Keith’s mouth felt suddenly dry. His unspoken question was answered, and the frankness of the acknowledgment rather took his breath away. Yet certainly, if Ardroy was as frank with Guthrie it might serve him well.
“You know where Lochiel is?” he half stammered.
Ewen shut his eyes and smiled, an almost happy smile. “I think he is where (please God) he will never be found by any redcoat.”
“You mean that he has gone overseas?” asked Keith, almost without thinking.
Ardroy’s eyes opened quickly, and for a second, as he looked up at the speaker, there was a startled expression in them. “You are not expecting me to tell you——”
“No, no,” broke in Keith, very hastily indeed. “Of course not! But I should be glad if he were so gone, for on my soul there is none of your leaders whom I should be so sorry to see captured.”
Yet with the words he got up and went to the doorway. Yes, Ardroy had the secret; and he wished, somehow, that he had not. The moment could no longer be postponed when he must tell him of his conversation with Guthrie, were it only to put him on his guard. Bitterly as he was ashamed, it must be done.
He stood in the doorway a moment, choosing the words in which he should do it, and they were hatefully hard to choose. Hateful, too, was it to leave Ardroy here helpless, but there was no alternative, since he could not possibly take him with him. Yet if Lachlan returned, and in time, and especially if he returned with assistance, he might be able to get his foster-brother away somewhere. Then Ewen Cameron would never fall into Guthrie’s hands. In that case what use to torment him with prospects of an interrogatory which might never take place, and which could only be very short?
No; it was mere cowardice to invent excuses for silence; he must do it. He came back very slowly to the pallet.
“I must tell you——” he began in a low voice, and then stopped. Ewen’s lashes were lying on his sunken cheek, and did not lift at the address. It was plain that he had fallen anew into one of those sudden exhausted little slumbers, and had not heard even the sentence which was to herald Keith’s confession. It would be unnecessarily cruel to rouse him in order to make it. One must wait until he woke naturally, as he had done from the last of these dozes.