“I do most solemnly swear it, on my honour as a gentleman. I never saw Guthrie again till the day before yesterday.”
“And will you swear, too, that you had not already suggested to him that I knew it, and would tell?” asked Ewen, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I never suggested that,” answered Keith, with a steady mien but a sinking heart. Nothing but the naked truth would avail now . . . and yet its nakedness might prove too ugly. “I am going to tell you exactly what I did suggest.”
“You will not swear it—I thought as much!”
“No, I will not swear until I have made clear to you what I am swearing to.—Yes, you must listen, Ardroy; ’tis as much for your own sake as for mine!” He dragged forward a stool for himself. “Go back to that scene on the mountain—if you can remember it. Do you think it was easy for me to find weapons to save you with? When I rushed in and caught you as you sank down by the wall, when I stood between you and the firing-party, with that scoundrel cursing me and ordering me out of the way and telling the men to set you up there again, I had to snatch at anything, anything to stop your execution. I told Guthrie who you were—too important to shoot out of hand like that. Afterwards he asserted that I had implied that you, as Lochiel’s kinsman, would give information about him. As God sees us, such an impossible notion never entered my head, and I said that you would never do it. It was as we were riding away; so he replied, that devil, ‘Then it is not worth my while to fetch him into camp to-morrow; he can rot there in the hut for all I care!’ And I saw that you would rot there unless I could persuade him to send for you. Being at my wits’ end I made a most disastrous suggestion, and said, loathing myself the while for saying it, that it might perhaps be worth his while to fetch you into camp on the chance of your . . . of your dropping some hint by inadvertence. And he——”
Ewen had given a sharp exclamation. “You said that—you did say that! It was true, then, what he told me! God! And how much more?”
“No more,” said Keith, wincing. “No more, on my soul. And I only said that to hoodwink him into sending for you. You cannot think that I——”
“You advised him to take me for that reason!” interrupted Ewen, dropping out every word, while his eyes, which had softened, began to turn to ice again. “And, when you came back that night, you never told me what you had done. Is not that . . . somewhat difficult to explain?”
“No,” said Keith with a sigh, “it is easy. I was ashamed to tell you—that is the explanation . . . and yet I only made the suggestion because your life, so it seemed to me, was in the balance. When at last I had brought myself to the point of confession you had fallen into the sleep in which I left you. If I had guessed—— But of what use is regret now! And, Ardroy, you cannot imagine that I really thought that you would . . . or that anyone would try by force to . . .” He suddenly covered his eyes with his hand.
And presently he heard the Highlander say, in a strange, dry, reflective tone, “Yes, it ill becomes me to accuse another man of treachery.” And then, even more quietly, “You say you did not believe it when they told you that I had made a disclosure . . . voluntarily. I ought to thank you for that.”