Suddenly he stopped and swung round. Perhaps he was not so impotent to help after all. Somehow that idle drum, still beating out there, with its suggestion of march and movement, had revived a memory only twenty-four hours old.
“Listen to me, Ardroy,” he said quickly, coming back and sitting down again. “But tell me first: you would only expect Lochiel to take to this refuge, would you not, if he were skulking, as the phrase goes here, not if he had a considerable body of followers with him?”
“No,” admitted Ewen, looking faintly surprised. “Only if he were alone, or nearly so. But he is alone, or at the best he can have but a handful with him.”
“It is there that I think you are wrong,” retorted Keith. “Though that may have been the case at first, it is evidently so no longer. This is what I overheard yesterday.”
And he told him, word for word, what had fallen from the officer who had been scouting down the Glen. Ardroy listened with the look of a drowning man sighting a distant spar.
“My God, if only that is true! No, if the clan has rallied somewhat he would not be in hiding. Yet, after a skirmish, or if he were surprised——”
“But consider,” urged Keith, “that, if they are so numerous, only an attack in force would be possible, and Lochiel could hardly be surprised by that: he would have scouts posted, surely. And after a skirmish, supposing the results unfavourable to him, he would probably withdraw altogether with his men, not go to earth in the neighbourhood. If the place is searched, believe me, it will be found empty!”
The eagerness with which Ewen hung upon his words was pathetic to witness.
“You are not,” he asked painfully, “inventing this story . . . out of compassion?”
“No, no; I heard it exactly as I have told it to you, and I can see no reason why the speaker’s statement should not have been true.”