Ewen looked grave again. “No, it cannot be at rest until I am sure that Lochiel knows the truth.”
“But why should he ever hear anything at all about the matter?”
“And I have thought that at my trial,” went on Ewen without taking notice of the interruption, “I may get the chance of publicly denying that I gave the information knowingly. And then I believe that I could die in peace.”
Keith withdrew his hand. “Why do you make so sure of your condemnation?” he asked almost irritably. “Of what real worth is the testimony of persons who imagine that they saw you during a siege? No one could swear to you out of so many Camerons!”
“You think we are all as alike as sheep?” queried Ewen, looking amused. “But I had at least one hand-to-hand conflict with the Argyll militia, and another day I encountered a writer of Maryburgh with whom I had had dealings; he knew me at once, and will be only too glad to give evidence against me; I cannot think how they have not got hold of it already.—No, Windham, ’tis better to face the truth; once I reach Fort William I am certainly for Carlisle, and with such good evidence against me I have small chance of acquittal. I have known that for the last ten days; though naturally I have not acquainted the authorities with the excellent case they are like to have.”
And to this Keith found nothing to say. It was strange, it was alarming, to feel, as by this time he did, how strongly their intimacy had progressed in two months of absence and, on his side, of deliberate abstention from communication—like the roots of two trees growing secretly towards each other in darkness. But it was so; and now the roots must be severed.
“I hear that some of the prisoners at Inverness intend to swear that they were forced out,” he remarked after a silence.
“I dare say that may be true of some of them,” replied Ewen with composure. “But you are not suggesting that I should employ that plea, are you?”
“I know too well that you would not,” returned his visitor, and then murmured something about transportation as a possible alternative to a worse fate.
“Transportation!” exclaimed the Highlander. “To be sent to work in the plantations oversea as an indentured servant! I’d far liefer be hanged and quartered!”