“Where will you make for? Give us a rendezvous—give me one, at all events!”
“Why, my dear boy, I shall make for Achnacarry.”
“But that is just where you would be sought for by the Elector’s troops!”
“Yet I must be where the clan can find me,” said the Chief. “Loch Arkaig is the best rallying point. ’Tis not easy neither to come at it suddenly in force because there is always the Lochy to ford. And if I were strictly sought for in person, there are plenty of skulking places round Achnacarry, as you know.”
“But none beyond the wit of man to discover, Donald—and most of them known to too many.”
“Of the clan, perhaps, yes. But you do not imagine, surely, that any of them would be betrayed by a Cameron! Moreover, Archie came on a new one the other day when we were there; he showed it to me. Truly I do not think the wit of man could find that unaided, and no one knows of it but he and I. So set your mind at rest, dear lad.” He took a step or two away. “I’ll tell you too, Ewen.”
The young man’s face, which had become a little wistful, lit up. “Oh, Donald . . .”
“Listen,” said Lochiel, dropping his voice, and coming closer to the wall. “Half-way up the southern slope of Beinn Bhreac, about a hundred paces to the right of the little waterfall. . . .”
And Ewen, listening eagerly, heard of an overhanging birch tree whose old roots grasped like hinges an apparently immovable block of stone, which could be moved if one knew just where to push it, and of a cave, long disused, which Dr. Cameron had found behind it—a place whose existence could never be suspected. And there, if hard pressed . . .
“Yes, surely there you would be safe!” said Ewen with satisfaction. “That is a thousand times better than any of the old places. I thank you for telling me; I shall not forget.”