebel than I.” He laughed, shuffled to a corner, and came back with another stool. “Now tell me how you came here, and what your situation is now? Mullins gave me some news of you—very scanty—in May. Are you quit of the cloud you drew upon yourself for my sake?”
“It is of yourself that we must speak,” said Keith, hoarsely, thrown off his balance by this unaffected cheerfulness, and deeply ashamed, all at once, of the cowardly ‘prudence’ which had left Ardroy without a letter. “Sit down; you should not stand, I am sure. How does your wound?”
Rather stiffly, Ewen sat down. “Quite healed, though the leg is weak. However, I am to ride thirty miles to-morrow, for I go to Fort William to be identified, thence to Carlisle for trial—by what means of transport I do not know.”
“You think that you will be identified by this man at Fort William?”
“Man? There is more than one; indeed there’ll be a measure of jealousy, I’m thinking, who shall travel to Carlisle on my affair at the expense of the Government.—Why, I vow it never occurred to me before thatyoumight go, Windham, and save me the journey to Fort William; for you can identify me, none better!”
Keith winced. “Don’t jest,” he said in a sombre voice; “don’t jest on such a theme, I beg of you. And, Ardroy,” he added earnestly, “I doubt whether the authorities here really place very much reliance on this testimony from Fort William, or they would not have——” He pulled up, biting his lip, for he had no intention of speaking of his encounter with Cumberland. Though he had no cause for shame, he was ashamed; moreover he did not wish to parade his own self-abnegation.
In the dim light, momentarily becoming to Keith, however, a little less dim, the prisoner looked at him with those clear eyes of his. Then, with a jangle, he laid his bony hand on the Englishman’s wrist. “My sorrow, I believe my jest went near the truth! They did want you to go as a witness against me—was not that what you were about to say? Why, then, did you not comply?”
Keith turned on him almost savagely. “How dare you ask me that, Ewen Cameron! Do you think I baulked Guthrie only to go in cold blood and bring you to the scaffold myself? Are you like the Duke, that you can fancy I would do such a thing for any consideration on earth . . . and witness moreover to acts by which I had been the gainer?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ewen mildly. “In truth I was not thinking of the implications of what I said. But, Windham,” he went on anxiously, “has not your refusal involved you once more in Cumberland’s displeasure? I’m sure it has!”
“No, no,” said Keith mendaciously. “He was angry, but he has not punished me further. He could not force me to be a witness; and Lord Albemarle has subsequently shown me some favour, and holds out hopes of employing me, which is why I am here at Fort Augustus. As far as I am concerned, therefore, good may yet come out of evil.—But, tell me, to what does this evidence at Fort William amount?”
But Ewen replied by another question. “What was the bribe which Cumberland offered you to give evidence against me?”
“Bribe!” exclaimed Keith, rather over-hastily. “I said nothing about a bribe. I want to hear about these witnesses at Fort William.”
“ButIwant to know what you have sacrificed for my sake? Or perhaps it would be truer to say, for the sake of your own self-respect? Cumberland did offer you something, did he not?”
“Nothing of consequence,” answered Keith carelessly.
“You will not tell me what it was? Then I know that it was something which you coveted. I seem fated to bring you misfortune, Windham,” said the Highlander rather sadly. “And yet I never really wished you other than well.”
“But I have brought you even more,” said Keith; “and indeed I wished you well, too.” His eyes were on the heap of straw in the corner which constituted Ewen’s bed. “If I had not ridden by the shieling hut that day, you would be lying quietly among the mountains of your own land and not—not about to set out for the chance, at least, of a death far away, and . . . and much less merciful. I should like to hear you say that you forgive me for that.”
“Forgive you for saving my life!” exclaimed Ewen. “My dear Windham, you are really absurd! Don’t, for God’s sake, go recalling the crazy things I said to you at our last meeting! You must remember that I was nearly out of my senses then.”
“I know that, and I have never given them another thought, I assure you. But there is a count,” said Keith rather hesitatingly, “on which you must find it hard to forgive me—suffering of the mind for which I must always hold myself in a measure responsible. You know to what I refer.”
Ewen looked down at the floor. “I had some dark days, it is true. . . . Yes, they were very dark . . . but not so dark after your return. You gave me hope; and above all you gave me back that night in the hut.” He smiled. “I often think of it. I think of it when I hear very different stories of the English. And I suppose you know that nothing came of my betrayal—they never even searched the place for Lochiel, I believe. And, moreover”—he suddenly looked almost boyishly elated and mischievous—“by some wonderful mischance I never gave the name of the mountain where the secret place was. In my sleep I presented them with the name of Ben Loy, where you came upon me, and they did not discover the error until too late.”
Keith put his hand on the speaker’s knee. “I heard at Inverness, to my satisfaction, that Lochiel had escaped capture. Then that is all over, and your mind at rest; I am thankful.”
Ewen looked grave again. “No, it cannot be at rest until I am sure that Lochiel knows the truth.”
“But why should he ever hear anything at all about the matter?”
“And I have thought that at my trial,” went on Ewen without taking notice of the interruption, “I may get the chance of publicly denying that I gave the information knowingly. And then I believe that I could die in peace.”
Keith withdrew his hand. “Why do you make so sure of your condemnation?” he asked almost irritably. “Of what real worth is the testimony of persons who imagine that they saw you during a siege? No one could swear to you out of so many Camerons!”
“You think we are all as alike as sheep?” queried Ewen, looking amused. “But I had at least one hand-to-hand conflict with the Argyll militia, and another day I encountered a writer of Maryburgh with whom I had had dealings; he knew me at once, and will be only too glad to give evidence against me; I cannot think how they have not got hold of it already.—No, Windham, ’tis better to face the truth; once I reach Fort William I am certainly for Carlisle, and with such good evidence against me I have small chance of acquittal. I have known that for the last ten days; though naturally I have not acquainted the authorities with the excellent case they are like to have.”
And to this Keith found nothing to say. It was strange, it was alarming, to feel, as by this time he did, how strongly their intimacy had progressed in two months of absence and, on his side, of deliberate abstention from communication—like the roots of two trees growing secretly towards each other in darkness. But it was so; and now the roots must be severed.
