There was nothing for it. “Yes, I’m coming, Sergeant.—We cannot undo the past, Ardroy, but for God’s sake try to torment yourself less about a calamity which may never befall—a certain person.”
Ewen looked up at him with a faint, forlorn smile. “And your calamity?” he asked.
“I must endeavour to take my own advice,” said his visitor rather grimly. “I shall try to see you again if possible . . . that is, if you . . .” he hesitated.
Ewen’s left hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “You say the past cannot be undone. There are some hours in it which I am glad I can never lose again—that night in the shieling, now I know that you were . . . what at the time I thought you!”
Three minutes after Keith had got back to his quarters the correct aide-de-camp appeared to announce to him that he would be taken to Inverness under escort early next morning, as he had been sent for from head-quarters. Keith shrugged his shoulders. That meant a court-martial, in all probability, and the loss of his commission. But at any rate the sacrifice was not all in vain, for he had cleared himself, in Ewen Cameron’s eyes, of charges far worse than any court-martial could bring against him.
All evening he thought of Ardroy up there, destitute in body and tormented in mind—though less tormented, fortunately, by the time he had left him. . . . Yet why, he asked himself, should he care what Ardroy was suffering, now that he had cleared his account with him? Was it because he had somehow become responsible for him by snatching him from death? God knew.
But that, he supposed, was why, when Mullins hobbled in with his supper, he handed the sergeant a sheet of paper.
“I want you to take this to Mr. Cameron to-night, Sergeant. Read it, and you can satisfy yourself that it contains nothing which it should not.”
The note briefly said that the writer would not be able to see the recipient again, since he was obliged to go to Inverness next morning, but that he would go thither with a mind vastly more at peace than he had come; and would go even more cheerfully if he were permitted to leave with the sergeant a sum of money sufficient to provide for the captive’s immediate needs in the way of food and clothes. “You can repay it at your convenience,” Keith had added, “but, if you will not accept this loan, I shall depart feeling that you have not truly forgiven me.”