“You bade me loose your arm when I touched you, and spoke of preferring to be ‘cut in pieces’ and of ‘another way’. You have just told me what that ‘other way’ was. Ewen, what was the first way, and who took it with you? You have not told me everything, after all.”
The young man was looking on the floor, and there was colour enough in his face now. “I do not very much wish to revive that memory. . . . But if you must know, I was near being flogged by order of the Lowland officer who captured me. He had been going to shoot me first—I’ll tell you of that anon. It was because he wanted . . . what they wanted and got at Fort Augustus.—No, do not look so horrified, Archie; he did not carry it out (though I’ll admit I believed he was going to). It was only a threat.”
“Then, if it was only a threat,” remarked Dr. Cameron, looking at him closely, “why did you call me a ‘damned torturer’ when I touched you?”
“I . . . Really, Archie, I cannot be responsible for everything I say in my sleep. I apologise, but if you were worth your salt you would give me some drug to cure me of the cursed habit!”
“I’m afraid the drug does not exist, my dear boy. When your mind is at peace you will not do it any more. And don’t you think that it would conduce to that state if you told me why you called me so unpleasant a name?”
Ewen gave him a little shake. “Mo thruaigh, Archie Cameron,” he said with vivacity, “I begin to think it was because you merit it with this persistence of yours! If I said that, I suppose I must have been remembering that when one has had a bayonet through one’s arm not long before, it is conveniently sensitive, that is all. But after a few experiments, Major Guthrie found that it was not sensitive enough. They knew better how to do things at Fort Augustus.”
Archibald Cameron still gazed at him, compressing his lips. “So the Lowlander tried ‘experiments’, did he? And do you still consider yourself a traitor, Ewen? I’d give you a rather different name, and so, I fancy, will Lochiel.”
“But I don’t mean you to tell Lochiel that! No, Archie, that was not confession—you got it out of me unfairly!”
“Unfortunately you made me promise to tell him everything,” retorted his cousin, smiling. “To turn to another aspect of this matter, then,” for Ewen was really looking unhappy, “it was, I suppose, to this Major Guthrie with a fancy for experiments that you were betrayed by the English officer who was your prisoner here—I might almost say your guest—last August. I hope that he did not go so far as to take part in these proceedings, too?—Bless us, what is wrong now?”
For this partial change of topic had proved far from soothing. With a sharp exclamation Ewen had got up from the bed.