“For God’s sake don’t think of that now!” cried Keith, quite distracted.
“But I must! Miss Cameron, if I can communicate with her, which may be allowed at Carlisle——”
“Will you waste time over a few guineas? In Heaven’s name, take them as a gift—cannot you see that it would be kinder to me?”
Ewen evidently saw; he could hardly fail to see it. “Very well, then I will; and thank you for the gift. After all, I took a greater at your hands on Beinn Laoigh. And do you remember the money you left as payment for my clothes at Fassefern House? My sorrow, but I was angry with you! I threw it away into the bushes, and Clanranald’s and Keppoch’s men hunted for it all night, so I heard afterwards.” His tone suddenly changed. “Do you mean to leave this penknife here—is that a gift, too?”
He pointed to that object, lying where Keith had laid it down on one of the stools in order to have both hands free to wrap up the lock of hair. The Englishman hesitated, looking from it to the prisoner, and read, plain to see in his eyes, the value which he would set on even so small and blunt a weapon to-morrow. For a moment he was tempted, against honour and duty.
“Why did you put me in mind of it?” he asked reproachfully. “I had indeed honestly forgotten it, and had I so left it, you could have taken it with you to-morrow! . . . But I gave Lord Albemarle my word not to help you in any way to escape . . .”
Ewen instantly picked up the penknife, shut it, and held it out to him. “Take it. They are sure, too, to search me before I go to-morrow. Come,” he still held it out, “you have sacrificed enough for me; your honour you shall not sacrifice!”
As Keith reluctantly took the knife from the shackled hand he had a shock as if a lightning flash had stabbed asunder the sky above him and shown him something he had never seen—never wished to see—before. The barren and solitary path which he had marked out for himself through life was not the best! Here was a man who would never willingly fail friend or lover, much less play them false. Now, at this their last meeting, when friendship with him was a thing impossible of realisation, he knew that he would have asked nothing better—he who never wished for a friend.
Like a lightning flash too in its speed the revelation was over. Mechanically he put the penknife away, and Ewen limped the few paces back to his stool. “Come and sit down again, Windham,” he said, “for once more you cannot get out if you wish to. And there is a matter about which I have long been curious. Why do you bear a Scots name—if I may ask without indiscretion? Have you perhaps Scottish kin?”
Keith, sitting down beside him again, shook his head. “There’s not a soul of my blood north of Tweed. But my father, who was a soldier also, had once a Scottish friend, killed at Malplaquet before I was born, for whom he must have had a great affection, since he gave me his name.”