“I hear that some of the prisoners at Inverness intend to swear that they were forced out,” he remarked after a silence.
“I dare say that may be true of some of them,” replied Ewen with composure. “But you are not suggesting that I should employ that plea, are you?”
“I know too well that you would not,” returned his visitor, and then murmured something about transportation as a possible alternative to a worse fate.
“Transportation!” exclaimed the Highlander. “To be sent to work in the plantations oversea as an indentured servant! I’d far liefer be hanged and quartered!”
Keith sighed heavily. “Yes, I have brought you nothing but harm. I would give my right hand to save you—and I can do nothing!”
Ewen twisted round on his stool. “How can you say that? Who knows what the want of your evidence at Carlisle may mean to me? For there is always a chance that the witnesses at Fort William may have left or died.”
“You have just said that once you reached Fort William there was no chance of escaping Carlisle. I am not a child, Ardroy!” retorted Keith, glowering at him in his own pain.
“Neither am I,” replied Ewen with a sudden smile. “Do not, therefore, talk about wishing in vain to give your right hand for my sake, for I strongly suspect that you have already given what means as much or more to you.”
Keith got up, that the speaker might not see in his face how near this guess went to the truth. “Even in my refusal to witness against you,” he said gloomily, “I begin to think that I acted like a fool. For, as I told His Royal Highness, if he sent me to Carlisle by force, as he threatened to do, nothing should have prevented my testifying also to your granting me my life in Lochaber and my liberty in Edinburgh. I have thought since that, on that score, it might have been better to agree to go. . . . But no, I could not have done it!” he added.
Ewen smiled up at him with a look that was almost affection, and laid his manacled hand on his cuff. “I almost wish that you had consented, so that we might meet again. For, if old Angus is right, this is our last meeting—I have counted them many times. And, indeed, I do not see how it could be otherwise. So”—his voice was very gentle—“we cannot bring each other misfortune any more.”
The words knocked sharply at Keith’s heart. And how young the speaker looked, for all his half-starved air; a boy going to extinction, while he, only four years his senior, felt as if he were middle-aged. (But no, at their last meeting, when he had trembled before him, Ewen had not been a boy.)
“Is there nothing I can do for you?” he asked painfully. “Do your kindred know of your situation; I suppose so?”
“I am not sure if my aunt knows. If she does, she has no doubt tried to communicate with my wife in France, but——”
“Your wife! Then you——”
“Yes. Miss Grant and I were married at Inverness in March. She is in France with her sick father, and since the battle I have been unable to write to her, so that, unless my aunt has contrived to do so, she may not know whether I am alive or dead. Ifyouwould write to her, Windham—you remember her, no doubt—that would indeed be a kindness. Will you?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” answered Keith, though he did not like the prospect. “But,” he went on with a little hesitation, “why do you not write yourself, and I would use my best endeavours that the letter should reach her.”
“I cannot write,” said Ewen. “They will not allow me the materials; I have often tried to come by them. You must tell her of me, if you will; and I particularly charge you not to omit how you saved my life and visited me, and . . . and all the rest that you have done,” he concluded a trifle unsteadily. “That is a last command, Windham.”
But Keith had drawn a pencil from his pocket. “You had a book in your hand when I came in; can you not tear out a blank page and write upon that? I promise you that, if I can compass it, no eye shall see the letter but your wife’s.”
“A book?” queried Ewen. “Ah, yes, but ’tis only a little Gaelic psalter which I contrived to get hold of. However——” He took it out of his pocket, remarking that the pages were but small, and, carefully tearing out the fly-leaf, accepted the proffered pencil. Keith, unable to withdraw as he would have wished, walked slowly up and down the narrow place with bent head. “I have saved him for this!” was still the burden of his thoughts. Had Ardroy been shot that day he would have known little about it; he was barely conscious. It would have been over in a moment, and it would have been a man’s death, too. Now . . . he shuddered to think of the alternative, purposely prolonged and horrible, the death of an animal in the shambles. He hoped with all his heart that Alison Cameron, away in France, did not know, and would never hear, the details of the English sentence for treason.
Ewen did not write much, for there was not a great deal of space on his paper. He read it over very composedly and signed his name. Then he folded the letter, stooped his head and put his lips to it. Keith turned his back, but the distance between them was so small that he knew that the writer, after that, had buried his face in his hands.
Ah, if only he had listened to him on that evening last summer, which now seemed such centuries ago, he would not now be giving up his love, as well as his life and lands!
But there was a clashing behind him; Ewen was getting to his feet. “I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting so long. Since you are so good I think that I should like to send my wife also the only remembrance that I can send. Have you a knife, and can you trust me with it?—or, better still, will you cut off a piece of this for her?”
He indicated his hair, and coming closer, bent his head. So Keith, with a rather blunt penknife, and not particularly good eyesight at the moment, sawed off a little lock on his temple.
“Women like such things,” said the young man half apologetically as Keith, his mouth tight shut, wrapped the trophy in his handkerchief. “And the more of which one can cheat Carlisle gate the better.” He spoke quite lightly and calmly, but his little letter, which he gave Keith the moment after, had been so tightly held in his hand that it was marked with his nail-prints. “I have written the direction upon it,” he went on, watching the Englishman put it carefully away. “Perhaps I may be able to write to her once more from Carlisle, but who knows? And the messenger might not be trustworthy, whereas I know that you are.—Now, Windham, there is another matter. The money you so generously left for my use——”
“For God’s sake don’t think of that now!” cried Keith, quite distracted.
“But I must! Miss Cameron, if I can communicate with her, which may be allowed at Carlisle——”
“Will you waste time over a few guineas? In Heaven’s name, take them as a gift—cannot you see that it would be kinder to me?”
Ewen evidently saw; he could hardly fail to see it. “Very well, then I will; and thank you for the gift. After all, I took a greater at your hands on Beinn Laoigh. And do you remember the money you left as payment for my clothes at Fassefern House? My sorrow, but I was angry with you! I threw it away into the bushes, and Clanranald’s and Keppoch’s men hunted for it all night, so I heard afterwards.” His tone suddenly changed. “Do you mean to leave this penknife here—is that a gift, too?”
He pointed to that object, lying where Keith had laid it down on one of the stools in order to have both hands free to wrap up the lock of hair. The Englishman hesitated, looking from it to the prisoner, and read, plain to see in his eyes, the value which he would set on even so small and blunt a weapon to-morrow. For a moment he was tempted, against honour and duty.
“Why did you put me in mind of it?” he asked reproachfully. “I had indeed honestly forgotten it, and had I so left it, you could have taken it with you to-morrow! . . . But I gave Lord Albemarle my word not to help you in any way to escape . . .”
Ewen instantly picked up the penknife, shut it, and held it out to him. “Take it. They are sure, too, to search me before I go to-morrow. Come,” he still held it out, “you have sacrificed enough for me; your honour you shall not sacrifice!”
As Keith reluctantly took the knife from the shackled hand he had a shock as if a lightning flash had stabbed asunder the sky above him and shown him something he had never seen—never wished to see—before. The barren and solitary path which he had marked out for himself through life wasnotthe best! Here was a man who would never willingly fail friend or lover, much less play them false. Now, at this their last meeting, when friendship with him was a thing impossible of realisation, he knew that he would have asked nothing better—he who never wished for a friend.
Like a lightning flash too in its speed the revelation was over. Mechanically he put the penknife away, and Ewen limped the few paces back to his stool. “Come and sit down again, Windham,” he said, “for once more you cannot get out if you wish to. And there is a matter about which I have long been curious. Why do you bear a Scots name—if I may ask without indiscretion? Have you perhaps Scottish kin?”
Keith, sitting down beside him again, shook his head. “There’s not a soul of my blood north of Tweed. But my father, who was a soldier also, had once a Scottish friend, killed at Malplaquet before I was born, for whom he must have had a great affection, since he gave me his name.”
They looked at each other, and the shadowy dead Scot of Marlborough’s wars seemed, to his namesake at least, to assume the shape of a symbol or a prophecy. Keith shivered suddenly.
“I can hardly hope,” said the Jacobite, “that you will care to name your son after me when I have ended . . . not on a battlefield . . . but I should like to feel that you will remember sometimes, not me, but what you did for me. For whereas you think but poorly of your fellow-men and yourself—or am I wrong?—you act, Keith Windham, very much otherwise!”
Moved and startled, Keith dropped his gaze and stared between his knees at the floor. Yes, they might have been friends; they were meant to be friends—Ardroy felt that too, did he? “I . . . in truth I do not well know what I think,” he murmured; “and, as for my actions, why, I seem to have failed on every side.—But one thing I do know,” he went on with a touch of defiance, “and that is, that I do not believe in your Highland second sight. Who can say that we shall not meet again—and you a free man?”
Ewen looked hard at him a moment. Outside the jangling of keys could be heard coming nearer. “I wish very much that I could think so too,” he answered simply, as he rose to his feet with a corresponding clashing. And again the strange constriction in his throat betrayed Keith into irritation.
“Are you so superstitious, Ardroy, that you’ll read into an old man’s maunderings a menace that was never there? Did your foster-father say a word about death in his precious prophecy? I warrant he did not!”
Ewen smiled. “My dear Windham, at bottom I believe as little in the two sights as you. But surely ’tis not superstition to realise that I am at least threatened with that fate. Yet who knows? If it pass me by, and we ever meet again in this world, then maybe I’ll have more time to thank you fitly for all you have done and given up for me. Yet I do thank you now, from my heart—from my inmost heart!”
He held out his fettered hands, and Keith as he took them was hardly capable of speech.
“I have failed in everything,” he muttered. “But your letter—I promise you it shall go by a safe hand. I . . . I . . .” The door, opening, recalled him to an Englishman’s last obligation, the suppression of emotion before witnesses. “To-morrow,” he said, loosing his grasp, and in a tolerably composed voice, “to-morrow you will at least be out of this dismal place and free of those irons.”
“Aye, will he,” commented the gaoler in the doorway. “And riding a braw horse forbye!”
“I doubt I’ll make much show as a horseman,” replied Ewen. “I fear I shall fall off.”
“Ye’re no’ like tae hae the chance, Mr. Cameron,” replied the man dryly. “Ye’ll be tied on.—Noo, sir, if ye please.”
“What time is he to start?” asked Keith.
“Sax o’ the clock.” The keys jingled impatiently.
Keith took a resolve. But he did not put it into words. All he said was “Good-bye,” and, for fear of being totally unmanned, stole only the most cursory glance at the pale, gravely smiling face under the rather untidy auburn hair.
But Ewen held out his hand again. “Beannachd leat, as we say in the Erse. ‘Blessings go with you; may a straight path be before you, and a happy end to your journey’!”
Without answering Keith wrung the hand and went quickly up the steps past the gaoler and into the passage. He was hardly there before the heavy door clanged to between him and his last meeting with Ewen Cameron.
“A peety,” said the gaoler reflectively, taking the key from the lock, “a peety yon muckle young man behoves to hae a rope aboot his thrapple. But there, wha will tae Cupar maun tae Cupar . . . Yon’s the way up, sir.”
At twenty minutes to seven next morning Keith Windham, having propped himself up on one elbow in his camp bed, was staring with incredulous and remorseful eyes at the watch which he had just drawn from beneath his pillow. That he should not wake in time to catch a final glimpse of Ardroy as he rode away had never occurred to him; the question last night had rather been whether he should ever get to sleep . . .
Well, evidently old Angus MacMartin’s fates were determined that he should not see Ewen Cameron again. And after all, he thought, trying to stifle regret, did I really desire to see him carried away, bound upon a horse, by Kingston’s dragoons?
When he was dressed he went to the door of the tent, which opened towards Loch Ness, and looked out. It was a beautiful, fresh morning, and the loch was smiling up at the flanking hills. Even the ruins of the fort, rearing themselves against that brightness, looked less blackened in the sunshine. But for Keith those gutted buildings held nothing now; and the busy camp around him was empty, too. How far on the road were they got by this time, and were the troopers riding too fast . . . ?
