had come with an army——”

“Then it would have been safe to declare for him!” broke in Alison,
and her dark eyes flashed. “Oh, if that is the English way of
thinking, it is not the Highland! Because he comes alone, and trusts
himself to us, is not that the best of reasons why we should follow
him who has the right, Captain Windham, and who may yet prove to have
the might also?”

There was a short silence between them. On the other side of the loch
a curlew uttered its plaintive, liquid cry. Captain Windham drew
himself up a little.

“If you feel thus about the matter, Miss Grant,” he said rather dryly,
“there is no more to be said. I see that you will not take my
offering. The best I can wish you, then, is that the affair may burn
itself out as quickly as possible, for the longer it lasts the more
victims there are likely to be . . . afterwards. And I would give
much, believe me, to know that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy will not be among
them.”

Alison held out her hand impulsively. And she had been thinking that
he was brooding on revenge! “I thank you for those words, sir,” she
said with great sweetness, “because I believe that you mean them. But,
though I shall not easily forget your kindness, it is—forgive
me—useless to discuss the matter further.”

Captain Windham kissed her hand in silence, and offered her his arm
back to the house, if she were returning thither. Alison took it
readily enough, and as they left the loch, conversing on indifferent
topics, she had time to taste the surprise and relief which had come
to her there. If Fate’s chosen instrument—supposing he were really
that—were so well disposed towards Ewen, how could he in the future be
used against him?

And yet, later in the evening, waiting for Ewen’s return, she found
that, unreasonably perhaps, she disliked Captain Windham’s presumption
that she could, if she tried, influence her lover to betray his
convictions even more than the supposition that she could be induced
to try. She felt that the soldier understood neither Highlanders nor
Jacobites. But for his kindly and even generous intentions she had
nothing but gratitude.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

As for Keith Windham, whose meditations by Loch na h-Iolaire had moved
him to an effort which surprised him, he told himself that he had
never expected any other result. They were all blinded and besotted,
these Jacobites. He wondered whether Miss Grant would tell her
betrothed of his attempt. With Ardroy himself he naturally should not
think of expostulating; to do so would be mere waste of breath.

There was no Ardroy at supper, though it appeared that he was expected
back at any moment, and Keith shortly afterwards excused himself and
withdrew to his own bedchamber, having no wish to be an intruder on
the lovers’ last hours together, rebels though they were. But it was
too early to go to bed, so once more he pulled a couple of books at
random from the shelf on the wall, and settled down by the window to
read. One of them he opened before he realised what it was, and found
himself staring at ‘Most heartily do we beseech Thee with Thy favour
to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord King——’ but ‘James’ had
been neatly pasted over the ‘George’.

Captain Windham smiled. He held in his hand the Book of Common Prayer
as used and amended by the nonjuring Episcopalian Jacobites, and saw
with his own eyes the treason to which his ears might have listened
earlier in the day. For though, on rising, he had forgotten that it
was Sunday, this was a fact of which he had not long been suffered to
remain ignorant, since after breakfast Miss Cameron had said to him in
matter-of-fact tones—they were alone for the moment: “I doubt you
will wish to attend Morning Prayer with us, Captain Windham, even if
you be an Episcopalian, like most of the English, for I must not
disguise from you that we pray, not for King George, but for King
James.”

“‘Morning Prayer,’” Keith had stammered. “Is—do you—I had thought
that you were all Presbyterians hereabouts . . . or Papists,” he
added, suddenly remembering the old woman on Friday.

“Ah, not at all,” replied Miss Cameron composedly. “The MacDonalds of
the mainland and the most of the Frasers indeed are Papists, but we
Camerons are Episcopalians, and so are our neighbours, the Stewarts of
Appin. But we can get to kirk but rarely, and to-day in especial,
being, as you will understand, somewhat throng, we shall be obliged to
worship at home.”

“And who——”

“Why, my nephew the laird, naturally,” replied Miss Cameron. “Though
as Mr. Grant is with us, ’tis possible he may read the service
to-day.”

“Leaving your nephew free to preach, no doubt?” suggested Keith,
trying to control a twitch of the lip.

“Now you are laughing at us, sir,” observed Miss Cameron shrewdly, but
with perfect good humour. “No, Ardroy does not preach. But I have the
habit of reading a sermon to myself of a Sunday afternoon, and if you
scoff any more ’tis likely the same exercise would benefit you, and
I’ll be happy to lend you a volume of some English divine—Bishop
Jeremy Taylor, for instance.”

Keith bowed and gravely assured her that if she saw fit to do this he
would duly read a homily. But he had gone out into the garden smiling
to himself. That model young man—he could not be more than five- or
six-and-twenty—reading the Church service every Sunday to his
household! He thought of the young men of his acquaintance in the army
or in the fashionable world of London, the careless, loose-living
subalterns, the young beaux of White’s. Ye gods, what ribald laughter
would have gone up at the tale! . . . Yes, but not one of those
potential mockers could have beaten Ardroy in stature or looks or at
swordplay. Keith would not forget Loch Oich side in a hurry.

But he had not attended Morning Prayer.

Now he was rather wishing that he had done so, for he supposed that he
would never again have the chance of seeing a young man who could
fight in that style acting as chaplain. But perhaps Mr. Grant had
superseded him; Keith had not enquired. At any rate Ewen Cameron was
not engaged on particularly prayerful business at this moment, over at
his Chief’s house, nor would he be on his knees to-morrow. Afterwards
. . . well, it was likely that his relatives would have need to pray
for _him_!

He turned over the Prayer Book idly, and it opened next at the feast
of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the words of the Gospel leapt at
him: ‘Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my Name’s sake
. . .’

Though not much of a churchgoer himself, Captain Windham was shocked
at the analogy which occurred to him, and closing the Prayer Book
hastily, fell to wondering what was going to be done with him
to-morrow; also, whose hand had retrieved and laid upon his
dressing-table the two missing buttons from his uniform which he had
found there a short while ago.

It was nearly ten o’clock when he heard the beat of hoofs. They
stopped in front of the porch, but he did not look out. Someone
dismounted, then Keith heard Miss Grant’s voice, with her heart in it:
“Ewen, you are come at last; it has been a long evening!”

“And will be a short night, Alison,” came the half-exultant reply.
“We march at daybreak for Glenfinnan.” And from the sudden silence
Keith guessed that the girl was in her lover’s arms. He moved away
from the window and began to pace up and down. So there was to be no
holding back. Ah, what a pity, what a pity!

Half an hour later he was back in his old place reading, but with a
lighted candle at his elbow now, when there was a knock, and Ardroy
himself came in, a big branched candlestick in his hand.

“You are not abed, Captain Windham! I must apologise, none the less,
for so late a visit.”

There was a kind of suppressed elation about him, and his eyes were as
blue as the sea.

“Your Highland nights are so light,” returned Keith, as he rose to his
feet, “that it is hard to believe it late.” Why should he, who cared
for no human being, feel regret that this young man was going to
destruction?

“My excuse,” went on Ewen, setting down the light he carried, “is that
I leave this house again in a few hours, and must speak with you first
on a matter that concerns you.”

“You will be setting out for—the rendezvous of which you told me?”

“Yes. And before I go——”

“Mr. Cameron,” broke in the Englishman, “you gave me a warning
yesterday to which I should have done well to listen. I suppose it is
too much to hope that, at this eleventh hour, you will listen to one
from me?”

As he said it he knew that he was a fool for his pains; that his
words, uttered on that astonishing impulse, so contrary to his
intention, were as useless as the little puff of air which at that
moment entered by the open window and set the candles a-quiver. And
over the bending flames the Highlander, looking very tall, gazed at
him straight and unyieldingly.

“You are too kind, Captain Windham. But if the matter of your warning
be what I suppose, you must forgive me for saying that you would only
be wasting your time.” His tone was courteous but very cold.

Keith shrugged his shoulders. After all, if a man _would_ rush on his
doom it was his own affair. “My time is far from valuable at present,”
he replied flippantly, “but yours no doubt is precious, Mr. Cameron. On
what matter did you wish to speak to me?”

“I have come to tell you from my Chief, Lochiel, that you are free
from to-morrow—on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“That you engage not to bear arms against the Prince for the remainder
of the campaign. Lochiel will accept an assurance given to me.”

“‘For the remainder of the campaign’!” exclaimed Keith rather
indignantly. “An impossible condition, on my soul!” He gave a short
laugh. “It is true that your ‘campaign’ is not like to be of long
duration!”

Ewen ignored the sneer. “You cannot tell, sir,” he replied gravely.
“But those are the terms which I am to offer you. Captain Scott has
accepted them, and has to-day gone to Fort William to have his wound
cared for.”

“Precisely,” retorted Keith. “Captain Scott is wounded; I am not.”
There was still indignation in his voice; nevertheless he was thinking
that if he accepted the offer he would be able to leave the Highlands
and return to Flanders and real warfare. It was a temptation. But some
deep-rooted soldierly instinct revolted.

He shook his head. “My sword is the King’s, and I cannot enter into an
indefinite engagement not to use it against his enemies. Indeed it is
fully time that I should ask you, Mr. Cameron, to restore me the
parole of honour which I gave you. I should prefer henceforward to be
your prisoner upon ordinary terms.”

But at this his gaoler seemed taken aback. “I fear that is impossible
at present, sir,” he replied with some hesitation. “If I left you
behind here there would be no one to guard you. As you will not accept
your freedom on the condition which is offered you, I have no choice
but to take you with me to-morrow—still on parole, if you please,” he
added, looking his captive straight in the face.

“I have requested you to give me back my parole, Mr. Cameron!”

“And I have already said that I cannot do so, Captain Windham!”

Once more they were facing each other across the candle-flames. Keith
began to feel annoyance.

“Am I then to go ranging the mountains with you for ever? You will
find me a great nuisance, Mr. Cameron.” (Mr. Cameron looked at that
moment as if he shared this opinion.) “But perhaps this is your way of
forcing Lochiel’s offer on me, for, by Gad, that is what it comes to!”

“No, no,” said Ewen hastily, and with a frown. “I had no such
intention. I will consult Lochiel again about the matter to-morrow,
and——”

“Can’t you do anything on your own responsibility, Mr. Cameron of
Ardroy? Must you always consult your Chief?”

He had goaded him at last. Ardroy’s head went up. “Had you not a
commanding officer in your regiment, Captain Windham?” he enquired
haughtily.

“Touché!” said Keith, with good humour. (It was a mutual hit, though.)
He liked to see his civilised young barbarian on the high horse. “But
suppose, Mr. Cameron, that I do not choose to wait so long, and tell
you frankly that, if you will not restore my parole to me, I shall
myself withdraw it from midnight to-night?”

“In that case,” said the barbarian with great promptitude, “I shall
put two of my gillies in here with you, lock the door and sleep across
it myself. . . . Do you tell me that you withdraw it?”

There was a second or two’s silence while Keith envisaged himself thus
spending the remainder of the night. It was on the tip of his tongue
to enquire whether the amiable Lachlan would be one of his guards, but
he suppressed the query. “No,” he said with a little grimace, “you may
keep my parole and I will keep my privacy. Let us hope that your
‘commanding officer’s’ wisdom will be able to cut the knot to-morrow. I
am to be ready, then, to accompany you at daybreak?”

“If you please,” said Ardroy stiffly. “I am sorry that I can do
nothing else. Good night.” He took up the candlestick and stalked out.

Captain Keith Windham remained staring for a moment at the closed door
and then began to smile rather ruefully. “A droll captivity, ’pon my
honour! Had I known that I was to be trailed about in this fashion my
attempt at warning might have been less disinterested than it was. But
I shall not make another.”

                              CHAPTER VI

Four days later Captain Windham was sitting at evening in a dark
little hut on the shores of Loch Eil, studying a pocket-book by the
light of a small lantern hung on the wattled wall behind him. A pile
of heather was all his seat; outside it was pouring with rain, but he,
unlike almost every one else, was at least under cover and secure, as
he had not been lately, from the attentions of the rapacious Highland
midges.

It was Thursday, the twenty-second of August, and since Monday he had
gone with Clan Cameron wherever it went. First of all Ardroy and his
contingent had rendezvoused with the main body of the clan at the very
place where Keith Windham now found himself again, Kinlochiel, at the
upper end of Loch Eil. Here, on that eventful Monday, Keith had had
his first meeting with the courteous and polished gentleman whom Clan
Cameron followed, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, nineteenth of the name.
And Lochiel had appeared so much distressed at the idea of the English
officer’s continual conveyance with them under guard, even possibly in
bonds, for they had no place in which they could conveniently leave
him behind, that Keith had been prevailed upon to extend the parole
which he had tried to take back from Ardroy, and to regard it as given
for the space of one week, dating from the day and hour of his capture
in the Great Glen. When that week was up, his gaolers seemed to think
that they would be able to make other arrangements about his custody.

After the rendezvous the clan had proceeded westwards, in the
direction of the coast, along a difficult road between close-pressed
craggy mountains, where the grey rock pushed in a myriad places
through its sparse covering, and came at last in the afternoon to the
trysting place at Glenfinnan. Though he was treated with every
civility, and rode in comfort on a horse of Ardroy’s, it had been a
mortifying journey for Captain Windham. Between the ranks of Camerons
marched sulkily the captured recruits of the Royals, without their
arms—like himself—and even Captain Scott’s white charger formed part
of the procession, to be offered to the ‘Prince’. As well, thought the
Englishman, be the prisoner of wandering Arabs.

So, scornful but half interested too, Keith Windham had been present
at a scene which, a week ago, he could little have imagined himself
witnessing, when, on the stretch of level ground at the head of Loch
Shiel, among that wild and lonely scenery, a thousand Highland throats
acclaimed the fair-haired young man standing below the folds of his
banner, and the very air seemed to flash with the glitter of their
drawn blades. It was very romantical and absurd, of course, besides
being rank rebellion; but there was no denying that these deluded and
shaggy mountaineers were in earnest, and Lochiel too, who was neither
shaggy nor—so it seemed to the observer—deluded in quite the same
sense . . . and certainly not absurd.

None observing or hindering him during the following days, Captain
Windham had taken the opportunity of keeping a fragmentary journal in
his pocket-book, and it was these notes which, for want of anything
better to do, he was now reading over in the little hut in the wet
twilight.

‘What an Army! ’tis purely laughable!’ he had written on August 20th.
‘The Men are fine, tall Fellows enough, particularly the Camerons—but
their Weapons! I have seen Muskets with broken Locks, Muskets with
broken Stocks, Muskets without Ramrods, and Men without Muskets at
all. There can’t be more than a Score of Saddlehorses all told, and
the Draught Horses are quite insufficient for Transport over such a
Road. Moreover the so-call’d “Army” is as yet compos’d of two Clans
only, the Camerons and some Part of the Macdonalds, its Number being,
I suppose, about thirteen hundred Men.

‘The Pretender’s Son I must admit to be a very personable young Man
indeed, with the _Bel Air_; they all appear craz’d about him. My own
young Achilles still very well-bred and agreeable, like his Chief. I
never lookt to see so much native Polish as Lochiel exhibits.
Achilles, if I mistake not, pretty well adores him. There is also a
younger Brother of the Chief’s, whom they call Doctor Archibald; with
him also my Warrior seems on very friendly Terms.’

Captain Windham turned over to the next two days’ records, which were
briefer, and brought him up to the present date.

‘August the 21st. Set out at last from that curst Spot, Glenfinnan.
But, after an Advance of one Mile, the Road was found to be so bad,
and the Horses so few, that the Rebels were oblig’d to leave twelve
out of their Score of Swivel Guns behind, and spent some Hours burying
’em in a Bog. As their total March to-day, to a Place call’d
Kinlocheil, was no more than four Miles, it looks as though ’twould be
some Weeks before the Breechless reach Civilisation.

‘August the 22nd. At Kinlocheil all Day. Prodigious Rain. Much-needed
Attempts seem to be going forward to organise the Transport, Wagons
and Carts of all Sorts being collected. Have scarce seen E.C. all
day.’

But he had hardly come to these last words, when a tall, wet figure
appeared without warning in the low doorway, and the diarist restored
his notebook somewhat hastily to his pocket. Ardroy stooped his head
to enter, taking off his bonnet and swinging it to remove the
raindrops. The dampness of the rest of his attire appeared to give him
no concern.

“Good evening, Mr. Cameron! Have you been burying any more cannon?”
enquired the soldier pleasantly.

Ardroy, reddening slightly, made no reply beyond returning the ‘Good
evening’, but hung up his bonnet on a nail and began to unfasten the
shoulder-brooch of his plaid. There was not a very great deal of
satisfaction for Captain Windham to be got out of baiting this ‘young
Achilles’ of his, because Achilles kept so tight a hold upon his
temper and his tongue. Or was it that he was naturally impassive?
Hardly, for Keith was sure that he felt the points of the darts which
he contrived from time to time to plant in him. Perhaps Ardroy thought
that the best way to meet his captive’s malice was to appear unaware
of it; and indeed the archer himself had to confess that this course
rather baffled him. He followed up his first shaft by another.

“You must admit that you should not have brought me here if you did
not wish me to learn your military dispositions—if such I am to call
that measure!”

And if the Highlander went on pretending that the unpinning of his
plaid was engaging his whole attention Keith would feel that he had
drawn blood. He knew that his own conduct verged on the puerile, but
the pleasure of pursuing it was too strong.

The big brooch, however, was undone at last, and Ewen said rather
dryly: “I am glad that your spirits are not suffering from the
weather, Captain Windham.”

“On the contrary,” said his prisoner cheerfully, leaning back against
the wall of the hut, his hands behind his head, “I am entertaining
myself by trying to recall any other great commander who began his
campaign by burying most of his artillery in a swamp; but I have
failed. Yet, by Gad, the plan might work a revolution in warfare—in
fact ’twould end it altogether if it were carried out to its logical
conclusion. Armies would take the field only to bury their muskets—and
perhaps,” he added maliciously, “that _will_ be your next step. I
protest that some of them would not take much harm by the interment!”

Ewen swung off his plaid. “Your mirth at our lack of equipment is very
natural,” he replied with complete equanimity. “But perhaps our ill
provision may not be widely known to our enemies. And is it not a fact
within your own military experience, Captain Windham,” he went on,
looking him in the face, “that it is what one supposes an enemy’s
forces to be rather than what they actually are which sometimes turns
the scale?”

It was the Englishman who coloured this time. In its absence of
specific reference to the mishap at High Bridge the retort was just
sufficiently veiled to enable him, had he chosen, to affect
unconsciousness of its sting. But he was too proud to do this.

“I deserved that,” he admitted, scrambling to his feet with the words.
“I am not such a dolt as to be unaware to what you allude. That you
feel obliged to remind me of last Friday’s disgrace proves that my own
remarks were not in the best of taste—and I apologise for them.”

But his tormentor’s apology appeared to embarrass Ewen Cameron much
more than his thrusts. “I am sorry I said that, Captain Windham!” he
exclaimed, with a vivacity which rather astonished the other. “I ought
not to have taunted you with a calamity for which you were not to
blame. That was in worse taste still.”

“Egad, Mr. Cameron, you are too punctilious,” said Keith carelessly.
“But if you are of that mind—I don’t say that I am—we may fairly cry
quits.”

“For after all,” pursued Ewen, throwing down his plaid, “since you are
not witnessing our preparations of your own free will, I suppose you
are at liberty to make what observations you please upon them.”

“You seem bent upon making allowances for me!” returned Keith with a
smile. “However, I do not complain of that; and if Fate should ever
reverse our positions, and give you, for instance, into my hands, I
hope I may be able to show the same generosity.”

Ardroy, who was now unbuckling his broadsword, stopped and gazed at
him rather intently in the feeble lantern-light, feeble because it
still had to contend with a measure of wet daylight. “Why, do you then
_anticipate_ our meeting again, Captain Windham?” he asked after a
moment.

“I anticipate nothing, Mr. Cameron. I am no wizard to foretell the
future. Yet, but for the fact that we could not meet save as enemies,
I vow ’twould give me pleasure to think that we might one day
encounter each other again.” But, feeling somehow that the young man
standing there looking at him took this for a mere _façon de parler_,
he added, with a return to his bantering tone, “You can have no notion
how much this tour—albeit a trifle too reminiscent of a Roman
triumph—has been alleviated by having so agreeable a cicerone. Though
indeed in the last twenty-four hours my glimpses of you have been
few—too few.”

So expressed, his sentiments had of course small chance of being taken
for sincere. The Highlander, indeed, for all reply gave a little shrug
that was almost like a Frenchman’s, spread his plaid upon the bare
earth floor and laid his broadsword beside it.

“Surely you are not going to sleep in that plaid!” exclaimed Keith,
stirred out of his levity. “Why, ’tis drenched! Take my cloak, I have
no mind to sleep yet, and shall not need it.”

But Ewen, without stiffness, declined, saying that a wet plaid was of
no consequence, and indeed but kept one the warmer. Some, he added,
and the Englishman gasped at the information, wrung them out at night
in water for that reason. All he would accept was some handfuls of
heather for a pillow, and then, lying down, his sword convenient to
his hand, he wrapped himself in the folds of damp tartan and in five
minutes was fast asleep.

But Keith, as he had said, was not sleepy; and after a while, feeling
restless, he strolled to the doorway—door the hut had none. When he
got there he was aware of a rigid figure, muffled in a plaid, standing
in the rain, just out of the direct line of vision—the inevitable
Lachlan watching over his master’s slumbers. He turned his head, and
Keith could see a contraction pass over his dark features. But the
English officer was not to be intimidated by a scowl from studying, if
he wished, the sodden, cloud-enfolded landscape, and the sheets of
rain driving in the twilight over the waters of Loch Eil, though it
was not a cheerful prospect.

What was going to happen to him when his parole expired to-morrow? At
the far end of Loch Eil Loch Linnhe joined it at right angles, and on
Loch Linnhe was Fort William, with its loyal garrison. To-morrow the
Highland force would proceed along Loch Eil, and every step would
bring him nearer to his friends. . . .

He left the doorway after a few moments, and looked down at the
sleeper on the floor, his head sunk in the bundle of heather and his
arm lying across his broadsword. “The embraces of the goddess of ague
seem to be agreeable,” he thought. “I shall be sorry to say farewell
to-morrow, my friend—deuce take me if I quite know why—but I hardly
think you will!”

Then at last he went and lay down on his heap of heather, and listened
to the sound of the rain, always, since he was a boy, connected with
the worst memories of his life. There was the dismal day of his
father’s funeral; he had been but five then, yet he remembered it
perfectly: rain, rain on the nodding plumes of the great black
carriage which had taken his father away; the day some years later on
which his childish mind first realised that his adored mother cared
nothing for him—rain, a soft mist of it. And the night in London, four
years past now, the night that he had discovered what Lydia
Shelmerdine really was. Against the closely-curtained windows of her
boudoir it could be heard to dash in fury (for there was a great wind
that evening) every time that there came a pause in her high,
frightened, lying speech, which ran on the more that he stood there
saying so little. The rose had slipped loose from her close-gathered
powdered hair, her gauze and ivory fan lay snapped at her feet . . .
and the rain sluiced pitilessly against the windows.

Into that tempest Keith Windham had presently gone out, and, once away
from the scented room, had known nothing of its fury, though it
drenched him to the skin; and he had forced his way all dripping into
the presence of the man who had seduced her . . . no, the man whom she
had seduced . . . and had told him to his face that he was welcome to
his conquest, that he did not propose to dispute it with him, nor even to
demand satisfaction. The lady was not worth fighting about; “not worth
the risking of a man’s life—_even of yours_!” There had been
witnesses, vastly surprised witnesses, of conduct so unusual. But he
thought his way of dealing with the situation more effective than the
ordinary; and perhaps it was. He never saw either of the two who had
betrayed him again.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

Riding behind his young Achilles next afternoon Keith Windham kept
looking at Loch Eil, now shining and placid, the seaweed of its level
shore orange in the sun, and the great mountain miles away over Fort
William mirrored, upside down, as clear as the original. If only he
could reach Fort William! But Ardroy, to whom his word of honour still
bound him, would certainly see to it that at the expiry of his parole
this evening he was secured in some other way. “I dare say he will
make it as little irksome for me as he can,” thought Keith, looking at
the tall, easy figure sitting the horse just ahead of him, on whose
gay tartan and ribbon-tied auburn hair the westering sun was shining
full. “He’s an uncommon good fellow . . . and we shall never see each
other again, I suppose.” And again he thought, “Not that he will
care—and why the devil should I?”

Then the stream of men and conveyances began to leave the loch side,
making towards Mr. John Cameron’s house of Fassefern, standing where
Glen Suilag made a breach into the mountains; though Lochiel’s burgess
brother, who would not join the Prince, had carried his prudence to
the length of absenting himself from his property lest he should be
open to the charge of having entertained that compromising guest. It
was not until they came to the gate in their turn that Ardroy slewed
himself round in his saddle to speak to the captive, and said that he
would do what he could for him in the way of accommodation, if he did
not object to waiting a little. So Keith gave up his horse to one of
Ewen’s gillies, and, working his way through the press, waited under a
tree and revolved plans. But in truth he could make none until he knew
how he was to be secured.

Sooner than he had expected his warden reappeared and, taking him in
at a side entry, conducted him to the very top of the humming house.

“I thought this little room might serve for us,” he said, opening the
door of a small, half-furnished garret, and Keith saw that their mails
were already there. “I do not know how many others may be thrust in
here, but there is at least one bed.” And so there was, a sort of
pallet. “You had best establish your claim to it at once, Captain
Windham, or, better still, I will do it for you.” And, mindful as ever
of his prisoner’s comfort, he unfastened his plaid and tossed it on to
the mattress. “I will come and fetch you to supper; I suppose there
will be some.”

