“And I’m to rely on nothing but a Campbell’s word for that!” cried Ewen, still at white heat, but sinking down again on the seat despite himself. “No, thank you, my Lord; the security’s not good enough! Nor am I going to tell you the name on any security, so you were best not waste your time.”
“Then,” said the Earl, and there was a new and dangerous note in his voice, “I warn you that Cameron of Lochiel will have the mortification of knowing that it was a Cameron who betrayed him. But I repeat that if you will give it to me——”
“There is one place the name of which I feel at liberty to give you,” interrupted Ewen, half closing his eyes, in which the light of battle was gleaming. “I think I should be doing my Chief no harm if I told you the way——” He paused as if uncertain, after all, whether to go on, and Greening and the two other officers, who, hearing voices raised, had reappeared in the doorway, pressed quickly forward.
Lord Loudoun fell into the trap. “The way to where?” he asked eagerly.
“The way to Moy,” answered Ewen, and the glint in his eyes was plain to see now. “To Moy in Lochaber—there is a place of that name there. Though whether you will encounter a second Donald Fraser too I don’t know.”
Lord Loudoun gave a stifled exclamation and grew very red. Consternation overcame his officers. The too-famous ‘rout of Moy’, as Ewen had well guessed, was not mentioned in the Earl’s hearing. But the Earl was the first to recover himself.
“You are not only insolent but foolish, Mr. Cameron. When Lochiel falls into my hands I shall not now be inclined to keep silence on the subject of his refuge, whether he is found in it or no, and it will depend upon me whether he is told that you made your disclosure about it involuntarily, as you declare that you did, or of your own free will.”
And thus did the Earl of Loudoun, a not ill-natured nor inhumane man, who in calmer moments would have been ashamed of such an impulse, threaten to use a calumny which he knew to be such in order to bring a captive foe to heel. The merest sign of pleading on the Cameron’s part and he would have relented. But nothing was farther from Ardroy’s mind than pleading. All he craved, in his wrath, was a fresh weapon with which to draw blood. He found it.
“But you may not capture Lochiel at all,” he said with an appearance of carelessness. “He may have followed your Lordship’s example when, after your amusing performances on the Dornoch Firth, you ran away from your captured troops and sought safety in Skye. Only,” he added venomously, “in my Chief’s case, it will be after the battle, not, as in yours, John Campbell, before it!”
The effect on Lord Loudoun, who was no coward, of this really undeserved interpretation of his misfortunes was all that Ewen could have wished. His hand clenched on his swordhilt. “By God, sir, if we were . . . elsewhere . . . I’d make you pay for that!”