He dropped the flap of the tent and, going over to the table, took out from the breast of his uniform the handkerchief with the curl of hair and the scrap of a letter, and sealed them up carefully in a little packet, first copying down the address and scrupulously averting his eyes from the rest of the torn fly-leaf in doing so. Then, wondering how soon and in what manner he should find an opportunity of fulfilling his trust, he sat on, staring at the packet, now directed in his own hand to Mrs. Ewen Cameron at an address in Havre-de-Grâce.
What was it that Ardroy had wished him yesterday—a straight path and a happy end to his journey. Ewen’s own path seemed straighter than his, now, but the end to which it led? Keith had a sudden horrible vision, corollary of those which had haunted him in the night. He pressed his hands over his eyes and bade it begone, bade himself be as little perturbed at the prospect as Ewen himself had been yesterday—Ewen who would certainly go cheerfully and courageously to that ghastly business, but who, had it not been for his interference, might be lying now unmutilated under the turf of Ben Loy, with only the plovers and the curlews to disturb his rest.
Keith suddenly got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro, his head on his breast. He was finding his self-defensive philosophy of a very meagre assistance now. If he were again the child he had been, the child who every night at his nurse’s knee asked so simply and naturally for what he desired, it would have been easy to utter the prayer in his heart. But of what use such supplication to the Power whose only concern with the world was that He had set it a-rolling? Yet it was some time before he came to a standstill, and, with a heavy sigh, replaced in his breast the little packet for Ewen Cameron’s wife; with this for consolation in his mind, that he who was riding southward was not yet condemned, and that till the sentence was spoken his case was not hopeless.
All that afternoon there came marching wearily back to Fort Augustus, in a woeful state of fatigue and rags, the various units of the fifteen hundred men whom Cumberland had sent out in his last battue for Prince Charles nearly a fortnight before. They had met with no success whatever.
At nine o’clock that evening Keith, to his surprise, received a summons from Lord Albemarle, and found him heated and discomposed.
“’Tis a most extraordinary and vexatious thing,” declared the Earl, pacing up and down his quarters with his heavy tread. “It seems as though the Pretender’s son must have broken through the chain of sentry posts round Clanranald’s country, and yet I can scarce believe it, they were so close together. I shall make a fresh effort, with fresh men; these poor fellows are quite worn out with their exertions. For my part, Major Windham, I declare that to capture that young man, source of all our woes, I should with infinite pleasure walk barefoot from Pole to Pole!”
Had Lord Albemarle but known, no such heroic pilgrimage was required of him; a ten-mile expedition that night to a certain cave in Glenmoriston would have been sufficient.
“Your Lordship’s zeal is common knowledge,” murmured Keith, wondering what the Commander-in-Chief wanted him for. “If it could only be crowned with success . . .”
“Aye, if only it could! One report says,” continued the Earl, going to a table and turning over some papers, “that the Pretender’s son is in Badenoch on his way to the east coast; another that he has gone north to Caithness. Some say he is still in Morar and Knoidart; and the very latest of all declares that he has gone back to the Long Island—as you know they call that chain of islands from South Uist to Lewis. It is distracting!”
It was; but Keith could not think why he should have been summoned to hear this truth.
“Why, bless my soul,” said Albemarle, as if he had read his thoughts, “I am so prodigiously put about that I have forgotten, I believe, to tell you, Major Windham, that you are one of the officers whom I design to employ in my new effort.”
“My Lord!” ejaculated Keith, flushing.
“Yes, I intend to send you without delay to the neighbourhood of Arisaig, not because I think that the young man is there at the moment, though one report says so, but because I think it not unlikely he may try in the end to escape from the very spot where he landed last July.”
“Your Lordship is really too good,” stammered Keith, rather overcome. “If the most active vigilance——”
“Yes,” cut in Albemarle, “I depend upon you to show that, Major Windham. Your future is in your own hands, and my reputation, too. For reasons upon which I touched the other day, it is you whom I am sending to what I cannot but consider the most likely spot for securing the person of the arch-rebel. The day that you bring him back a prisoner your difference with His Royal Highness will be no more remembered against you. And perhaps I, too,” added the Earl with a sigh, “shall be able to leave this most distasteful country.”
“I assure your Lordship,” said Keith with a beating heart, “that failure shall not be due to any want of exertion on my part. Your generous selection of me for this expedition overwhelms me with gratitude, and whether I secure the prize or no I shall be your Lordship’s lifelong debtor for the opportunity.”
Lord Albemarle nodded, pleased as one who knows that he confers a benefit. “You will march at daybreak with a hundred men. I do not say that you are to station yourself exclusively at this Loch nan—on my soul, I cannot pronounce its outlandish name. Dispose your men as you think best. My secretary is preparing a few notes for your guidance. The devil of it is, however,” confessed the harassed commander in a further burst of confidence, “that these informations, when one receives them, are always a se’nnight or two out of date.” And, after adding a few more recommendations as to Keith’s conduct, he said kindly, “Now go and get some sleep, Windham—and good luck to your endeavours!”
Keith went out as one who walks on air. A chance at last—the greatest, if only he could seize it! So the day which had taken from him something which he felt that he had never really possessed had brought him . . . no, not compensation for the loss, for that, perhaps, he could never have, but opportunity to do more than purge his disgrace—to make himself the most envied man in the three kingdoms.
“Hereafter, in a better world than this,I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”—Shakespeare.
“Hereafter, in a better world than this,I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”
“Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”
—Shakespeare.
It was fortunate for Ewen that the sorrel horse on which he was tied had easy paces, and that the troopers did not ride fast; fortunate too that his arms had been bound to his sides and not behind his back, as had at first been proposed when, limping badly, and shielding his eyes against the unaccustomed daylight, he was brought out into the courtyard of the fort to be mounted. For by midday so many hours in the saddle, under a July sun, were making heavy demands on a man come straight from close confinement and not long recovered of a severe wound.
