“But there’s a price on your head,” protested Ewen. “You should not, should not have come here!”
Archibald Cameron smiled his gentle, quizzical smile and sat down on the bed. “I understand from Miss Margaret that you daily affirm the house of Ardroy to be perfectly safe. Moreover, one does not dictate to a physician, my dear boy, how and when he shall visit his patients. I heard how you escaped as you were being carried to Fort William, and I did not believe that it was your body which was found some days after in one of the pools of Spean. (You do not know, perhaps, that that is what has been given out at Fort Augustus.) But I guessed that that same body needed attention, so, being yesterday in Glendessary, I made my way hither. Now, let me look at those wounds of yours.”
And, though Ewen protested that these were quite healed and that he was only a trifle lame, Dr. Cameron insisted. The extent of the lameness, very patent when he made the young man walk about the room, evidently displeased him.
“When you get to France, Ewen, you must have the care of a good surgeon. I greatly fear that an important muscle in the thigh has been severed; but with proper treatment it may reunite again.”
“I suppose you have been talking to Aunt Margaret,” remarked his patient, sitting down upon the bed. “But, as I have told her, I am not going to France—yet. The muscle must reunite at home.”
Archie looked at him keenly. He had been talking to Aunt Margaret. “I am not advising France solely in the interests of your lameness, Ewen.”
“Well I know that! But I shall stay in Scotland for the present.”
“Until you are captured again, I suppose?” said Dr. Cameron, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back against the post at the bottom of the bed. “But I do not know on what grounds you assume that you will have so lucky an escape a second time.”
“Oh, I shall not be captured here,” said Ewen carelessly. “And when I can walk a little better, I shall very likely take to the heather for a while—like you!” And as Archibald Cameron raised his eyebrows he said with more warmth, “My God, Archie, I’d rather skulk in sight of Loch na h-Iolaire with nothing but my plaid and a handful of meal, even were there a redcoat behind every whin-bush, than lie in the French King’s bed at Versailles!”
“No doubt,” responded his cousin, unmoved. “And so would I. Yet I shall certainly make for France—if God will—when my tasks here are done. I hope indeed that it may not be for long; who knows but next year may see another and a more successful effort, with support from the French. The Prince——”