A dull flush swept over the English soldier’s face. “You mean that I am to run the gauntlet of those caterans, when they return, under your protection? No; I have been humiliated enough this evening; it would be less galling to go as a prisoner. Keep my sword; ’tis the second of mine you have had, Mr. Cameron.”
Yes, he was sore, and no wonder! Ewen decided that he would not even mention the objectionable guineas. “I cannot hold this sword much longer,” he said lightly, “having but the one hand at present.—No, the caterans shall not see you at all, Captain Windham, and you shall go alone. Only, for Heaven’s sake, be quick, for some of them must soon be here!”
Bewildered, half reluctant, Keith closed his fingers on the hilt held out to him, and Ewen drew him to the escritoire on the right of the hearth. When he pushed it aside the panel behind slid slowly back.
Keith Windham stood before the gap momentarily speechless. “That, then——” he began at last, thickly.
“Yes, that is the way my friends went. But you can use the same road. It comes out, I understand, in the West Bow; there you will have to trust to chance, but it seems a dark night. Here, take my cloak,”—he went and picked it up—“’twill cover your uniform. And you must have a candle to light you down.”
To these directions and the proffered candlestick and cloak the baffled hunter paid no heed. “Your friends!” he said between his teeth. “The Pretender’s son, you mean! He was here this evening, then, in this very room!”
“Yes, but he was gone a little time before you entered,” answered Ewen soothingly. “I was only troubled lest the door should slide open and betray the path he took. But ’tis of no moment now.”
“No, it’s of no moment now!” repeated Windham bitterly. Wrath, reluctant admiration, disappointment and concern for what he had so nearly done—and not in fair fight—to the man before him strove openly in his tone as he went on: “Is this your revenge for——”—he pointed to the swathed right hand—“and for my outwitting you last August? It’s a sharp one, for all that it’s generous. . . . Yes, you have fairly outmanœuvred me, Ardroy, with your secret stair and your clansmen so pat to the moment, like a stage play! But I warn you that this mumming will turn to grim earnest some day; there’ll be a bloody curtain to the comedy, and you will regret that ever you played a part in it!”
“That depends, does it not, on how many more battles of Gladsmuir we have?” retorted Ewen, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. “But go—go!” for at last there had come a rush of feet up the stairs, and the rescue party (oblivious of the bolt) were hammering upon the door with cries. He thrust the candlestick and the cloak—the Prince’s cloak—into the Englishman’s hands, calling out something in Gaelic over his shoulder the while. “Go—they’ll have the door down in another minute!”
He almost pushed Captain Windham into the aperture, pressed the spring, and wedged the returning panel with the table, only a second or two before the unfortunate door of Lady Easterhall’s drawing-room fell inwards with a crash, and Cameron kilts plunged over it.