“Then did that poor woman dream that the house was burnt down?” asked Ewen some quarter of an hour later, gazing at Miss Cameron in perplexity, as she planted before him, ensconced as he was in the easy-chair in her bedroom, the last components of a large repast. For allow him to descend and eat downstairs she would not; indeed, after the first questions and emotions were over, she was for hustling him up to the attics and hiding him there. But, Ewen having announced with great firmness that he was too lame to climb a stair that was little better than a ladder, she compromised on her bedchamber for the moment, and, with Marsali’s assistance, brought up thither the first really satisfying meal which Ewen had seen for more than three months.
In answer to his question she now began to laugh, though her eyes were still moist. “The house was set fire to—in a way. Eat, Eoghain, for you look starving; and you shall hear the tale of its escape.”
Ewen obeyed her and was told the story. But not yet having, so it seemed to him, the full use of his faculties, he was not quite clear how much of the house’s immunity was due to chance, to connivance on the part of the officer commanding the detachment sent to burn it, and to the blandishments of Miss Cameron herself. At any rate, after searching, though not plundering, the house of Ardroy from top to bottom (for whom or what was not quite clear to Ewen, since at that date he was safely a prisoner at Fort Augustus), firing about half the crofts near, collecting what cattle they could lay their hands on, the most having already been sent up into the folds of the mountains, and slaying a dozen or so of Miss Cameron’s hens, they had piled wood against the front of the house, with what intention was obvious. It was a moment of great anguish for Miss Cameron. But the soldiers were almost ready to march ere the fuel was lighted. And as they were setting fire to the pine-branches and the green ash-boughs the officer approached her and said in a low voice, “Madam, I have carried out my instructions—and it is not my fault if this wood is damp. That’s enough, Sergeant; ’twill burn finely. Column, march!”
Directly they were out of sight Miss Cameron and Marsali, the younger maidservants and the old gardener, seizing rakes and brooms and fireirons, had pulled away the thickly smoking but as yet harmless branches. “And then I bethought me, Ewen, that ’twould be proper there should be as much smoke as possible, to convince the world, and especially the redcoats, should they take a look back. A house cannot burn, even in a spot so remote as this, without there being some evidence of it in the air. So we made a great pile of all that stuff at a safe distance from the house—and, my grief, the trouble it was to get it to burn! Most of the day we tended it; and a nasty thick reek it made, and a blaze in the end. That’s how the house was burnt. . . . What ails you, my bairn?”
But this time Ewen was able hastily to dash the back of his hand over his eyes. He could face her, therefore, unashamed, and reaching out for her hand, put his lips to it in silence.
CHAPTER III
Not infrequently in the past had Miss Margaret Cameron animadverted on the obstinacy which lay hidden (as his temper was hidden) under her nephew’s usually gentle speech and ways. And now, at the greatest crisis in his life, when that life itself might hang upon his prudence, poor Miss Cameron was faced in her young relative with a display of this quality which really distracted her.
On that joyful and wonderful morning of his return she had allowed him (she put it so) to retire to his own bed in his own room ‘just for the once’; the garrets, the cellar or a bothy on the braeside being designated as his future residences. Ewen did not argue—indeed he was not capable of it; he fell into his bed and slept for fourteen hours without waking.
Once he was there, and so obviously in need of rest and attention, Miss Cameron had not, of course, the heart to turn him out; but she kept a guard of young MacMartins and others round the house ready to give tongue in case of a surprise, and promised herself to banish the returned fugitive to more secluded regions directly he was able to leave his room. But when, after three days, Ewen did so, it was not to retire into this destined seclusion; on the contrary, he began at once to limp about, acquainting himself with what had happened to his tenants in his absence, trying to discover the fate of those who had never returned—among whom was Lachlan MacMartin—visiting the nearer crofts in person, and interviewing the inhabitants of the farther at the house. Presently, he said, he would ‘take to the heather,’ perhaps; but, as his aunt could see, he was yet too lame for it; and, as for the garrets or the cellar, he was just as safe in his own bedchamber as in those uncomfortable retreats.