Keith could not help looking after his departing figure with a smile
which held both amusement and liking. He could not, however, afford to
let sensibility interfere with what was in his mind now. Whatever were
the reason, Ardroy seemed to have completely forgotten that in—Keith
consulted his watch—in another twenty minutes his captive’s parole
would expire, and he would be free to take himself off . . . if he
could. Or was it that he had not mentioned the coming change of
conditions from some feeling of delicacy, because it would involve
setting a guard?

The Englishman sat down upon the pallet and considered his chances.
They depended almost entirely upon whether in twenty minutes’ time
there was a Highlander posted at the door of this room. But Ardroy had
spoken of fetching him to supper. Heaven send then that supper was
delayed! Perhaps he could creep out of the garret and conceal himself
elsewhere until he found an opportunity of getting clear away later
in the evening. Yet there was no special advantage in waiting for
nightfall (even if Ardroy’s forgetfulness extended so far) because
the nights were apt to be so disconcertingly light. No, the great
difficulty at any hour was his uniform. . . .

And here he found himself looking at the roll from Ewen Cameron’s
saddle, lying on the solitary half-broken chair.

But Keith Windham was much too proud a man not to have a strict regard
for his pledged word. He could hardly prevent the entrance of a plan
of escape into a brain which was, as yet, on parole, but he would not
take the smallest step to put it into execution before the appointed
hour should strike. To pass the time he would scribble a note to
explain his conduct; and, wondering the while whether he should not
have to destroy it even before he had finished it, he tore out a leaf
from his pocket-book and began:

    “DEAR MR. CAMERON,—

    “To justify my unadvertis’d Departure I am fain to put you in Mind
    that I gave my Parole of Honour for the Space of a Se’nnight from
    the Day and Hour of my Capture by you in the Evening of last
    Friday. In ten Minutes more that Period will have expir’d, and I
    trust you will not think it any Infraction of Military Honour
    that, without having previously recall’d that Fact to your Memory,
    I intend at half after six to attempt my Freedom.

    “I shall always retain the most cordial Remembrance of your
    Hospitality, and though the Pilgrimage of the last few Days has
    been somewhat prolong’d, it has enabled me to be present upon a
    most interesting Occasion.

    “Adieu, and forgive me for supposing that when you are more
    accustom’d to a military Life, you will not repeat the Oversight
    by which I am hoping to profit,

                            “Your most obedient, humble Servant,
                                       “KEITH WINDHAM, _Captain_.”

When he had finished this effusion, of which the last paragraph, it
cannot be denied, afforded him a special pleasure, he still waited,
watch in hand. At half-past six exactly he rose from the pallet and,
feeling remarkably like a footpad, opened Ardroy’s modest baggage with
hasty fingers. It proved to contain a clean shirt, a pair of
stockings, a few odds and ends and—a kilt. The plunderer held this up
in some dismay, for he would very greatly have preferred trews, such
as Ardroy was wearing at present, but it was this nether garment or
his own, and in a remarkably short space of time he was surveying his
bare knees with equal disgust and misgiving. No knees that he had seen
this week under tartan were as white as that! Happily the garret was
dusty, and therefore his legs, if not respectably tanned, could at
least look dirty. He thought at first of retaining his uniform coat,
which he fancied could be fairly well hidden by Ardroy’s plaid—how he
blessed him for leaving it behind—but the skirts were a little too
long, and the blue cuffs with their galons too conspicuous, and so he
decided to go coatless. Thereupon he began experiments with the
plaid—what a devil of a lot of it there was! He wished he had a bonnet
to pull forward on his brows . . . but one could not expect everything
to be provided. The want, however, reminded him of his incongruous
wig, and he took this off and placed it, with his discarded uniform,
under the mattress. And so there he was, clad in a costume he would as
soon have assumed as the trappings of a Red Indian—and clad very
insecurely too, he feared, for Ardroy’s kilt was too big for him, and
he could not fasten it any tighter.

Still no sign of any person coming. Keith looked doubtfully at his
host’s rifled baggage. It was his duty to regain his liberty by any
lawful means, but he had certainly acted the part of a pickpocket. The
only compensation in his power was to pay for the clothes he had
taken, since those he had left behind were no adequate exchange. He
pulled out his purse, having small idea of the worth of the purloined
garments, and still less of how Ardroy would view the payment; he
suspected that the Highlander might not relish it, but for his own
peace of mind he felt constrained to make it. And so he wrapped three
guineas in his farewell letter and laid the letter on the chair. Then
he softly opened the garret door, went to the head of the stairs, and
listened.

The immediate neighbourhood of the little room was deserted, and the
sounds from below suggested that the bustle which existed in Fassefern
House that evening was more likely to help than to hinder a pretended
Cameron who desired to slip out unnoticed. Captain Windham settled the
plaid more to his satisfaction and began with an unconcerned air to
descend the stairs. But he was clutching nervously at the top of the
philabeg, and his legs felt abominably cold.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

Some three-quarters of an hour later Donald Cameron of Lochiel and
Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch, he whose clansmen had held High
Bridge, were talking together outside the front of Fassefern House.
About an hour previously it had been arranged that the heavy baggage
was to go forward that night along Loch Eil side with a strong convoy
of Camerons; a large escort was required because at Corpach they would
have to run the gauntlet of the neighbourhood of Fort William on the
other side of the water—a danger which the Prince and the rest of the
little force would avoid next day by taking a route through Glen
Suilag impossible to the baggage train.

“And I am sending my young cousin Ardroy in command of it,” concluded
Lochiel, “though the news was something of the suddenest to him. But
he will be ready; he is a very punctual person, is Ewen.”

And they went on to speak of other matters: of Macleod of Macleod’s
refusal to observe his solemn engagement to join the Prince (even if
he came alone), which was still more resented than the withdrawal of
Sir Alexander MacDonald of the Isles; and of what Sir John Cope would
do, and where he would elect to give them battle. For that the English
general would take his alarmed way up to Inverness without daring to
face them had not occurred to the most sanguine.

Lochiel, indeed, was looking very grave. Keith Windham’s flash of
insight had been correct; he was not deluded. His was the case of a
man who was risking everything—life, fortune, lands, the future of his
young family—against his better judgment because, more scrupulous of
his plighted word than the Chief of Macleod or MacDonald of Sleat, he
felt himself too deeply engaged to draw back without loss of honour.
Yet, unlike Macleod’s, his engagement only pledged his support
in the case that the Prince came with French assistance—and he
had come without it. The fate of his whole clan lay on Lochiel’s
shoulders—more, the fate of every man in the rising, for if he had
held back the spark would have been quenched at the outset for lack of
fuel. That knowledge was a heavy burden to be laid on a man who, far
from being a freebooting chief, had striven all his life for the
betterment of his people.

“Yes,” he was saying for the second time, “if we can reach and hold
the pass over the Corryarrick before Cope——”

At that moment there was a rapid step behind the two men, Lochiel
heard his own name uttered in sharp accents, and, turning quickly,
beheld the young commander of the baggage convoy in a state of high
discomposure.

“My dear Ewen, what is wrong?”

“He’s gone!” And so agitated was Ardroy’s tone, so black his brow,
that Lochiel’s own colour changed. “Who—not the Prince!”

“The English officer—my prisoner . . . he’s escaped! His parole
expired at half-past six this evening, and I, fool that I was, had
forgot it over this business of the escort. He’ll go straight to Fort
William with information of our numbers and our arms. . . . Oh, I
deserve you should dismiss me, Lochiel! He’s been away near an hour, I
suppose. Shall I ride after him? . . . No, I cannot, unless you give
the convoy to someone else—and truly I think I am not fit——”

Lochiel broke in, laying a hand on his arm. “’Tis not worth while
pursuing him, my dear Ewen, nor any very great loss to be rid of him.
I doubt not, too, that they have already at Fort William all the
information that Captain Windham can give. But how, with that uniform,
did he get away?”

The enraged young man ground his teeth. “He was not wearing his
uniform. He stole some clothes from me—a philabeg and my plaid. And
he left me a damned impertinent letter . . . and these.” He unclosed a
hand and held out three gold coins. “Isn’t that the final insult, that
he must leave so much more than the things were worth, as though to——”
He appeared unable to finish the sentence. “If ever I meet him
again——” Back went his arm, and Captain Windham’s guineas hurtled
violently into the shrubbery of Fassefern House.

                                  II

                              FLOOD-TIDE

         “To wanton me, to wanton me,
          Ken ye what maist would wanton me?
          To see King James at Edinburgh Cross,
          Wi’ fifty thousand foot and horse,
          And the usurper forced to flee,
          Oh this is what maist would wanton me.”
                                                     —_Jacobite Song_.

                               CHAPTER I

The dusk of early October had fallen on the city of Edinburgh, that
stately city, which for some three weeks now had been experiencing a
situation as odd as any in its varied and turbulent history. For
Prince Charles and his Highlanders held the town, but not the Castle,
secure on its lofty and impregnable rock; this they could neither
storm, owing to its position, nor, from lack of artillery, batter
down, while King George’s military representatives in the Castle were,
for their part, unable to regain control of the city below them. The
stalemate thus established was perfectly in harmony with the spirit of
unconscious comedy which had reigned throughout these weeks, beginning
with the ludicrous indecisions and terrors of the city fathers on the
news of the Highland advance, and the casual method by which the city
had suffered itself to be captured, or rather walked into, by Lochiel
and his men. For the opening of the Netherbow Port very early on the
morning of the 17th of September, just as the Highlanders outside were
preparing to withdraw disappointed, was due to nothing more momentous
than the exit of a hackney carriage on its way to its stable in the
Canongate—though it is true that it was the carriage which had just
brought back the discomfited envoys sent to interview the Prince at
Gray’s Mill.

Yesterday only had come to an end the latest (and not entirely
humorous) episode, of some days’ duration, when, the Prince having
‘blockaded’ the Castle, in other words, having cut off daily supplies,
the garrison had retaliated by firing on the town, killing some
innocent inhabitants, striking terror into them all, and making it
very undesirable to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Castle in the
company of a Highlander. Violent representations on the part of the
city to the Prince, embodying ‘the most hideous complaints against the
garrison’, had brought this uncomfortable state of affairs to an end
by the raising of the ‘blockade’—itself originated, so the story went,
by the discovery of smuggled information in a pat of butter destined
for the valetudinarian General Guest, for whom milk and eggs were
permitted to pass daily into the Castle. Yet the old gentleman’s
treacherous butter was only one of the many whimsical touches of the
goddess Thalia, who had devised, during these weeks of occupation,
such ingenious surprises as the descent of a soldier from the Castle
by means of a rope into Livingston’s Yard, where he set a house on
fire, and returned in triumph, by the same method, with a couple of
captured Jacobite muskets; the discomfiture, by a sudden illumination
from above, of three Camerons sent experimentally to scale the Castle
rock under cover of darkness, and—perhaps the most genuinely comic of
all—the solemn paying out to the cashier and directors of the Royal
Bank of Scotland, within the very walls of the Castle, and in exchange
for Prince Charles’s notes, of the ready money which had been taken
there for safety, but the lack of which inconvenienced the Edinburgh
shopkeepers as much as anybody. This transaction had taken place,
under the white flag, during the blockade itself.

But to-night, the guns being silent, and General Joshua Guest once more
in possession of his invalid diet, the lately terrified citizens in
the high, crammed houses with their unsavoury approaches were
preparing to sleep without fear of bombardment next day by their own
defenders. Those outposts of the invading foe, which always kept a
wary eye upon the Castle and its approaches—and which had not passed
through a very enviable time the last few days—the Highland guard at
the Weighhouse, the West Bow, and elsewhere, had received their
night relief, and Mr. Patrick Crichton, saddler and ironmonger, was
writing in his diary further caustic and originally spelt remarks
anent these ‘scownderalls’, ‘scurlewheelers’ and ‘hillskipers’. Inside
the walls all was quiet.

But at the other end of the town Holyrood House was lit up, for there
was dancing to-night in the long gallery under the eyes of that
unprepossessing series of early Scottish kings due to the brush of an
ill-inspired Dutchman . . . and under a pair of much more sparkling
ones. For the Prince was gay to-night, as he was not always; and
though, following his usual custom, he himself did not dance, it was
plain that the growing accessions to his cause during the last few
days had raised his spirits. For, besides all those who had joined him
soon after Glenfinnan—Stewarts of Appin, MacDonalds of Glengarry,
Grants of Glenmoriston—two days ago had come in fierce old Gordon of
Glenbucket with four hundred men, and the day before that young Lord
Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie’s son, with six hundred, and Farquharson of
Balmoral with two hundred, and his kinsman of Monaltrie with more. And
others were coming. Whatever the future might hold, he was here as by
a miracle in the palace of his ancestors, having defeated in a quarter
of an hour the general who had slipped out of his path in August and
returned by sea to the drubbing which awaited him among the morasses
and the cornstubble of Prestonpans.

So there, at the end of the gallery nearest to his own apartments, in
a costume half satin, half tartan, stood the living embodiment of
Scotland’s ancient dynasty, and drew to himself from time to time the
gaze of every lady in the room. But it was to those of his own sex
that he chiefly talked.

