“It is of no moment,” replied Ewen coldly, and he shifted himself a trifle so as to look at his visitor no longer, and propped his head on his clenched fist. The plaid in which he was partly wrapped had slipped from his shoulders when he put his hands up to his ears, and there was now nothing to hide his torn and dirty shirt—which, after all, was only of a piece with the general neglect of his person. The only evidence of care or cleanliness was the fresh bandage round his sword-arm. . . . ‘So that has been recently dressed,’ thought Keith, ‘and he can use it. . . . That must be the plaid which I spread over him in the shieling. He was a very different man then. . . .’
He was surprised, after another appreciable silence, to find himself being addressed again, though not looked at.
“Why did you turn back?”
“What is the use of telling you—you will not believe me! Indeed I wonder whether you believe me when I say that I am under arrest; that might be a lie also.”
He had at least succeeded in gaining Ardroy’s attention, for the latter dropped his arm and once again looked across the room at him. “I should like to know why you turned back?” he repeated, without comment on the reply which he had drawn forth.
Yes, that at all events he should hear! Keith left the door, where there was no sound of Sergeant Mullins’ approach.
“Cannot you guess? I came because of you—because, a dozen miles beyond here, on my way back to Inverness, I learnt both of the abominable way in which you had been treated in Guthrie’s camp, and of the manner in which that scoundrel had twisted my words and my actions in order to misrepresent me to you. It was the night before last; it was late, but I resaddled and came back at once—neglecting my duty, Lord Loudoun said. I rode back in the greatest haste to see you, I was in such apprehension about you. When I got here I heard that you——” Ewen drew his breath sharply, and the sentence was not finished. “I insisted on seeing Lord Loudoun at once, and when I was told that you had . . . had made disclosures of your own free will, I demanded to see you. I said that I would never believe that unless you told me so yourself. Then there was a scene of some violence, and I had to give up my sword and my despatch—and I suppose that in a few days my commission will go the same road. Should I have acted so—so madly against my own interests if I had been what you think me? . . . But I am forgetting; you will say that this is false also, though every officer in Fort Augustus should tell you that it is true!”
Ewen had put his head down on his updrawn right knee. A shaft of sunlight, striking through one of the narrow windows, fell across its auburn disorder. And, looking with something more painful than pity at the utter desolation of his aspect, Keith thought that life could scarcely hold anything more terrible for a gallant man than to feel himself at once a traitor and betrayed. But betrayed he had not been! If only he could be brought to see that!
And perhaps Ewen was being brought to it, for from his huddled figure there came a long sigh, and, after another silence, words which sounded as though they were wrung from his very heart:
“I wish to God that I could trust you again!”