“You have not a despatch for me from the Duke, then—or from General Hawley?”
“No, my Lord. I have but seized this opportunity of appealing to your Lordship on behalf of a prisoner here”—the Earl’s homely, blunt-featured face changed—“who, if he has really made any disclosures, can only have done so under violent measures, taken unknown to your Lordship, and I——”
“What is all this about a prisoner?” interrupted Loudoun, frowning. “You mean to say, Major Windham, that you are here on a purely private matter, when I especially gave orders—— Who admitted you to me under false pretences?”
But the officer of the guard had discreetly vanished.
“Is it a purely private matter, my Lord,” retorted Keith hotly, “that a badly wounded Highland gentleman should be tortured into giving information against his own Chief? It seems to me a matter affecting the good name of the whole army. I only hope that I have been misinformed, and that no such disclosures have been dragged from him.”
“Have you come here, sir,” asked Lord Loudoun with increasing displeasure, “and on no one’s authority but your own, to dictate to me on the treatment of prisoners?”
“No, indeed, my Lord,” replied Keith, making an effort to be properly deferential. “I have come, on the contrary, because I feel sure that your Lordship——”
“If you want news of any prisoner,” interrupted his Lordship with a wave of the hand, “you must wait until Captain Greening here is at liberty. Meanwhile you will perhaps have the goodness to remember that I only marched in to Fort Augustus this morning, and am still so pressed with business that I see small chance of sleep to-night if I am to be interrupted in this manner.”
It was a dismissal: less harsh than at one moment seemed likely, but proving to Keith that he had gained nothing. He tried another tack.
“My Lord, give me permission then, I implore you, to visit the prisoner in question, Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy.”