At the other end of the gallery, which looked out on to the garden and
the chapel, Alison Grant, very fine in her hoop and powder, her
flowered brocade of blue and silver, with a scarf of silken tartan and
a white autumn rose on her breast, was talking with animation to three
young men, one of whom, in a French uniform, bore a strong resemblance
to her, and was in fact her young brother Hector, just come over from
France. The others were distant kinsmen, Grants of Glenmoriston and
Shewglie respectively. Right in the corner, on a gilded chair, sat Mr.
Grant in a not very new coat (for it was more fitting that Alison
should go braw than he). His hands rested on his cane, and his lined
face, half shrewd and half childlike, wrinkled into a smile as he saw
the likelihood that neither young Glenmoriston nor young Shewglie, who
seemed to be disputing in a friendly way for the honour of the next
dance, would obtain it, since someone else was making his way between
the knots of talkers to this corner. To judge by the glances cast at
him as he passed, it appeared that Alison was not the only lady there
to think that a certain tall cadet of Clan Cameron, a captain in
Lochiel’s regiment and one of the Prince’s aides-de-camp, who wore
powder for the nonce and amber satin instead of tartan, was the match
of any other gentleman in the room—except, of course, of him with the
star on his breast.

Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the new-comer the briefest glance
now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away
again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took
themselves off.

“Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,” said her father
from his corner.

“Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,” observed
Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck,
where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice,
and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their
powder, were beginning to show their true colour. “Like the rest of
the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a
Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to
convert me.”

At that Alison turned round, laughing.

“Well, sir,” she said, looking him up and down, “your costume, I vow,
is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan
upon you, you might be an Englishman!”

“Or a Frenchman,” suggested her father from his corner.

But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. “No;
Frenchmen are all little men!” Yet, having lived so much in France,
she must have known better.

“No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,” agreed Mr. Grant. “And he
has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the
French air.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ewen, bowing, “since I suppose I am to take
that as a compliment.”

“There are some tall fellows enough in my regiment,” declared Hector
Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. “For my part, I’ve no
ambition to attain the height of a pine tree. Alison, is it customary
in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?”

“Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the
kinship,” responded Ewen for his betrothed. “Not, therefore, in this
case, Eachain!”

“Proprietary airs already, I see,” retorted the young soldier, a smile
in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. “_Eh bien_, if I may not
have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not
your young misses.” And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand,
carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.

And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and
silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of
Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by
the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on
rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a
reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how
handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know
this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control.
Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an
exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.

The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in
a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great
blue blossom. Then she took his hand and they went aside.

“Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no?
What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?” asked
Ewen.

“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end
of the apartment, “the Prince is no longer here!”

“Is he not?” responded Ewen calmly. “I had not observed.”

“And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!” cried Alison, and took
her fan out of his hand.

“I was looking at you, _mo chridhe_,” said her lover in his deep,
gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.

“But where can His Royal Highness have got to?”

“My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch
us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another of his
aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety.
Archie!”

Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his
kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than
Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen
had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore
his Chief.

“Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a
Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of
the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed
his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.”

But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of
the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So
Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away
like a fair ship.

“Taken to task so soon!” said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a
married man himself, with several children. “No doubt if my Jean were
here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had
withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.”

Neither did Ewen now. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Donald will not be
here to-night at all?”

“Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.”

“He’s not ill, Archie?”

“No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.” And giving his
young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.

Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner.
Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned
to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the
gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.

“Captain Cameron,” said he, coming closer and speaking still lower,
though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so,
“Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you
will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his
bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal
Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the
ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to
his absence. Do you understand?”

Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There
was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which
he did not relish, and, in common with many of the Highland chiefs,
he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the
Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.

“This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,” he observed. “A
short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.”

“I suppose, sir,” retorted Strickland tartly, “that you scarcely
consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health
than he is himself?”

“No,” returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, “but I
do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from
His Royal Highness himself, and not from any . . . intermediary.”

Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. “You are not very polite, Captain
Cameron,” he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a
warmer retort. “I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the
honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to
execute them?”

“No, since I have not refused,” said Ewen with brevity, and he turned
upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. “Not yet—you are
not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.”

And Ewen stopped. “The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of
an hour’s time!” he exclaimed. “Then indeed ’tis a very strange
seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.”

“For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!” said Strickland in an agitated
whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. “For God’s sake show some
discretion—moderate your voice!” And he murmured something about a
delicate task and a wrong choice which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions
the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be
guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was
expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very
little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of
nervousness.

“Pray let go my arm, sir,” he said, and, the Englishman not at once
complying, added meaningly, “if you do not wish me to be still more
indiscreet!” On which Mr. Strickland hastily removed his grasp, and
Ewen turned and began to make his way down the room, careless whether
Strickland were following or no, since if that gentleman’s desire for
secrecy were sincere he dared not make an open protest among the
dancers.

As he went Ewen very much regretted Lochiel’s absence to-night, and
also the indisposition of Mr. Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s
secretary, who had delicate health. Mr. Strickland must be aware of
both those facts. . . . And if Strickland were in this business,
whatever it might be, it was fairly certain that Colonel O’Sullivan,
the Irish Quartermaster-General, was in it also. For a second or so
the young man hesitated, and glanced about for Dr. Cameron, but he was
nowhere to be seen now. Then he himself would try to get to the bottom
of what was going on; and as when his mind was made up an earthquake
would scarcely have turned him from his path, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy
made straight for the Prince’s bedchamber with that intention.

The drawing-room leading directly from the picture gallery had about a
dozen couples in it; the ante-room which gave at right angles from
this was fortunately empty, although the door between was open. The
investigator went quietly through, closing this, marched across the
ante-room and knocked at the Prince’s door.

“_Avanti!_” cried a voice, and Ewen went into the bedchamber which had
once been the ill-fated Darnley’s. The Prince was sitting on the other
side of the gilded and embroidery-hung bed, with his back to the door,
engaged, it seemed, in the absence of Morrison, his valet, in pulling
on his own boots. A black cloak and plain three-cornered hat lay upon
the gold and silver coverlet.

“Is that you, O’Sullivan?” he asked without turning his head. “I shall
be ready in a moment.”

Ewen thought, “I was right; O’Sullivan is in it! . . . Your Royal
Highness, . . .” he said aloud.

At that the Prince looked quickly behind him, then, still seated on
the bed, turned half round, leaning on one hand. “My orders, Captain
Cameron, were for you to post yourself at the outer door. There has
evidently been some mistake, either on your part or on Mr.
Strickland’s.”

“On mine then, may it please Your Highness,” admitted Ewen coolly. “As
the order puzzled me somewhat, I have ventured to ask that I may
receive it from Your Royal Highness’s own mouth.”

The mouth in question betrayed annoyance, and the Prince arose from
his position on the bed and faced his aide-de-camp across it. “_Mon
Dieu_, I thought it was plain enough! You will have the goodness to
station yourself outside the farther door and to let no one attempt to
see me. I am indisposed.”

“And the quarter of an hour’s interval of which Mr. Strickland spoke,
sir?”

“That is of no moment now. You can take up your place at once, Captain
Cameron.” And with a gesture of dismissal the Prince turned his back
and walked across the room towards the curtained window. It was thus
plainly to be seen that he had his boots on.

He was not then expecting a visit; he was going to pay one! Hence the
sentinel before the outer door, that his absence might not be known.
Ewen looked at the cloak on the bed, thought of the dark Edinburgh
streets, the hundred and one narrow little entries, the chance of a
scuffle, of an encounter with some unexpected patrol from the Castle,
and took the plunge.

“Your Royal Highness is going out—at this hour?”

The Prince spun round. “Who told you that I was going out? And if I
were, what possible affair is it of yours, sir?”

“Only that, as your aide-de-camp, it is my great privilege to watch
over your Royal Highness’s person,” answered Ewen respectfully but
firmly. “And if you are going out into the streets of Edinburgh at
night without a guard——”

Charles Edward came nearer. His brown eyes, striking in so
fair-complexioned a young man, sparkled with anger. “Captain Cameron,
when I appointed you my aide-de-camp, I did not think that I was
hampering myself with a s——” He bit off the short, pregnant word, that
aide-de-camp’s suddenly paling face evidently recalling to him
whither he was going. But he instantly started off again on the same
road. “_Dieu me damne!_” he said irritably, “am I to have your clan
always at my elbow? Lochiel may have walked first into Edinburgh, but
he was not the first to declare for me. He sent his brother to beg me
to go back again! I think you Camerons would do well to remem——” Again
he broke off, for there had come a knock at the door.

But Ewen, white to the very lips, had put his hand behind him and
turned the key. “Will your Royal Highness kindly give your orders to
some other man?” he asked, in a voice which he did not succeed in
keeping steady. “I’ll not endure to hear either my Chief or myself
insulted, no, not though it be by my future King!”

The Prince was brought up short. His aide-de-camp might have taken
upon himself a good deal more than his position warranted, but to
offend a chieftain of Clan Cameron at this juncture was madness.
Charles was not yet a slave to the petulant temper which from his
boyhood had given anxiety to those about him, and which in later
unhappy years was to work so much disaster, and his great personal
charm was still undimmed.

“Wait a little!” he called through the door, and then looked with
appeal in his beautiful eyes at the tall figure in front of it, rigid
with the stillness of a consuming anger. “Ardroy, forgive me for a
moment of irritation! I scarce knew what I was saying. You cannot
think that there is any thought in my breast for my good Lochiel but
gratitude—all the greater gratitude that he knew and weighed the risk
he ran and yet drew that true sword of his! And as for you, how did I
insult you?”

“I think,” said Ewen, still very pale and haughty, and using to the
full the physical advantage which he had—not very many had it—of being
able to look down on his Prince, “I think that your Royal Highness was
near calling me . . . something that no gentleman can possibly call
another.”

“Why, then, I could not have been near it—since I hope I am a
gentleman!” The Prince smiled his vanquishing smile. “And to prove
that you are imagining vain things, my dear Ardroy, I will tell you on
what errand I am bound to-night, and you shall accompany me, if you
still insist upon your right to watch over my royal person.”

Ewen was not vanquished. “Your Royal Highness is too good,” he
answered, bowing, “but I should not dream of claiming that right any
longer, and I will withdraw.”

“I always heard that you Highlanders were unforgiving,” lamented the
Prince, between jest and earnest. (Devoted though they were, they were
certainly not easy to manage.) “Come, Ardroy, you are much of an age
with myself, I imagine—do _you_ never say in heat what you designed
not—and regret the moment after?”

Their eyes met, the warm Southern brown and the blue.

“Yes, my Prince,” said Ewen suddenly. “Give me what orders you will,
and they shall be obeyed.”

“I am forgiven then?” asked the Prince quickly, and he held out his
hand as though to clasp his aide-de-camp’s. But Ewen bent his knee
and put his lips to it.

During this touching scene of reconciliation it was evident from
various discreet but not too patient taps upon the door that the
excluded person on the other side still desired admittance.

“Open the door, _mon ami_,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking
it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too
pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his
arm.

“I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He
stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a
stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General
and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the
recent battle.

“Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a
spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me,
O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be a _partie carrée_.”

“As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.

“And in that case,” went on his Royal Highness, “he had best know
whither we are bound. We are going, my dear Ardroy, to pay a visit to
a lady.”

Ewen was astonished, for he had seen enough since their coming to
Edinburgh to make him conclude that the Prince was—perhaps
fortunately—very cold where women were concerned, no matter how much
incense they burnt before him. Then disgust succeeded to astonishment:
was this the time for intrigues of that nature? But the latter
emotion, at least, was very transitory, for the Prince went on almost
at once: “’Tis the Jacobite widow of a Whig Lord of Session—an old
lady, but no doubt charming, and certainly loyal—who dwells at the
corner of the West Bow and the Grassmarket.”

“So near the Castle!” broke from Ewen in spite of himself.

“_Donc_, the last place in which I shall be looked for! Moreover,”
said the young Prince gaily, “I am borrowing Murray’s name, since
Lady Easterhall is his kinswoman, and is expecting a visit from
him—though not, I’m bound to say, to-night. You look blank, Captain
Cameron” (and Ewen had no doubt he did). “See then, read the old
lady’s letter to Murray.”

Ewen took the paper which the Prince drew from his pocket, and read
the following, written in a slightly tremulous hand:

    ‘MY DEAR JOHN,—

    ‘It will no doubt be your Labours in His Royal Highness’s Service
    that have hitherto hindered you frae waiting upon an old Woman who
    has not set Eyes upon you since you were a Lad. I see I’ll e’en
    have to bid you to my House, and maybe set a Bait to bring you
    there. Well then—do you mind of William Craig of Craigmains, him
    that’s sib to your Uncle Dickson on the Mother’s Side, with a
    pretty Fortune, and Kin that went out, severals of them, in the
    Fifteen? He comes to Edinburgh to-day on Affairs, and will likely
    stay two-three Days with me; and I’m thinking that could he be
    gained for the Good Cause others of the Fife Lairds might follow
    his Example. Forbye there’s his Siller. Try then could you not
    dine with me the morn at three of the Clock, and have a bit Crack
    with Craigmains, and tell him how well Things go for our bonny
    Prince, and you’ll maybe do as good an Afternoon’s Work as writing
    Proclamations.