But from Ewen’s spirit a much heavier toll was being exacted; not by the prospect of the death which was in all likelihood awaiting him, not even by the remembrance of his lost Alison, but by the pain which was actually tearing at him now, this taking leave of what he loved better than life, the lakes and mountains of his home. This was the real death, and he kept his lips locked lest he should cry out at its sharpness.
The picture which had been tormenting Keith Windham he could look at without undue shrinking; or rather, he did not trouble to look at it any more now. Like the man who had saved him, he could not avoid the thought that Guthrie’s musket balls had been more merciful, but the choice had not lain in his hands; and for the last two months it had been more important to try to keep his equanimity day after day in the cold and darkness of his prison than to think what he should do or feel when he came to stand in the hangman’s cart. And the parting with Alison was over; and because he had known that the kiss in the cabin of the brig might be their last, it had held the solemnity which had enwrapped their hurried marriage and the bridal night whose memory was so holy to him. Alison had been his, though for so brief a space; and one day, as he firmly believed, they would meet again. But Beinn Tigh . . . would he ever see again, inthatworld, his beloved sentinel of the stars?
Ever since its peak had appeared, all flushed by the morning sun, as they began to ride by Loch Oich, he had kept his eyes hungrily upon it, praying that the horses might go slower, or that one might cast a shoe; watching it like a lover as it revealed more of its shapeliness and dominated the shoulder, between it and the loch, behind which, as they went farther, it would inevitably sink. And Loch na h-Iolaire,hisloch, away behind there, invisible, secluded by its own mountains! If only he could get free of these cords, swim the water between, climb those intervening miles of scree and heather, and see the Eagle’s Lake once more! No, never again; neither in this world nor the next. For Loch na h-Iolaire was not like Alison and him; it had not a soul free of time and space. Loch na h-Iolaire existed over there, only there, on that one spot of earth, and in all the fields of heaven there would be no lake so lovely, and in heaven the grey mists would never swoop down on one who ambushed the deer.
At Laggan-ach-drum they had halted and rested and eaten. It was Glengarry’s country, yet on the border of the Cameron, and Ardroy was known there; but in the burnt and ravaged clachan there seemed to be no man left, and no risk of a rescue. The troopers of Kingston’s Horse had shown themselves rough but not unkindly, and the sergeant, probably thinking that unless they gave the prisoner some attention they would hardly get him to Fort William at the end of the day, had him unfastened and taken off the sorrel and set down amongst them by the roadside with food and drink. But they were very careful of him, tying his ankles together, and putting a cord from one wrist to the belt of the next man. And Ewen had eaten and drunk in silence, looking at the sunlit desolation.Thiswas what had been done in the Glen . . . done in all the countryside . . .
A young girl had passed once or twice to a half-burnt croft carrying a bucket of water, and presently the sergeant, wanting some for the horses, called to ask where the water came from, since here they were no longer by a lake side. Setting down the heavy bucket, she came and stood before him, looking on the troopers with eyes like coals, and only once at their prisoner. (But the softness of evening was in them then.) The sergeant, without harshness, put his question, but the girl shook her head, and Ewen knew that she had not the English. Already he had seen a sight that set his heart beating, for as she stooped to put down the bucket he had caught a glimpse of the black handle of asgian dubhin her bosom.
“Shall I ask her for you?” he suggested to the sergeant, and, hardly waiting for the answer, he spoke rapidly to her in Gaelic, putting the question about water indeed, but adding at the end of it, “Try to give me your knife when I am on the horse again—if you have another for yourself!”
The girl gave him a glance of comprehension, and turned away to show where to fetch the water; and the sergeant had no inkling that another question besides his had been put and answered. He even threw a word of thanks to the interpreter.
But while they were tying Ewen on again the girl came among them, as if curiosity had brought her to see the sight, and, heedless of the jests which she did not understand, slipped nearer and nearer among the horses until she seemed to be jostled against the sorrel’s shoulder. And Ewen felt the little knife, warm from its hiding-place, slide into his right stocking; it was only with an effort that he kept his eyes averted and seemed unaware of her presence. But he turned his head as they rode away, and saw her standing at gaze with her hands joined, as though she were praying.
That was an hour agone and more. How he should ever get at, much less use, the blade against his leg he had no idea, seeing that his arms were immovably pinioned, but to know it there made a world of difference. His thoughts reverted to Major Windham, to that interview yesterday. They might have been friends had Fate willed it otherwise; indeed he could not but think of him already as a friend, and with wonder at what he had done for him. But why had Angus’s heron brought them together to so little purpose, to meet, and meet, and then to part for ever, as they had met at first, ‘by the side of water’—Loch Oich and Loch Ness? Yet he owed his life to one of those encounters; there was no possible doubt of that. But it was still a mystery to him why the Englishman should have cared so much for his fate as to wreck his own career over it. He had really behaved to Loudoun and (as far as he could make out) to Cumberland—all honour to him for it—as if he were fey. And he had seemed at the outset of their acquaintance of so mocking a temper, so lightly contemptuous as scarcely even to be hostile. One saw him with different eyes now.
But Keith Windham was swept from his thoughts again, as he realised afresh that he was going for the last time along Loch Lochy side. It was bright pain to look at it, but Ewen looked greedily, trying to burn those high green slopes for ever on his memory, to be imaged there as long as that memory itself was undissolved. There was the steep corrie and the wall shutting out his home. What though the house of Ardroy were ashes now, like Achnacarry and a score of others, there were things the marauders could not touch, things dearer even than the old house—the sweeps of fern and heather, the hundred little burns sliding and tinkling among stones and mosses, the dark pine-trees, the birches stepping delicately down the torrent side, the mist and the wind, the very mountain air itself. But these, though they would remain, were not for him any more.
