Keith’s fingers closed on the arms of his chair. “Are you jesting, sir?”
“Not in the least,” replied the young man, without any trace either of amusement or of elation. “I know it to be a fact, because I spoke afterwards with their leader, MacDonald of Tiendrish. They used an old trick, I understand, to pass themselves off as more than they really were.”
He continued to look at the fire. Captain Windham, with a suppressed exclamation, had lowered his injured foot to the ground, and then remained silent, most horribly mortified. Two companies of His Majesty’s Foot turning tail before a dozen beggarly Highlanders with whom they had not even stayed to exchange shots! The solace, such as it had been, of reflecting that the recruits had in the end been surrounded and outnumbered, was swept clean away, for he knew now that they would never have come to this pass but for their initial poltroonery. Keith had lost all desire for further converse, and every instinct of patronage was dead within him. Why the devil had he ever asked that question?
“I think, sir,” observed his captor, turning round at last, “that it would be better, would it not, if you went to bed? I hope that you have been given everything that is necessary?”
“Everything, thank you,” replied Keith shortly. “And also, just now, something that I could well have done without.” He tried to speak lightly, yet nothing but vexation, he knew, sounded in his tone.
“I am sorry,” said the Highlander gravely. “I would not have told you the number had you not pressed me for it. Forget it, sir.” He went to the door. “I hope that your injured ankle will not keep you awake.”
That ill office was much more likely to be performed by the piece of news which he had presented to the sufferer. “Eleven men and a piper!” repeated Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots when the door was shut; and with his sound leg he drove his heel viciously into the logs of Highland pine.
CHAPTER III
Captain Keith Windham, unwillingly revisiting the neighbourhood of High Bridge, which was populated with leaping Highlanders about nine feet high, and permeated, even in his dream, with the dronings and wailings of the bagpipe, woke, hot and angry, to find that the unpleasant strains at least were real, and were coming through the window of the room in which he lay. He remained a moment blinking, wondering if they portended some attack by a hostile clan; and finally got out of bed and hobbled to the window.