                                        ‘Your loving Great-aunt,
                                                ‘ANNA EASTERHALL.’

This letter was superscribed ‘To Mr. John Murray of Broughton at
Holyroodhouse’, and was of the same day’s date. Ewen gave it back to
the royal hand in silence.

“Mr. Murray is indisposed and keeps his room, and I am going to pay
his great-aunt a visit in his stead,” said the Prince, going to the
bed and taking up his cloak. “And ‘our bonny Prince’ himself will have
the necessary bit crack with this Fife laird of the moneybags. You can
see from the letter that Lady Easterhall thinks a little persuasion
might induce him to open them, and I flatter myself that he’ll yield
to me sooner than to Murray.”

“But your Royal Highness could cause this kinsman of Mr. Murray’s to
come here, instead of venturing yourself in the Grassmarket,” objected
Ewen, to whom this Haroun-al-Raschid scheme—unknown, he felt sure, to
the secretary himself—did not at all appeal.

“Not before he had made up his mind, man! He would not; your Lowland
Scot is too canny.”

“But would not a visit to this lady to-morrow——”

“Would you have me approach the Castle in daylight, my friend?”

“But consider the other dwellers in the house,” urged Ewen. “Your
Royal Highness knows that nearly all Edinburgh lives pell-mell, one
above the other. Lady Easterhall’s neighbour on the next land may well
be a Whig gentleman or——”

“My dear Ulysses,” said the Prince, laying a hand familiarly on his
aide-de-camp’s arm, “you may have an old head on young shoulders, but
so have I too! Lady Easterhall is very singular; she has a whole house
to herself. I found this out from Murray. And if report says true, the
house itself is singular also.”

At that moment there was another discreet tap at the door, and
O’Sullivan, who had been listening to this conversation in a sardonic
silence, opened it to admit Mr. Francis Strickland in a cloak. In
response to the displeased query on the last-comer’s face the
Quartermaster-General observed that Captain Cameron was going with
them, “though one gathers that he disapproves.”

“He has my leave to disapprove,” said the Prince lightly, “provided he
comes too.” He was evidently in great spirits at the prospect of this
escapade, as pleased as a boy at stealing a march on his bedridden
secretary—relieved too, perhaps, at having laid the storm which he
had himself raised; and when Ewen asked him whether he should not
procure him a chair, scouted the idea. He would go on his own feet as
less likely to attract attention. “And when I have my cloak so”—he
threw it round his face up to the very eyes—“who will know me? I
learnt the trick in Rome,” he added.

But his gaze then fell upon his aide-de-camp’s attire. “Faith, Ardroy,
you must have a cloak, too, to cover up that finery—nay, you cannot go
to fetch one now. I know where Morrison keeps another of mine.”

“And the sentinel at your Royal Highness’s ante-chamber door?”
enquired Strickland in an injured voice.

“The door must go wanting one after all—unless you yourself covet the
post, Strickland? In that case you can lend _your_ cloak to Captain
Cameron.” And at the look on Strickland’s face he laughed. “I was but
jesting. Like the man in the Gospel, I have two cloaks—here, Ardroy,
if ’twill serve for that excessive height of yours. . . . Now for my
great-great-great-grandsire’s private stair!”

                              CHAPTER II

The three men followed him in silence down the narrow, twisting stair,
Ewen bringing up the rear, and wondering why disapproval made one feel
so old. And, after O’Sullivan had given the word of the day and passed
them out of Holyrood House, they were soon walking briskly, not up the
Canongate itself, but up the slope parallel to it, the ‘back of the
Canongate’, the Prince in front with the Irishman, Ewen behind with
Strickland, both the latter very silent. Flurries of the October wind
plucked at their cloaks as they went in the semi-darkness, sometimes
swooping at them from the open grassy spaces of the King’s Park on
their left, at others appearing to originate mysteriously in the tall
line of houses of the Canongate with their intervening gardens on the
right. They met nobody until they came to the Cowgate Port, and,
O’Sullivan again giving the word to the guard, were admitted within
the town walls and the nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper.

In the Cowgate there were still a few folk abroad, and a couple of
drunkards, emerging unexpectedly from a close, all but knocked into
the Prince. As he moved quickly aside to avoid collision, a man
passing in the opposite direction was obliged to step into the gutter.
It was quite natural that this man should turn his head to see the
reason for being thus incommoded, but unfortunate that the Prince’s
cloak should at that instant slip from its position. Ewen could only
hope that the passer-by had not recognised him; there was at least
nothing to indicate that he had. He went on his way without a pause,
and the four adventurers resumed theirs.

As they emerged into the Grassmarket the great mass of the Castle
Rock, half distinguishable against the sky, and crowned with a few
lights, lifted itself as if in menace; but a few steps farther and it
was blocked from view by the houses on the other side of that wide
open space. Lights still burned in some of these, but everything was
quiet.

“That is the house,” said the Prince in a low voice, but it was not
easy to know at which he was pointing across the Grassmarket, since
they all adjoined each other. “The entrance, however, is neither here
nor in the West Bow, but up a close leading out of the Grassmarket, so
Murray says.”

Holding their fluttering cloaks about them they crossed the
Grassmarket. Away to their right, when they were over, wound the curve
of the West Bow. At the mouth of the close which the Prince indicated
Ewen, seeing that O’Sullivan seemed to be going to allow his master to
walk first up the dark passage, strode forward, and without apology
placed himself in front, and so preceded them all up the alley, his
hand on his sword. He liked this place not at all.

In a moment he felt a twitch on his cloak from behind. “This will be
the door of the house,” said the Prince’s voice. “See if you can
summon someone. They keep uncommonly early hours hereabouts; I trust
the household is not already abed.”

But Ewen, tirling the risp on the door in the gloom, welcomed this
suggestion with delight, since, if it were so, the Prince would be
obliged to go home again. And for some little time it did appear as if
his hope were to be fulfilled, for no one came in answer to his
summons. He peered up the close; it seemed to him possible that its
upper end debouched on the Castle Hill itself. It was madness to have
come here.

The Prince himself then seized the ring and rasped it impatiently up
and down, and very soon Ewen’s heart sank again as he heard bolts
being withdrawn inside. An old serving-man opened the door a little
way and put his head out.

“Will Lady Easterhall receive her kinsman, Mr. Murray of Broughton,
and his friends?” asked Mr. Murray’s impersonator.

The ancient servitor opened the door a little wider. “Ou, ay, Mr.
Murray o’ Broughton,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Mr. Murray o’
Broughton,” he repeated, in an owl-like manner which hinted at recent
refreshment. “An’ Mr. Murray’s frien’s,” he added, with another yawn
but no motion to admit the visitors. “Hoo mony o’ ye wull there be
then—is yon anither?” For footsteps had been coming up the close, and
at the words a man passed the group, walking quickly. He did not
glance at them, and it was too dark in the alley to see faces; but
Ewen felt an uncomfortable suspicion that it was the same man who had
passed them in the Cowgate and had looked at the Prince. But no,
surely this man was shorter; moreover he had betrayed no interest in
them.

“Come, man, conduct us to Lady Easterhall,” said O’Sullivan sharply.
“Or is she abed?”

“Nay, her leddyship’s taking a hand at the cartes or playing at the
dambrod wi’ Miss Isobel. Come ben then, sirs. Which o’ ye wull be Mr.
Murray?”

But nobody answered him. They followed him towards the staircase, up
which he began laboriously to toil. “Forbye her leddyship’s no’
expectin’ Mr. Murray till the morn,” they heard him mutter to himself,
but soon he did little save cough as he panted and stumbled upwards,
pausing once to announce that whiles he had a sair hoast.

“Take heart, my Nestor,” said the Prince in Ewen’s ear, as they
arrived at the first floor. “It may be difficult to get into this
house, but I have heard that it is easy to get out of it.”

Before he could explain himself the old man had opened the door of a
large room, economically and most insufficiently lit by the flickering
firelight and a couple of candles on a small table near the hearth, at
which sat an old lady and a young playing draughts. There was no one
else in the room.

“My leddy, here’s yer leddyship’s kinsman, Mr. Murray o’ Broughton,
and a wheen frien’s tae veesit ye. Wull I bring some refreshment?”

From the island of light the old lady looked up surprised. “Ye
veesit ower late, nephew,” she said in a little, cracked, but
authoritative voice, in the Scots common even to persons of breeding.
“Nane the less ye are welcome. But did ye no get my letter the day?
Saunders, light the sconces and bring wine.” And, as one or two
candles on the walls sprang to life and the Prince took a few steps
forward, she leant from her easy chair. “Eh, John, ye’ve made a finer
figure of a man than aince I thocht ye like to do! But hae ye the
toothache that ye are sae happed up? Come and present your friends,
and I’ll make ye acquainted with Miss Isobel Cochran, your aunt
Margaret’s niece. Bestir yersel’ now wi’ the candles, Saunders—dinna
don’er, man!”

The Prince removed his cloak from the lower part of his face. “Madam,”
he said, bowing, “I must crave your pardon for having used your
great-nephew’s name as a passport. I am not Mr. Murray, and—though I
hope indeed that you will not be so cruel—I await only your word to
have your good Saunders show us the door again.”

The old lady peered still farther into the only half-dispelled
dimness. “Presairve us—wha’s gotten intil the hoose?” she exclaimed.
“Wha is’t . . . I canna see . . .”

But the girl was on her feet, the colour rushing into her face.
“Great-aunt, great-aunt, ’tis the Prince himself!”

         *         *         *         *         *         *

Even Ewen’s disapproval was hardly proof against the scene that
followed. Old Lady Easterhall rose tremulously on her ebony stick, her
face working almost painfully, and attempted to kneel, which the
Prince of course would not allow; while Miss Cochran, from pale that
she was become, had the colour restored to her cheeks by the salute
which he set on her hand as she rose from the deepest curtsy of her
life. In a short time Saunders, babbling joyfully, had lit every
sconce in the room, till the candle-light swam and glittered on the
well-polished furniture and the half-seen satins of the visitors’
coats, seeming to concentrate itself upon the winking star of St.
Andrew which—most ill-advisedly, thought the aide-de-camp—still
adorned the Royal breast. And when chairs had been set, and wine
brought, then at last, in a warm atmosphere of loyalty and emotion,
the Prince tactfully explained his errand.

Lady Easterhall shook her becapped head. “Ah, I jaloused ’twas not to
see an auld woman that your Royal Highness came here! But Craigmains
is no’ come yet; he wasna to reach the toun till noon the morn. I
thocht I had writ that in my letter to my nephew. Sae your Royal
Highness has come here for naething.”

The Prince’s face had indeed fallen, but he recovered himself quickly.
“Do not say that, madam. Have I not gained the pleasure of your
acquaintance, and of Miss Cochran’s, not to speak of drinking the best
claret I have tasted since I came to Edinburgh? So let us pledge the
missing guest, gentlemen, and the real Murray shall deal with him
to-morrow.”

On which, lifting his glass, he drank again, and Colonel O’Sullivan
and Mr. Strickland followed his example. But Ewen did not; he had
risen, and now remained standing behind the Prince’s chair, as one
awaiting the signal to depart. Now that he had learnt the uselessness
of his escapade His Highness would no doubt speedily withdraw. But
that young gentleman showed no sign of such an intention. On the
contrary, he began in an animated manner to question Lady Easterhall
on her recollections of the Fifteen, while Miss Cochran’s hand played
nervously with the neglected draughtsmen on the little table, though
her eyes, wide and glamour-stricken, never left the unbidden guest.
She at least, even if she knew it not, was uneasy.

And after a few minutes the Prince became aware of his aide-de-camp’s
attitude. He turned his head.

“What a plague ails you, Captain Cameron, standing there like a
grenadier! Sit down, man, and do not so insult our hostess’s excellent
vintage.”

“I had rather, with Your Highness’s and Lady Easterhall’s leave,”
replied Captain Cameron, “post myself in some part of the house whence
I can get a view of the approach to it. Does not the close run up
towards the Castle Hill, madam?”

“You are very nervous, sir,” commented O’Sullivan, half-sneeringly.
“Why should the nearness of the Castle trouble Lady Easterhall, since
his Royal Highness’s presence cannot possibly be known there? And of
what use is the guard at the Weighhouse—your own clansmen, too—if they
cannot prevent the garrison from coming out?”

But Lady Easterhall herself seemed of Ewen’s opinion. “The young
gentleman is verra richt,” she declared. “He shall keep watch if he’s
minded tae, though, as ye say, sir, the Castle’s little likely to
trouble my hoose. Isobel, gang ye with Captain Cameron and show him
the best windy for the purpose. Though even if they should send a
picket here,” she added smiling, “His Royal Highness and all could be
oot of the hoose before they could win entrance. There’s a secret
stair, gentlemen, leads frae this verra room doun under the hoose to a
bit door in the West Bow, and the entry to’t lies ahint yon screwtore
at the side of the chimley, sae ye may be easy.”