And then Ewen bit his lip hard, for, to his horror, his eyes had begun to fill, and, since he could not move a hand, all that was left was to bow his head and pray desperately that the troopers on either side might not observe his weakness. But they were just then absorbed in heartfelt complaints at the detour which they were obliged to make on his account, instead of setting out with the rest of Kingston’s Horse, in two days’ time, for Edinburgh; and Ewen quickly swallowed the salt upon his lips, thinking, ‘Since I am so little of a man, I must fix my mind on something else.’ Yet here, in this dear and familiar neighbourhood, he could think of nothing else but what was before his eyes; and his eyes told him now that the radiance of the morning was gone, and that clouds were coming up the Glen from the south-west, from Loch Linnhe, with that rapidity which he knew so well of old. In an hour it would very likely be raining hard; in less, for beyond the Loch Arkaig break he could see that itwasraining . . .
Here he was, looking just as intently at the hills as before! So he shut his eyes, afraid lest moisture should spring into them again; and also a little because the waters of Loch Lochy, still bright, despite the advancing clouds, were beginning queerly to dazzle him. And when his eyes were shut he realised with increasing clearness that physically too he was nearing the boundary-line of endurance. He had wondered himself how he should ever accomplish the thirty-mile ride, but the problem had not troubled him much, and the untying and rest at Laggan had been a relief. Now—and they still had a long way to go—it was astonishing how this sea of faintness seemed to be gaining upon him. He reopened his eyes as he felt himself give a great lurch in the saddle.
“Hold up!” said the trooper who had the reins. “Were ye asleep?”
Ewen shook his head. But what curious specks were floating over the darkening landscape! He fixed his eyes on his horse’s ears; but once or twice the whole head of the animal disappeared from his sight altogether; and the second time that this phenomenon occurred he felt a grip on his arm, and found the soldier on the other side looking at him curiously. However, the man released him, saying nothing, and Ewen, mute also, tried to straighten himself in the saddle, and looked ahead in the direction of Ben Nevis, since perhaps it was a mistake to look at anything close at hand. The mountain’s top was veiled. The last time that he had seen it . . . with Lochiel . . .
But that memory had poison in it now. Oh, to have speech with Lochiel once before he went hence! Ewen set his teeth, as waves of faintness and of mental pain broke on him together. If he could only say to Donald . . .
And there followed on that, surprisingly, a period in which he thought he was speaking to Lochiel; but it must have been by some waterfall—the waterfall near the hiding-place, perhaps—and through the noise of the rushing water he could not make Lochiel hear what he was saying to him. He tried and tried . . . Then all at once someone was holding him round the body, and a voice called out, miles away, yet close, “He was near off that time, Sergeant!”
Ewen left the waterfall and became conscious, to his astonishment, that they were away from Lochy and within full sight of Ben Nevis and all his brethren. Also that the whole escort had stopped. Landscape and horses then whirled violently round. His head fell on a trooper’s shoulder.
“The prisoner’s swounding, Sergeant! What are we to do?”
Swearing under his breath, the sergeant brought his horse alongside. “Shamming? No, he ain’t shamming. Here,” he brought out something from his holster, “give him a drink of his own Highland whisky—nasty stuff it is!”
They held up Ewen’s head and put the spirit to his lips. It revived him a little, and he tried to say something, but he himself did not know what it was. The sergeant eyed him doubtfully.
“I’ll tell you what,” he remarked to his men, “we’ll untie his arms—not his feet, mind you—and maybe then he can help himself by taking a holt of the mane.—Can ye do that?”
Ewen nodded, too sick and dizzy to realise what possibilities would thus be put within his reach.
The dragoons unfastened the cords round his arms and body, gave him some more spirit, rubbed his cramped arms, and in a little while he was able to do what the sergeant suggested; and presently, he leaning hard upon the sorrel’s crest, his fingers twined in the mane, they were going slowly down the moorland slope towards the Spean. Ewen felt less faint now, after the whisky and the release of his arms; the fine misty rain which had now set in was refreshing, too, so, although the landscape showed a disposition to swim at times, he could certainly keep in the saddle—indeed, how could he fall off, he thought, with this rope passing from ankle to ankle beneath the horse’s belly? And he began to think about High Bridge, still unseen, which they were approaching, and of the part which it had played in this great and ill-fated adventure—and in his own private fortunes, too. For down there the first spark of revolt had flashed out; down there Keith Windham had been turned back by MacDonald of Tiendrish and his men; and because he had been turned back, Ewen himself was alive to-day, and not mouldering by Neil MacMartin’s side on Beinn Laoigh.
But he was none the less on his way to death, and there was no one to stay the redcoats from passing High Bridge now. Tiendrish, marked for the scaffold, lay already in Edinburgh Castle; Keppoch, his chief, slept with his broken heart among the heather on Culloden Moor; Lochiel was a wounded outlaw with a price on his head. The gods had taken rigorous dues from all who had been concerned in the doings of that August day here by the Spean. Yes, strangely enough, even from Keith Windham, who was on the other side. They had made him pay for having dared to show compassion to those whom they pursued. It was singular.
Unconsciously Ewen was back in the dungeon again, seeing the Englishman’s troubled face, hearing his voice as it asked him why he had put him in mind of the forgotten penknife . . .
And then Keith Windham’s face and voice were blotted out in an instant by a thought which made him draw a long breath and clutch the sorrel’s mane almost convulsively. He had something better than a blunt penknife on his person at this very moment, and now, now that his arms were untied, he could perhaps get it into his hand. For the last hour he had completely forgotten the girl’ssgianin his stocking; and indeed, until recently it might as well not have been there. But now, if he could draw it out unobserved . . .
And then? Rags of a wild, a desperate plan began to flutter before his eyes. And only here, by the Spean, could the plan be put into execution, because, High Bridge once crossed, it was all open moorland to Fort William. Only by the Spean, racing along between its steep, thickly wooded banks, was there a chance of shelter, if one could gain it. It was a mad scheme, and would very likely result in his being shot dead, but, if they stopped at the little change-house on the other side of Spean, as they surely would, he would risk that. Better to die by a bullet than by the rope and the knife. How his body would carry out the orders of his brain he did not know; very ill, probably, to judge from his late experiences. Yet, as he hastily plotted out what he would do, and every moment was carried nearer to High Bridge, Ewen had an illusory feeling of vigour; but he knew that he must not show it. On the contrary, his present partially unbound condition being due to his recent only too real faintness, he must continue to simulate what for the moment he no longer felt. If only the faintness did not come on again in earnest!
