The flight of the heron

by D. K. Broster

Ewen raised his head, and out of his sunken, dark-rimmed eyes gave Keith a look which wavered away from him as if undecided, and then came back to his face and stayed there. Despair sat in those blue windows, but behind despair could be caught now a glimpse of a more natural craving for sympathy which had not been there before.

“Because,” he answered, his hand gripping hard the plaid over his legs, “they had written down every word I said—every word. In the morning they read it over to me. Of course I denied that it was correct . . . but there it all was—the secret that only I and one other besides Lochiel himself knew. Never having seen the actual spot myself I had learnt the directions off by heart; ’twas the last thing I did before the battle.” He shuddered violently, and once more dropped his head on to his knee. “O God, that ever I was brought away from Drumossie Moor!”

“Devils!” said Keith under his breath, “cold-blooded devils!” But who had first suggested that Ardroy should be watched? He sprang up, and began to pace distractedly about the room; but that thought could not so be shaken off. Yet a rather stinging consolation dawned on him: since the prisoner had acknowledged to him, what he had denied to his inquisitors, that the information was correct, he must trust him again—he must indeed, for he had thus put it in his power to go and betray him afresh.

“You’ll tell me, I suppose,” began Ewen’s dragging voice again, “that a man cannot be expected to control his tongue in sleep, and it is true; he cannot. But they will keep that part out, and Lochiel, all the clan, will hear that I gave the information of my own free will. Is not that what you have been told already?” And as Keith, unable to deny this, did not answer, Ewen went on with passion: “However it was done, it has been done; I have betrayed my Chief, and he will know it. . . . If I were only sure that it would kill me outright, I would crawl to the breach there and throw myself down. I wish I had done it two nights ago!”

From the camp, where a drum was idly thudding, there came the sound of cheering, and the broken room where this agony beat its wings in vain was flooded with warm light as the sun began to slip down to the sea behind the hills of Morven, miles away. And Keith remembered, with wonder at his obtuseness, that he had once decided that Ewen Cameron was probably a very impassive person. . . .

What was he to say? For indeed the result of Ardroy’s disclosure might very well be just the same for Lochiel as if he had made it when in full possession of his senses. One argument, however, leapt unbidden to Keith’s lips: his Chief would never believe that Ardroy had willingly betrayed him. Would Ardroy believe such a thing of him, he asked.

But Ewen shook his head, uncomforted. “Lochiel would not have allowed himself to go to sleep—I did.”

“But you must have gone to sleep sooner or later!” expostulated Keith. “Lochiel himself would have done the same, for no human being can go very long without sleep.”

“How do you know?” asked Ewen listlessly. “I cannot sleep now when I wish to . . . when it is of no moment if I do.”

Keith looked at him in concern. That admission explained a good deal in his appearance. If this continued he might go out of his mind, and yet one was so powerless to help him; for indeed, as Ardroy had said, what was done, was done. He began to pace the room again.