All eyes turned towards the spot indicated, where, not far from
the hearth, an ebony writing-table with inlay of metal and
tortoiseshell—evidently a French importation—stood against the
panelling. “A secret stair!” exclaimed the Prince, and, in a lower
tone, “_ma foi_, rumour was right!—You hear, Ardroy? So now you need
not deprive us of your society . . . nor of Miss Cochran’s.”

“Miss Cochran’s I need not in any case take from your Royal Highness,”
responded Ewen, preparing to leave the room, “for I doubt not I can
find a suitable look out without troubling her. But, even with the
secret stair, I think it would be better to post a sentry.” A laugh
from O’Sullivan followed him as he closed the door, and stirred his
simmering wrath against the Quartermaster-General and Strickland to a
still higher temperature. That they should without remonstrance allow
the Prince to remain here, under the very shadow of the Castle, for no
more valid object than to drink Lady Easterhall’s claret—and, of
course, to give her pleasure by the honour done to her—was monstrous!
It was true that it needed a certain amount of skill and courage to
make a dash from the Castle, on account of the Highland guards in its
neighbourhood, but it was dark, and he was still uneasy about the man
who had passed them in the close.

The landing and stairway were ill lit, and he hesitated; he had better
summon Saunders, perhaps. Then the door behind him opened and shut, a
rather timid voice said, “Captain Cameron!” and turning, he beheld
Miss Isobel Cochran with a lighted candle in her hand.

“I came, sir, because I thought you would need this.” She held it out
none too steadily. “Oh, sir, you are the only one right of all of us!
The Prince should not bide longer; it is too dangerous.”

“So I think,” said Ewen, looking down at her gravely. “I thank you,
Miss Cochran.” He took the light from her. “Could you not persuade
Lady Easterhall to hasten his departure?”

“Hardly,” answered the girl regretfully. “You can see what it means to
her to have the Prince under her roof. . . . If you will go along that
passage, sir, you will find a window out of which you can see some way
up the close. . . . Stay, I will show you, since I am here.”

She slipped along the passage in front of him, and he followed with
the candlestick.

“There,” said Miss Cochran, “this window.” She unlatched it, Ewen
setting down the light at some distance. He saw the girl put her head
out . . . and then draw back, her hand over her mouth as though to
stifle a scream. “Too late, too late already! Look, look!”

Ewen leaned out. Down the dark alley, already echoing to the quick
tramp of feet, a file of soldiers were advancing two by two, an
officer leading. He drew in his head.

“Go back at once and warn the Prince, madam. I will stay a moment to
watch. Blow out the light, if you please; I do not want them to see
me.”

Obeying him, the girl fled, while Ewen, crouching by the open window,
held his breath as the heavy, hasty footsteps drew nearer and nearer,
and he was looking down at last on three-cornered hats and tilted
bayonets. There were fully a score of soldiers, and they _were_
stopping at Lady Easterhall’s entrance; he saw the officer raise a
lantern to make sure of the door. Waiting no longer, he ran back along
the passage and pelted down the stairs. “Saunders, Saunders!”

Fortunately the old man heard him at once and emerged from some lair
of his own on the ground-floor. “What’s to do, sir?”

“There are soldiers from the Castle at the door. Don’t admit them, on
your life! They are after . . . ‘Mr. Murray’. Is the door stout?”

“No’ by-ordinar’ stout. Dod, they’ll be for coming in; nae doot o’
that!” For a sword-hilt, it might have been, was clamouring on the
door. “If I’m no’ tae open, they’ll ding the door doun!”

“Let them,” commanded Ewen. “’Twill take some time to do it. And
remember, you know nothing at all about her ladyship’s visitors!”

He ran up again, thanking Heaven with all his heart for the secret
passage and its exit in a spot where the redcoats would never dare to
show their faces—since there was a Highland post in the West Bow also.

Three minutes, perhaps, had elapsed since the first discovery and Miss
Cochran’s return to the drawing-room; Ewen hoped, therefore, as he
burst into that apartment, to find no one but the ladies remaining. To
his dismay, however, they were all there, in a group against the wall
on the right of the hearth. The writing-table had been pushed aside,
Strickland was holding a candle close to a panel, and O’Sullivan
seemed to be struggling with something in the carving of this. Lady
Easterhall, looking incredibly old, was clinging to her great-niece,
and the eyes of both were fixed agonisedly on the Irishman and his
efforts. The Prince, though he too was watching O’Sullivan narrowly,
appeared the most unconcerned of the five.

“Ah, Ardroy, it seems you were justified of your nervousness, then,”
he observed coolly. “And the spring of the panel is unfortunately
stiff. It is long, evidently,” he added in a lower tone, “since a
lover left this house by that road!”

“The soldiers are at the door,” said Ewen in a stifled voice. His
heart felt like hot lead within him; was all to end thus, so foolishly
and so soon? The dull sound of battering came up from below.

“Let Miss Cochran try,” suggested the Prince. “I think it is rather
skill than strength which is needed.” And O’Sullivan relinquished his
place to the girl. He was very pale, and Strickland had obvious
difficulty in keeping the candle upright.

“Isobel, Isobel, can ye no’ stir it?” exclaimed Lady Easterhall,
wringing her old hands.

The girl’s slender fingers were striving with the boss of carved
woodwork which concealed the spring. “O God!” she whispered, and shut
her eyes. “Is there no other possible hiding-place——” Ewen was
beginning in desperation when, with a loud grinding noise, the panel
ran back, revealing a dark wall and the first few steps of a winding
stair which plunged steeply downwards.

“Quick!” said O’Sullivan, seizing Strickland by the arm. “You first,
to light the stair. Now, your Highness!” The Prince stepped through
the aperture and O’Sullivan himself followed. But Ewen lingered a
moment on the threshold of safety.

“Madam,” he said earnestly to the shaken old lady, “if I may advise,
do not you or Miss Cochran stay a moment longer in this room! To be in
your bedchambers retiring for the night, when the soldiers succeed in
forcing an entrance, as I fear they will, is the best answer you can
make to the charge of entertaining the Prince. Do not, I beg of you,
be found here—for he has still to get clear of the house!”

“Ye’re richt,” said Lady Easterhall. The frozen terror had left her
face now. “’Tis you hae had the wits all along, young sir! In wi’ ye!
Noo, Isobel, pit tae the door—and then let’s rin for it!”

Behind Ewen came grinding and a snap, and he was left in almost
complete darkness to find his way as best he could down the stair.
Somewhere below he heard echoing steps and cautious voices, so the
Prince and his companions were still in the house. There must, indeed,
be a passage as well as a stair if one was to emerge into the West Bow
right on the other side of it. For him there was no hurry; it was just
as well to play rear-guard. He started leisurely to descend, feeling
his way by the newel, and hoping that he would never again go through
another five minutes like the last.

He had certainly not accomplished more than a dozen steps of the
descent when he stopped and stiffened, his heart jumping into his
throat. There had suddenly floated down from above an ominous
dragging, rasping sound which he had heard too recently not to
recognise. It was the panel sliding open again! Had the soldiers found
it already? It seemed almost impossible.

Tugging at his sword, Ewen half leapt, half stumbled, up the dark
twisting stair again, and was met by an oblong of light, barred across
its lower half by the replaced writing-table. But, as he was instantly
aware, the room, though still brilliantly lit—for there had been no
time to extinguish the sconces—was empty, and silent save for the
sounds of furious battering which came up from below through its
closed door. It was clear what had happened. The spring of the secret
entrance, damaged perhaps, had failed to catch, and after the hurried
departure of the two ladies it had released the panel again . . . and
so the first thing to attract the notice of anyone entering the room
would be that yawning gap in the wall.

Ewen sprang at the sliding door and tried to push it to again, but on
its smooth inner surface there was nothing by which to get sufficient
purchase. Closed it must be, at whatever cost, and on whichever side
of it he was left. He thrust aside the escritoire, stepped out into
the room, and pressed the boss which concealed the spring. The panel
obediently returned . . . to within half an inch of its place. By
getting hold of a projecting line of carving with his nails, Ewen
feverishly contrived to push it completely home, but was instantly
aware that it would no longer engage itself securely in whatever
mechanism usually kept it fast there—in short that, having first
refused to open, it now refused to shut. And if the Prince were not
yet clear of the passage down below, if the fastenings of the door
into the West Bow, for instance, were rusty from disuse, as well they
might be, he would yet be taken.

There was a final crash from below; the door was undoubtedly down and
the invaders in the house. If only the existence of the sliding panel
could be concealed for a few moments longer! To stand before it sword
in hand (as was Ewen’s impulse) were only to advertise its presence.
He looked round in desperation. Perhaps the corner of the escritoire,
pressed well against the line of carving, would eliminate that
betraying crack in the woodwork? Yes, the escritoire was sufficiently
heavy to keep the panel in place, and, provided that it was not itself
moved away from its position, all might yet be well . . . though not
for him, who must now throw himself to the wolves to keep the secret
inviolate.

To ensure that the writing-table stayed as he had put it he must be
near it, and have a reasonable excuse, too, for his position. The most
natural was the best; so, throwing off his hat and cloak, he pulled up
a chair, sat down—unfortunately this necessitated his having his back
to the door—and, seizing a sheet of paper and a quill, began hastily
to write a letter. His heart might be beating faster than usual, but
his hand, as he saw with pleasure, was quite steady.

“My dear Aunt Margaret,—I told you in my last Letter of the Victory
gain’d——” They were coming up the stairs now, and at the noise of
their approach he realised how unnatural it would look to be found
writing a letter in the midst of such a disturbance as had been going
on below. He let his head sink forward on his arm as if he were
overcome by sleep; and so was sitting when a second or two later the
door was flung violently open, heavy feet came tumbling in, and there
was a triumphant shout of “Here’s one o’ them, sir.”

Ewen judged it time to wake. He lifted his head and turned in his
chair with a start; and then sprang to his feet in simulated
astonishment. “_Soldiers!_ What are you doing here?”

There were a sergeant and three men of Lascelles’ regiment in Lady
Easterhall’s drawing-room, and the sergeant advanced resolutely
towards the tall gentleman in amber satin. “’Tis for us to ask that of
you, sir.” Then he stopped, his face lighting up with a sort of
incredulous joy. “Lord, it’s him himself!” he exclaimed. “Call the
officer quick, one of ye! Bide where ye are, sir,” he said with a
mixture of triumph and respect. “If ye don’t stir ye’ll not be
harmed.”

Ewen saw that the man took him for the Prince—a mistake well worth
encouraging if possible, though it was not very likely that an officer
from the Castle would make the same mistake. In any case he had no
intention of stirring from his place; as it was he imagined that the
crack of the panel was widening behind his back, and dared not turn
his head to look. What would be the end of this? Edinburgh Castle and
captivity, at the best; perhaps a fate even less agreeable.

Ah, here was the officer pushing eagerly through the soldiers round
the doorway. One glance at the figure in front of the escritoire and
that eagerness was wiped away.

“That is not the Prince, you fool!” he said to the sergeant. “What was
he doing when you came in—did he offer any resistance?”

Through the sergeant’s reply that the gentleman was sitting at the
table and seemed to be asleep, Ewen was striving not to manifest a
surprise which, this time, was perfectly genuine. For, however he had
become part of the marooned garrison of Edinburgh Castle, his captor
was no officer of Lascelles’ regiment from that fortress; he was
Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots.

But Ewen’s own powder, satin and lace were, apparently, as good as a
disguise to him, for it was quite clear that Captain Windham had not
recognised in this fine gentleman the tartan-clad victor of Loch Oich
side, nor even his seven days’ host—no, even though he was now looking
at his capture more directly, and saying, with military abruptness,
“You are my prisoner, sir!”

Ewen drew himself up. “By what right, if you please?” he demanded. “By
what right indeed do you break at all into a private house? The Lord
Provost shall know of this to-morrow,” he went on, with a sudden idea
of passing himself off as an ordinary peaceful burgess. “The Lord
Provost shall know of it, and will require an explanation from General
Guest.”

Alas, his voice, at any rate, was not unfamiliar, like his hair and
costume. Captain Windham suddenly strode forward, gave an exclamation,
and recoiled a little. “What! It is _you_, Ardroy! Then I know
that the Pretender’s son is in this house, for you are one of his
aides-de-camp! Sergeant, leave a couple of men here, and search the
next floor with the others; I will follow in a moment.”

“Is that your pretext for breaking into an old lady’s house at this
hour of night?” asked Ewen with a fine show of indignation, as the
sergeant withdrew. “Surely you know the way to Holyrood House, Captain
Windham—though in truth it may not be so easy to force an entrance
there!”

In spite of his anxiety he was able to view with pleasure Captain
Windham’s visible annoyance at this speech.

“Mr. Cameron,” said the soldier, with a steely light in his eyes, “I
am not to be played with like this! The Pretender’s son, with three
companions, was seen to enter this house a short while——”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,” broke in Ewen, “but it was _I_
who entered with three companions. As you see, I have just been
mistaken anew for the Prince. My three friends have left—yes, those
are their wineglasses on the table—Lady Easterhall has retired, and
I was beginning to write a letter when I fell into the doze which your
noisy and illegal entry has cut short.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Keith starkly, though at the mention of
the letter his eyes had strayed for a second to the escritoire—and
Ewen immediately wished he had not called attention to it. “Nor do I
believe that our informant mistook you for the Pretender’s son; tall
though he is, you are much taller. He is somewhere hidden in this
house.”