Here was the Spean in its ravine, and here the narrow bridge reared on its two arches, its central pier rising from a large rock in the river-bed. They clattered over it, three abreast. The bridge was invisible, as Ewen knew, when one was fairly up the other side, because the approach was at so sharp an angle, and the trees so thick. And as they went up that steep approach the trees seemed even thicker than he remembered them. If Spean did not save him, nothing could.
The change-house came into view above them, a little low building by the side of the road, and for a moment the prisoner knew an agonising doubt whether the escort were going to halt there after all. Yes, thank God, they were! Indeed, it would have been remarkable had they passed it.
The moment the troopers stopped it was evident how little they considered that their prisoner needed guarding now; it was very different from the care which they had bestowed in this particular at Laggan. Drink was brought out; nearly all swung off their horses, and broke into jests and laughter among themselves. Ewen’s all but collapse of a few miles back, his real and evident exhaustion now, served him as nothing else could have done. Realising this, he let himself slide slowly farther over his horse’s neck as though he could scarcely sit in the saddle at all; and in fact this manœuvre called for but little dissimulation.
And at that point the trooper who had charge of his reins, a young man, not so boisterous as the others, was apparently smitten with compassion. His own half-finished chopin in his hand, he looked up at the drooping figure. “You’d be the better of another drink, eh? Shall I fetch you one?”
Not quite sure whether this solicitude was to his advantage, Ewen intimated that he would be glad of a cup of water. The dragoon finished his draught, tossed the reins to one of his fellows, and sauntered off. But the other man was too careless or too much occupied to catch the reins, and they swung forward below the sorrel’s head, free. This was a piece of quite unforeseen good luck. Ewen’s head sank right on to his horse’s crest; already his right hand, apparently dangling helpless, had slipped the little black knife out of his stocking; now he was able unsuspected to reach the rope round his right ankle. . . . Five seconds, and it was cut through, and the next instant his horse was snorting and rearing from a violent prick with the steel. The dismounted men near scattered involuntarily; Ewen reached forward, caught a rein, turned the horse, and, before the startled troopers in the least realised what was happening, was racing down the slope and had disappeared in the thick fringe of trees about the bridge.
The sorrel was so maddened that to slip off before he reached the bridge, as he intended, was going to be a matter of difficulty, if not of danger. But it had to be done; he threw himself across the saddle and did it. As he reached ground he staggered and fell, wrenching his damaged thigh, but the horse continued its wild career across the bridge and up the farther slope as he had designed. Ewen had but a second or two in which to pick himself up and lurch into the thick undergrowth of the gorge ere the first of a stream of cursing horsemen came tearing down the slope. But, as he hoped, having heard hoof-beats on the bridge, they all went straight over it in pursuit of the now vanished horse, never dreaming that it was riderless.
Once they were over Ewen cut away the trailing rope from his other ankle, pocketed it, and started to plunge on as fast as he could among the birch and rowan trees, the moss-covered stones and the undergrowth of Spean side. He was fairly sure that he was invisible from above, though not, perhaps, from the other side, if and when the troopers returned. But the farther from the bridge the better. His breath came in gasps, the jar of throwing himself off the horse had caused him great pain and made him lamer than ever, and at last he was forced to go forward on his hands and knees, dragging his injured leg after him. But as he went he thought how hopeless it was; how the dragoons would soon overtake the horse, or see from a distance that he was no longer on its back, and, returning, would search along the river bank and find him. And he could not possibly go much farther, weak and out of condition as he was, with the sweat pouring off him, and Spean below seeming to make a noise much louder than its diminished summer clamour.
Thus crawling he finally came up against a huge green boulder, and the obstacle daunted him. He would stop here . . . just round the farther side. He dragged himself round somehow, and saw that what he had thought to be one stone was two, leaning together. He tried to creep into the dark hollow between them, a place like the tomb, but it was too narrow for his breadth of shoulder. So he sank down by it, and lay there with his cheek to the damp mould, and wondered whether he were dying. Louder and louder roared the Spean below, and he somehow was tossing in its stream. Then at least he could die in Scotland after all. Best not to struggle . . . best to think that he was in Alison’s arms. She would know how spent he was . . . and how cold . . . The brawling of the river died away into darkness.
When Ewen came fully to himself again it was night, the pale Highland summer night; he could not guess the hour. He had not been discovered, then! He lay listening; there was no sound anywhere save the rushing of the river below him, nothing to tell him whether the troopers had returned or no. But now was undoubtedly the time to quit his lair and get back over the bridge and along the short but dangerous stretch of high road, until he could leave it and make for the river Lochy. When he had forded Lochy and was on the other side of the Great Glen he would be safer.
Alas, the next few minutes implanted in him a horrible doubt whether he would ever ford Lochy, seeing that between the swimming head of exhaustion and the twist which he had given his damaged leg in throwing himself off the horse he could scarcely even stand, much less walk. And although the people up at the change-house, almost within call were, unless they had been removed, of a Cameron sept, he dared not risk attracting their attention, for a double reason: soldiers, his own escort or others from Fort William, might very well halt there; and to shelter him would probably in any case be disastrous to the poor folk themselves.
His prospects did not seem too bright. All his hope was that he might feel more vigorous after a little more of this not very comfortable rest. Huddled together on his side under the lee of the boulder, to get what shelter he could from the soft, misty rain which he felt rather than saw, he said a prayer and fell into the sleep of the worn-out.
He was wakened by a strange, sharp noise above him, and the sensation of something warm and damp passing over his face. Stiff and bewildered, he opened his eyes and saw in the now undoubted, though misty daylight, the author of these two phenomena, an agitated sheepdog, of a breed unknown to him. As he raised himself on an elbow the dog gave another excited bark, and immediately darted away up the tree-grown bank.
So numbed and exhausted was the fugitive that it took him a few seconds to realise that he was discovered. But by whom? Not by soldiers, certainly; nor could that be the dog from the change-house. He dragged himself into a sitting posture, got his back against the boulder, pulled the little black knife, his only resource, from his stocking, and waited.
