“Since you desired so greatly to be even with me for a moment of triumph, could you not have let me be shot, and watched it? Or was that not sufficient for you because I did not know that you were there? . . . Oh, if God would but give me back that moment against the shieling wall, and allow it to finish as it was meant to! Then I should not be to-day what you have made me—a worse traitor than you are yourself!”
After that there was silence. What use in talking of his good faith and his charitable intentions when they had resulted in this! For it was true then—Ardroy had given the information. Indeed the fact was written on his haunted face.
But at last Keith said, in a scarcely audible voice and with his eyes on the floor, “What did they . . . do to you?”
There was no answer, and, looking up, he saw that the wounded man’s outburst had exhausted him; breathing fast, he had put his head back against the edge of the seat behind him, and his eyes were half shut. His appearance was so ghastly that Keith went forward and seized a bowl of water from the floor beside him.
But a shaking hand came up to keep him off, and he hesitated. “What, are you trying to act that night over again?” asked Ewen bitterly. And Keith stood there helpless, his fingers tightening on the bowl. Was this anguished hostility utterly to defeat him?
The Highlander looked as if he had not slept for nights and nights; his eyes, naturally rather deepset, were fearfully sunk, and glittered with a feverish brilliance. All his courtesy, all his self-command, his usual rather gentle address, every quality which Keith had observed and carelessly admired in him, seemed obliterated by the event which had brought him almost to breaking-point. “Will you not go?” he gasped out, clenching his hands; “will you not go now that you are satisfied?”
Keith put down the bowl; the action seemed symbolic. “Ardroy, if you would only listen for a moment!” he pleaded. “Indeed it is not as you think! I never betrayed you—I would as soon betray my own brother! There has been a horrible——”
“Why must I endure this, too, after all the rest?” broke out Ewen violently. “You cannot make a fool of me again, Major Windham! Have a little pity at the last, and leave me!”
“No, for your own sake you must hear me!” urged Keith. “It is Major Guthrie who is respon——”
But Ewen Cameron, with a face like stone (save that no stone image ever had eyes like that), had put his hands over his ears.