“Tall . . . taller . . .” observed Ewen meditatively. “Ah, yes, I was
forgetting your opportunities of observation at Glenfinnan. I suppose
you were able to tell them his exact height at Fort William after you
had so craftily given me the slip.”

This effort at provoking an argument about the ethics of that action
was unsuccessful, though he could see that his late prisoner did not
relish the expression which he had applied to it. But Captain Windham
merely repeated, with more emphasis, “He is somewhere hidden in this
house!”

“If so, then perhaps you will have the good fortune to find and
recognise him,” said Ewen with an air of levity. “Or if not His Royal
Highness, one of the other two, perhaps.”

“I have no doubt I shall,” replied Keith shortly. “Meanwhile—your
sword, if you please, Mr. Cameron!”

This object Ewen had not the slightest intention of surrendering. But
any kind of parley with the enemy gained time, which was the important
matter. So, after a long look at the floor, as though seeking counsel
there, he put his hand to the hilt, and very slowly drew the
small-sword from its velvet sheath. But, once the blade was out, his
fingers retained their grip.

“After all, I find that I dislike making you an unconditional gift of
it,” he announced coolly, while the candle light played menacingly up
and down the steel. “But I cannot prevent your _taking_ it, Captain
Windham—if you think it worth the trouble.” And with his free hand he
tucked his lace ruffle out of the way.

But, as he had expected—half hoped, yet half feared, for at bottom he
was pining for a fight—the Prince’s pursuer did not wish to engage
either himself or his men in personal conflict while part of the house
still remained unexplored. “I’ll deal with you later, Mr. Cameron,” he
replied curtly, and turned to the soldiers. “See that the prisoner
does not move from that spot, men. I am going to fasten the door.” He
went out and, sure enough, could be heard to bolt the door on the
outside.

Ewen smiled to himself to think how little he desired to quit his
self-chosen position. “You’ll not object to my sitting down, I hope?”
he observed politely to his two guardians, and, turning round the
chair from which he had risen—casting, too, a quick glance at the
panel behind him, still in place—he sat down, facing his gaolers, his
sword across his knees. Though they had no orders to that effect, he
thought it just possible that they might attempt to disarm him, but
they showed no sign of such a desire, standing stiffly by the door
with their muskets and screwed bayonets, and glancing nervously at him
out of the corners of their eyes, mere young north-country English
lads, overawed by his dress and his air. Had they not been there,
however, he could have decamped through the secret door, and what a
charming surprise that would have been for Captain Windham when he
returned—Fassefern House the other way round! But on second thoughts
Ewen was obliged to admit to himself that this withdrawal would not
have been feasible in any case, because he could not close the panel
from the inside.

Meanwhile Captain Windham, in pursuit of a prey already (please God!)
out of the snare, was presumably searching Lady Easterhall’s
bedchamber, and, a still more delicate matter, Miss Cochran’s. Ewen
could not suppose that the task would be to his liking, and the
thought of his opponent’s embarrassment afforded him much pleasure, as
he sat there with one silk-stockinged leg crossed over the other. His
ill-temper had gone. Too young a man to have at all enjoyed the rôle
of disapproving critic forced upon him this evening, with his two
elders covertly sneering at his prudence, and even the Prince amused
at him, he was more than relieved to be free of his ungrateful part.
Events had most amply justified his attitude, and now, with rising
spirits, he was free to try what his wits—and perhaps, in the end,
his arm—could accomplish against Captain Windham and his myrmidons. It
was true that, short of getting himself killed outright, he did not
see much prospect of escaping imprisonment in the Castle, but at any
rate he might first have the satisfaction of a good fight—though it
was to be regretted that he had not his broadsword instead of this
slender court weapon. Still, to get the chance of using it against
what he knew to be overwhelming odds was better than having to submit
to being told that he had an old head on young shoulders!

Sooner than he had expected he heard returning feet, and now Captain
Windham and he would really come to grips! It was by this time, he
guessed, some twenty minutes since the Prince had slipped down the
stair, and, provided that there had been no difficulty about exit, he
must be almost back at Holyrood House by this time. But one could not
be sure of that. And in any case Ewen had no mind to have the way he
took discovered. Here, at last, was an opportunity of repaying to
Captain Windham the discomfiture which he had caused him last August
over his expired parole, perhaps even of wiping out, somehow, the
insult of the money which he had left behind. The young man waited
with rather pleasurable anticipations.

And Captain Windham came in this time, as Ewen knew he would, with an
overcast brow and a set mouth. He was followed in silence by the
sergeant and five men, so that the room now contained nine soldiers in
all.

“Ah, I was afraid that you would have no luck,” observed Ewen
sympathetically. He was still sitting very much at his ease, despite
his drawn sword. “A pity that you would not believe me. However, you
have wasted time.”

Keith Windham shot a quick, annoyed, questioning glance at him,
but made no reply. His gaze ran rapidly round Lady Easterhall’s
drawing-room, but there was in it no article of furniture large enough
to afford a hiding-place to a man, and no other visible door. He
turned to the two soldiers whom he had left there. “Has the prisoner
made any suspicious movement?”

“He has not moved from yonder chair,” he was assured in a strong
Lancashire accent.

“And yet this is the room they were in,” muttered the Englishman to
himself, looking at the disordered chairs and the used wineglasses.
After frowning for a moment he started to tap the panelling on his
side of the room, a proceeding which made Ewen uneasy. Had they heard
up at the Castle of the existence of a secret passage somewhere in
this house? It was unpleasantly possible. But when Captain Windham
came to the three windows giving on to the Grassmarket he naturally
desisted. And the farther side of the room—that where Ewen and his
writing-table were situated—faced, obviously, down the close by which
the soldiers had entered, so (if the Highlander followed his reasoning
correctly) Captain Windham concluded that there was no room there for
a hiding-place, and did not trouble to sound the wall.

Ewen, however, judged it time to rise from his chair. “I told you,
Captain Windham, that my friends had gone,” he remarked, brushing some
fallen powder off his coat. “Will you not now take your own departure,
and allow an old lady to resume the rest which I suppose you have just
further disturbed?”

He saw with satisfaction that the invader (who was, after all, a
gentleman) did not like that thrust. However, the latter returned it
by responding dryly: “You can render that departure both speedier and
quieter, Mr. Cameron, by surrendering yourself without resistance.”

“And why, pray, should I be more accommodating than you were last
August?” enquired Ewen with some pertinence.

Keith Windham coloured. “To bring back the memory of that day, sir, is
to remind me that you then put me under a deep obligation, and to make
my present task the more odious. But I must carry it out. Your sword,
if you please!”

Ewen shrugged his shoulders in the way Miss Cameron condemned as
outlandish. “I had no intention, sir, of reminding you of an
obligation which I assure you I had never regarded as one. But why
_should_ I render your task, as you call it, more pleasant? And why
make a task of it at all? The Prince, as you see, is not here, and
Generals Guest and Preston will find me a very disappointing
substitute.”

Keith Windham came nearer and dropped his voice. His face looked
genuinely troubled. “I wish, Ardroy, for your own sake, that you would
let me take you unharmed! Take you I must; you are a chieftain and the
Prince’s aide-de-camp, as I happen to know. It is the fortune of war,
as it was last August, when our positions were reversed. So, for the
sake of the courtesy and hospitality which I then received from you——”

“My sorrow!” burst out Ewen. “Must my past good conduct, as you are
pleased to consider it, lead to my undoing now? . . . And I very much
doubt whether our positions _are_ reversed, and whether any further
disturbance—and you have made not a little already—do not bring the
guard from the West Bow about your ears. If I might give advice in my
turn, it would be to get back to the Castle while yet you can!”

“Thank you,” said Keith with extreme dryness; “we will. Sergeant, have
your men secure the prisoner.”

He stood back a little. Ewen had already decided in the event of a
fight to abandon his post by the writing-table, where, on one side at
least, he could be taken in flank, and where any shifting of the table
itself, highly probable in a struggle, would cause the panel to reveal
its secret. (Not that that would greatly matter now.) Immediately the
Englishman stepped back, therefore, he darted across the room and
ensconced himself in the corner by the nearest window, hastily
wrapping his cloak, which he had snatched up for the purpose, round
his left arm. His eyes sparkled; he was going to have his fight!

“I am ready,” he remarked cheerfully, seeing the much slower
preparations of his assailants. “Is it to be a charge with the
bayonet, or are you going to use the butt, my friends?”

“You’ll not use either!” said Keith sharply to his men. “I do not wish
this gentleman injured.”

“Then make him put up his sword, sir,” retorted the sergeant in
justifiable indignation. “Else it’s ourselves will be injured, I’m
thinking!”

Ewen was about to endorse this opinion when a familiar and most
welcome sound came to him through the closed window behind him. No
mistaking that strain; and that the soldiers should hear it too he
turned a little and dashed his elbow, protected by the curtain,
through the nearest pane of glass. In it flowed, wailing and menacing,
the Cameron rant: ‘Sons of the dogs, come hither, come hither and you
shall have flesh . . .’

“I think you had best call off your men altogether, Captain Windham,
if they are to save their own skins!” And in the uneasy silence which
he had procured Ewen added, with some exultation, “It is my own clan,
the Camerons; they are coming down the West Bow into the Grassmarket.
There will not be much left of you, my good fellows, if you so much as
scratch me!” And, seeing the effect of his words, he tugged aside the
curtain, flung open the partly shattered casement, and called out in
Gaelic to the line of kilted figures just emerging from the West Bow.

The long yell of the slogan answered him as he swung quickly back on
guard. But there was no need of his sword. Prestonpans had taught the
Castle garrison exaggerated terror of those who uttered such cries.
The soldiers, the sergeant included, were already huddling towards the
door, and Keith Windham was not in time to get between them and the
exit. He stamped his foot in fury.

“Do your duty, you dirty cowards!” he shouted, pointing at the figure
by the window. But a second heartshaking yell came up from the
Grassmarket: ‘_Chlanna nan con, thigibh an so, thigibh an so . . ._’
Perfectly deaf to their officer’s objurgations, the English soldiers
were occupied only with the question of which should be first from the
room. Keith seized the last fugitive by the collar, but the only
result of this appeal to force was that the man, who was very
powerful, shook him off, thrust him back with small regard for his
rank, and banged the door behind himself. Captain Windham, livid,
threw himself upon the handle to pluck it open again—but the knob
merely turned in his hand. The violent slam had evidently shot to the
bolt on the outside. Hunter and quarry—only now it was hard to know
which was which—were equally prisoners.

Ewen, over at the window, laughed aloud; he could not help it. “You
seem always to be unfortunate in your men, Captain Windham,” he
remarked, and, shaking the cloak off his left arm, slid his blade back
into the scabbard. “I fear it is I who shall have to ask you for
_your_ sword. Would you prefer to give it up to me before the guard
arrives?”

He got it . . . but not in the fashion which he had expected. Keith,
quite beside himself with mortification and rage, had already whipped
out his weapon while Ewen, with bent head, was sheathing his own, and
now, really blind to the fact that the Highlander was for the moment
defenceless and off his guard, Captain Windham sprang furiously at him
without warning of any sort. Ewen had no chance to draw again, no
space to spring aside, no time for anything but to catch wildly at the
blade in the hope of diverting it. At the cost of a badly cut right
hand he succeeded in saving himself from being spitted, and the
deflected point, sliding through his clutching fingers, went by his
hip into the panelling where, both men loosing their hold at the same
moment, the weapon stuck for the fraction of a second, and then fell
ringing to the floor.

Horrified and sobered, Keith had sprung back; Ewen, after a first
instinctive movement to catch him by the throat, had checked himself,
and, clasping his bleeding hand tightly with the other, leant back
against the wall and looked at him with a mixture of sternness and
enquiry. His breath was coming rather quickly, but, compared with his
assailant, he was the image of calm.

“My God!” stammered the Englishman, as white as a sheet. “I never saw
. . .” He indicated Ardroy’s sheathed sword. “I might have killed you.
. . .” He took a long breath and drew a hand across his eyes. Still
looking at him curiously his victim fished out his lace-bordered
handkerchief and began to wrap it round his palm, a very inadequate
precaution, for in a moment the cambric was crimson.

In another Keith was at his side. “How deeply is it cut? Let me . . .”
And he pulled out his own more solid handkerchief.

“I don’t know,” answered Ewen composedly, putting back his Mechlin
ruffle, which had slipped down again. “Pretty deeply, it seems.” He
surrendered his hand. “Thanks; over mine then—tie it tighter still.”

“Good God, I might have killed you!” said Keith again under his breath
as he bandaged and knotted. “I . . . I lost my temper, but, as
Heaven’s my witness, I thought you had your sword out.”

“Why, so I had, a moment earlier,” replied Ewen. “You did not intend
murder, then?”

“I deserve that you should think so,” murmured the soldier, still very
much shaken. “Perhaps as it is I have disabled you for life.”