Feet were coming down the steep bank, and soon two men could be seen plunging through the birch and alder, shouting to each other in an unfamiliar accent; in front of them plunged and capered the sheepdog, with its tail held high, and Ewen heard a loud hearty voice saying, “Clivver lass—aye, good bitch th’art indeed! See-ye, yon’s rebel, Jan!” He reflected, “I can kill the dog, but what good would that do me? Moreover I have no wish to.” And as the intelligent creature came bounding right up to him, wagging a friendly tail, and apparently proud of its accomplishment in having found him, he held out his left hand in invitation. The dog sniffed once, and then licked it.
“See thon!” cried the former voice. “Dang it, see Lassie so freendly and all!”
“Yet you had best not come too near!” called Ewen threateningly. “I am armed!” He raised his right hand.
The larger of the men, pushing through an alder bush, instantly lifted a stout cudgel. “If thou harmst t’ bitch—— Coom here, Lassie!”
“No, I will not harm her,” said Ewen, fending off the dog’s demonstrations with his other arm. “But call her off; I owe her no gratitude.”
“For foindin’ thee, thou meanst,” supplied Lassie’s owner. “Aye, thou’st the fellow that gie t’ sogers the slip yesterday; we heerd all aboot thee oop at t’ little hoose yonder. Eh, but thou’rt a reet smart lad!” There was genuine admiration in his tone. “’Twere smart ti hide thee here, so near an’ all, ’stead o’ gooin’ ower t’ brig—eh, Jan?”
“Main smart,” agreed the smaller man. “Too smart fur th’ redcoats, Ah lay!”
The smart lad, very grim in the face, and rather grey to boot, sat there against his boulder with thesgianclutched to his breast, point outwards, and eyed the two men with a desperate attention, as they stood a little way higher up amid the tangle of bushes, stones and protruding tree-roots, and looked at him. They had the appearance of well-to-do farmers, particularly the larger, who was a tremendously burly and powerful man with a good-tempered but masterful expression. The smaller was of a more weazened type, and older.
“See-thee, yoong man,” said the burly stranger suddenly, “’tis no manner o’ use ti deny that thou’rt one of these danged Highland rebels, seein’ we’s heerd all the tale oop yonder.”
Ewen’s breath came quickly. “But I’ll not be retaken without resistance!”
“Who says we be gooin’ ti taake thee? Happen we’ve summut else ti moind. Coom here, Lassie, wilt thou! Dunnot be so freendly tiv a chap wi’ a knife in his hand!”
“I tell you the dog has nothing to fear from me,” repeated Ewen. “See then!” And on a sudden impulse he planted thesgianin the damp soil beside him and left it sticking there.
“Ah, that’s reet, yoong man—that’s jannock!” exclaimed the large stranger in evident approval and relief. “Happen we can ’ev some clack together noo. Hoo dost thou rackon ti get away fra this tod’s den o’ thine?”
Here, quite suddenly, the little man began to giggle. “He, he! maakes me laugh to think of it—t’ sogers chasing reet away ower t’ brig and Lord knaws wheer beyond! They nivver coom back, so t’ folk oop yonder tells.”
“Aye, a good tale to tell when we gan back ower Tyne,” agreed the large man, shaking gently with a more subdued mirth. And as Ewen, for his part, realised that the reference to Tyne must mean that the strangers were English, though he could not imagine what they were doing in Lochaber, this large one burst into a great rumbling upheaval of laughter, causing the sheepdog to bark in sympathy.
“Quiet, lass!” commanded her master, making a grab at her. “Thy new freend here has no wish for thy noise, Ah’ll lay.” He looked straight at the fugitive sitting there. “Hadn’t thee best get thee gone, lad, before ’tis onny loighter?” he asked.
Was the man playing with him, or was he genuinely friendly? Ewen’s heart gave a great bound. A momentary mist passed before his eyes. When it cleared the large man was stooping over him, a bottle in his hand.
“Thoo’rt nigh clemmed, lad, or ma name’s not Robert Fosdyke. Here’s t’ stuff for thee—reet Nantes. Tak’ a good soop of it!”
The fiery spirit ran like lightning through Ewen’s cramped limbs. “Why . . . why do you treat me so kindly?” he gasped, half stupid between the brandy and astonishment, as he returned the bottle. “You are English, are you not? Why do you not give me up?”
Mr. Fosdyke, who had now seated himself on a large stone near, struck his knee with some vehemence. “Ah’ll tell thee whoy! First, because t’ bitch here foond thee and took ti thee, and thou didna stick yon knife o’ thine intiv her—but Ah’d ’ev driven in thy skool if thou hadst . . . second, because thou’rt a sharp lad and a bold one, too; and last because Ah’ve seen and heerd tell o’ things yonder at Fort Augustus, wheer we went ti buy cattle, that Ah ’evn’t loiked at all. No, Ah didn’t loike what Ah heerd of goings on.—Aye, and foorthly, t’ cattle was woorth danged little when we’d gotten ’em; all t’ best were sold awready.”
Ewen knew what cattle they would be; the one possession of many a poor Highland home, as well as the herds of the gentry. He remembered now having heard that some of the many thousands collected from Lochaber and Badenoch were sold to English and Lowland dealers. Apparently, then, these men were on their way south through Glencoe and Breadalbane with such as they had bought, and now he knew why once or twice during this conversation he had fancied that he heard sounds of lowing at no great distance.
“I wonder if mine are all gone!” he said half to himself.
“Thou hadst cattle of thy own, lad?” enquired Mr. Fosdyke. “If thou canst see onny o’ thine among oors oop there thou shalt have them back again—and that’s none so generous as thou medst think, for there’s some Ah’d as soon give away as drive all t’ waay ower t’ Border.”
Ewen gave a weak laugh. “What should I do with cattle now? I cannot get home myself, much less drive cattle there.”
“And whoy canst thou not get home, when thou’st put summut in thy belly?” asked the Yorkshireman.