“God’s curse on you, what have you done!” he exclaimed, seizing his foster-brother by the shoulder. “If you have really harmed Major Windham——” But the moon showed him the bloody dirk. With a shudder he thrust the murderer violently from him, and, deaf to young Angus’s shrill remonstrances, started to run haltingly back towards the slope. Surely, surely Lachlan had mistaken his victim, for what could Windham be doing here at Morar?
But it was Keith Windham. He was lying on his side, full in the moonlight, almost at the bottom of the slope, as if he had been thrown there . . . stunned, perhaps, thought Ewen wildly, with a recollection of how he himself had lain on Culloden Moor—though how a dirk could stun him God alone knew. Half-way down the slope lay a pistol. Calling his name he knelt and took him into his arms. Oh, no hope; it was a matter of minutes! Lachlan had used that long blade too well.
As he was lifted, Keith came back from a moment’s dream of a shore with long green rollers roaring loudly under a blood-red sunset, to pain and difficult breath and Ewen’s arms. He knew him.
“I . . . I did not have to . . . fire,” he gasped; but Ewen could not realise what lay behind the words. “Go . . . go before . . . they come from Morar . . .”
“My God, my God!” exclaimed Ewen, trying to staunch the blood which that spotless sand was already drinking. “Oh, Windham, if I could only have warned you—if I had known that he was here . . .”
“There is a hole . . . in the boat,” said Keith with increasing difficulty. “I . . . took out . . . the plug.”
“They have put in another—one they had in readiness. Windham, for God’s sake try to——”
Try to do what? “Your letter . . . is still . . . I had no . . .”
“Duncan—Angus!” called Ewen desperately, “have none of you any brandy?”
But his men, who had run up, were intent on another matter. “Come, the boat is ready—and I think the redcoats are stirring over the river,” said Duncan Cameron, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Come, Mac ’ic Ailein, come!”