Ewen had nearly retorted, “Why should that trouble you?” but he was so
much astonished at the depth of feeling in his enemy’s tone that he
merely stared at his bent head as he tied the last knot.

“These handkerchiefs are not enough,” said Keith suddenly,
relinquishing the wounded hand. He pushed aside the little brass
gorget at his neck, untied and unwound his own lace cravat, and bound
that over all. Then he stood back.

“You will soon get attention now, Ardroy. Keep your hand up, so. . . .
There is my sword.” He made a jerky movement towards the floor, and
walking abruptly away to the hearth, stood there with his back turned.

For a moment or two Ewen also stood quite still where he was, looking
at that back. That Captain Windham was ashamed of his attack on a
practically unarmed man he could understand; he would have had
precisely the same scruples in his place, and he would certainly have
felt the same rage and humiliation had he been deserted by his
followers in so disgraceful a manner (though he could not imagine
Highlanders ever acting so). And, observing the dejection revealed in
Captain Windham’s attitude, where he stood with bowed head and folded
arms by the dying fire, and the complete absence in him of any of that
mocking irony with which he himself had more than once made
acquaintance at Ardroy, Ewen began to feel less vindictive about the
incident of the guineas. Captain Windham, being an Englishman, did not
understand Highland pride, and had probably never intended any insult
at all. And now, with this sudden turning of the tables, he was again
a prisoner, made in rather an absurd and ignominious fashion. Ewen
could find it in his heart to be sorry for him. And what would be the
advantage of yet another prisoner? The officers taken at Gladsmuir had
had to be paroled and sent away. . . .

He picked up the fallen sword, faintly smeared with red along its
edges, and went over to the hearth.

“Captain Windham!”

The scarlet-clad figure turned. “Your Camerons are very tardy!” he
said with a bitter intonation. “Or are those yells all we are to know
of them?” It was indeed sufficiently surprising that the rescuers had
not entered the house some minutes ago, particularly as the door was
broken open.

Ewen listened. “I think that they are possibly chasing . . . a
retreating enemy. But in any case”—he held out Keith’s sword—“I cannot
stomach taking advantage of your being left in the lurch by those
rascals. Put on your sword again, and I’ll convey you safely out of
the house.”

A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I
am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your
protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would
be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of
mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”

Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even
mention the objectionable guineas. “I cannot hold this sword much
longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the
caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go
alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon
be here!”

Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held
out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the
hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.

Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That,
then——” he began at last, thickly.

“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road.
It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to
trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he
went and picked it up—“’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a
candle to light you down.”

To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the
baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his
teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! He _was_ here this evening,
then, in this very room!”

“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen
soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and
betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”

“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath,
reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so
nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly
in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to
the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a
sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly
outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so
pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming
will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to
the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”

“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we
have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his
eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the
stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering
upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the
Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in
Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in
another minute!”

He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the
spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second
or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room
fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.

                              CHAPTER IV

Walking home with her father next day up the crowded Canongate after
rain, Miss Alison Grant suddenly became aware of a tall Highland
officer striding up the street some way ahead. From the occasional
glimpses of him, which were all that she was able to obtain in the
moving throng, it seemed to be her betrothed; but, if so, he was
carrying his right arm in a sling. This was disturbing. Moreover Ewen,
if it were he—and at any rate the officer was a Cameron—was walking at
such a pace that Alison and her parent would never overtake him,
unless indeed he were on his way to visit them where they lodged in
Hyndford’s Close, a little beyond the Netherbow.

“Papa,” whispered Alison, “let us walk quicker; yonder’s Ewen, unless
I am much mistaken, on his way to wait upon us, and he must not find
us from home.”

They quickened their pace, without much visible effect, when lo! their
quarry was brought to a standstill by two gentlemen coming downwards
who encountered and stopped him.

“Now let us go more slowly, sir,” suggested Alison, dragging at her
father’s arm. To which Mr. Grant, complying, said, “My dear, to be
alternately a greyhound and a snail is hard upon a man of my years,
nor do I understand why you should be stalking Ardroy in this
fashion.”

“Ewen _is_ rather like a stag,” thought Alison; “he carries his head
like one.—Papa,” she explained, “I want to know—I _must_ know—why he
wears his arm in a sling! Look, now that he has turned a little you
can see it plainly. And, you remember, he disappeared so strangely
last night.”

And now, crawl as they would, they must pass the three gentlemen, who
made way for them instantly, not to turn the lady with her hooped
petticoats into the swirling gutter. As Ewen—for it was he—raised his
bonnet with his left hand, Alison cast a swift and comprehensive
glance over him, though she did not pause for the fraction of a
second, but, acknowledging his salutation and those of his companions,
went on her way with dignity.

But she walked ever slower and slower, and when she came to the narrow
entrance of their close she stopped. Yet even then she did not look
back down the Canongate.

“Papa, did you hear, those gentlemen were asking Ewen what had
befallen him. I heard something about ‘disturbance’ and ‘Grassmarket’.
You saw his hand was all bandaged about. He looked pale, I thought.
What can he have been at last night—not fighting a duel, surely!”

“Well, my dear, here he is, so he can tell us—that is, if he is
disposed to do so,” observed Mr. Grant. “Good day, Ardroy; were you
coming in-bye?”

“I intended it, later on,” replied Ewen with more truth than tact,
“but——”

“But now you see that you behove to at this moment,” finished Alison
with determination, looking very significantly at his arm; and Ewen,
without another word, went obediently up the close with them, secretly
admired from above by a well-known Whig lady who happened to be at her
window, and who remarked to her maid that the Jacobite Miss lodging
overhead had a braw lover, for all he was a wild Hielandman.

And presently the wild Hielandman was standing in the middle of Mr.
Grant’s parlour, and the Jacobite Miss was declaring that she could
shake him, so little could she get out of him. “They say you can ask
anything of a Cameron save butter,” she said indignantly, “but it’s
clear that there are other things too you’ll never get from them!”

Ewen smiled down at her, screwing up his eyes in the way she loved. He
was a little pale, for the pain of his cut hand had kept him wakeful,
but he was not ill-pleased with life this afternoon.

“Yes, other people’s secrets, to wit,” he said teasingly; and then,
feigning to catch himself up, “My sorrow, have I not the unlucky
tongue to mention that word in a woman’s hearing! What I have told
you, _m’eudail_, is the truth; I had an encounter last night with some
of the Castle garrison, and my hand, as I say, was hurt—scratched, that
is, as I warrant you have sometimes scratched yourself with a needle
or a bodkin.”

“The needle’s never been threaded whose scratch required as much
bandaging as _that_!” retorted Alison, with her eyes on the muffled
member in the sling. “And what was yon I heard as I passed about a
disturbance in the Grassmarket?”

“Has she not the ears of a hare?” observed Ewen to Mr. Grant. “’Tis
true, there was a disturbance in the Grassmarket.”

“If that is so, then I’ll learn more of it before the day’s out,”
deduced Alison with satisfaction. “And you, sir, that ought to know
better, brawling in the town at such an hour! I thought the Prince had
summoned you last night. Not that I remarked your absence from the
ball,” she added. “I was quite unaware of it, I assure you, in the
society of my cousins of Glenmoriston.”

Ewen looked across at Mr. Grant and smiled. “My dear,” protested the
old gentleman, “an encounter with the Castle garrison can scarce be
called brawling. We are, it may be said, at war with them.”

“But are they not all as mild as milk up there now that the Prince has
lifted the blockade?” enquired Alison. “And how could Ewen have met
any of them in the Grassmarket? The poor men dare not show their faces
there; the place is hotching with Camerons and MacDonalds!”

“Who said I met them in the Grassmarket?” retorted Ewen. “But never
fret, Miss Curiosity; some day I’ll be free to tell you where it was.”

“Wherever it was,” said Miss Grant with decision, “I’ll be bound ’twas
you provoked the disturbance!”

Her lover continued to smile at her with real amusement. In a sense
there was truth in this last accusation. “It’s a fine character you
give me, indeed! I think I’d best be taking my leave until you
appreciate me better!” And he put out his left hand to take his bonnet
from the table where he had laid it. Something sparkled on the hand as
he moved it.

“Who gave you that ring?” exclaimed Alison. “Nay, that I have a right
to know!”

Ewen put his hand behind him. “No woman, Alison.”

“Then you can tell me who it was. . . . Come, _Eoghain mhóir_, if
there be a mystery over the ring also, why, you should not be wearing
it for all the world to see!”

“That’s true,” said Ardroy, and he relinquished his hand. “Yes, you
can take it off. ’Tis not so plain as it looks, neither. There is a
spring beneath.”

“Oh!” breathed Alison, her eyes very wide. The chased gold centre of
the ring had moved aside in the midst of the rose diamonds, and it was
a tiny miniature of the Prince which she held. “Ewen, _he_ gave you
this?”

“I did not steal it, my dear. Yes, he gave it me this morning.”

“For . . . on account of what happened last night?”

Ewen nodded. “For my prudence. You see, the Prince does not write me
down so turbulent as you do.”

There was something like tears in Alison’s eyes. “Prudence? No! It was
because you gained that ‘needle-scratch’ for him!” She kissed the
ring, and, taking the strong, passive hand, slipped it on again. “I
will not plague you any more. Does the wound pain you, dearest heart?”

         *         *         *         *         *         *

But next day Hector Grant came into possession of the story, more or
less correct, which was flying about Edinburgh, and presented his
sister with a fine picture of her lover, alone against a score of the
Castle redcoats, standing with his back to the secret stair hewing
down the foe until his sword broke in his hand, and the Cameron guard
rushed in only just in time to save him. And, Alison unveiling this
composition to the hero himself at their next meeting, Ewen was
constrained in the interests of truth to paint out this flamboyant
battle-piece and to substitute a more correct but sufficiently
startling scene. Alison certainly found his sober account quite lurid
enough.

“And you let the English officer go, after that!” she exclaimed
breathlessly. “But, Ewen dearest, why?”

“For one reason, because ’twas such curst ill luck that his men should
run away for the second time!” replied Ewen, settling his silken sling
more comfortably.

“For the second time?”

“I have not yet told you who the officer was. Cannot you guess?”

“Surely ’twas not . . . _Captain Windham_ . . . here in Edinburgh?”

“It was Captain Windham himself. I have no notion how he got here; it
must have been before we took the town. But I was sorry for him, poor
man, and it was quite plain that he had no real intention of killing
me; indeed he was greatly discomposed over the affair. So you must not
lay that to his charge, Alison.”

“And so you _have_ met again!” said Alison slowly, her eyes fastened
on her lover. (‘A great service’ . . . ‘a bitter grief’ . . . This was
neither.) “It was not then because of your foster-father’s prophecy
that you let him go?”

And now Ewen stared at her. “Faith, no, darling, for I had clean
forgot about it. _Dhé!_ It begins to fulfil itself then!”

Bright and cold, or wet and windy, the October days went by in
Edinburgh. Ewen’s hand healed, and that secret fear which he had
mentioned to no one save Dr. Cameron, who dressed it, that he would
never be able to grip a broadsword again, passed also. And having
waited upon Lady Easterhall and Miss Cochran a day or two after the
fracas to ask how they did (not that he had omitted to reassure
himself of this on the night itself, before he left) he then, by the
old lady’s desire, carried Alison to visit them also. And it is
possible that Miss Cochran envied Miss Grant.

But up at the Castle the days went a great deal more slowly,
particularly for Captain Keith Windham, who had little to do but to
pace the battlements and look down, as he was doing this morning, when
October was almost sped, on that unrivalled vista of which he was now
heartily sick, and remember all the mortifications, professional as
well as personal, which he had suffered there since the end of August,
when he had made his way thither from Fort William with the news of
the Highland advance. For after the startling tidings of Cope’s
avoidance of the rebels, leaving the road open before them to
Edinburgh, Keith, secure but chafing, had endured the spectacle of
vain attempts by the frightened citizens to repair and man the walls,
and to raise a body of volunteers (almost immediately disbanded lest
their lives should be endangered), and the sight of two regiments of
His Majesty’s dragoons in full flight along the Lang Dykes with no man
pursuing. Finally, to complete and symbolise the great scandal and
shock of Cope’s lightning defeat, he had with his own eyes seen,
struck defiantly into the outer gate of the Castle, the dirk of the
single Jacobite officer who on that occasion had chased a party of
terrified troopers thither like rabbits to their burrow.

On top of all this had come his own personal humiliation and
disappointment, and of this Ewen Cameron and no other had been the
cause. The soldiers of Lascelles’ regiment who had so shamefully
deserted the officer in charge of them had been severely punished, but
this did little to heal the very sore place in Captain Windham’s
memory. Sometimes it was only anger which coloured his recollections
of that scene in Lady Easterhall’s house, sometimes it was shame.
Sometimes he wondered if he had not permanently injured Ardroy, and
though, as a loyal subject of King George, he ought no doubt to have
been glad of the possibility, in view of how the hurt had been
inflicted and of the Highlander’s subsequent behaviour, the idea
filled him with a feeling far removed from satisfaction. And even