So about six o’clock in the evening he followed his limping guide up the stair and found himself standing, with real dread in his heart, outside a door which the sergeant unlocked, saying to an unseen occupant:
“I have brought someone to see you, Mr. Cameron.”
The room was light and airy—rather too airy, for one wall had in it a good-sized breach, across which a piece of canvas had been stretched in an attempt to keep out rain and wind. Facing the door was a semicircular embrasure pierced with three narrow windows, and having a stone seat running round it. And on the floor of this embrasure, on some sort of a pallet, with his back propped against the seat, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his eyes fixed on the slit of window opposite him (though from his position on the floor he could not have seen anything but a strip of sky) Ewen Cameron was sitting motionless. He did not turn his head or even move his eyes when the door opened and closed again; and Keith stood equally motionless, staring at a haggard and unshaven profile which he found difficulty in recognising.
At last he took a few steps forward. Ewen turned his head indifferently . . . and then was as suddenly frozen as one who looks on Medusa. There was a long shivering pause.
“Why are you here . . . Judas?”
Half prepared though he was, Keith felt slashed across the face. He caught his breath.
“If I were that, I should not be here,” he answered unsteadily. “I have come . . . I came directly I had news of you, to explain . . . to put right if I could . . .” But the words died on his lips; it seemed a mockery to talk of putting anything right now.
“To explain!” repeated Ewen with an indescribable intonation. “To explain why you told your confederate Major Guthrie everything you knew about me, to explain why you came back that night and fooled me, why you urged him to tear from me what I knew, having first made sure that I knew it—it needs no explanation! You wanted to pay off old scores—Edinburgh, Loch Oich side. Be content, you have done it—you have more than done it!”
“Ardroy, no, no, as God’s my witness,” struck in Keith desperately, “I had no such thought!” But he was not heeded, for Ewen tore on hoarsely: