"There are some questions I ought to ask, friend Andrew, while we go," said the young nobleman, as they entered a narrow, stony path leading upward from the glade. The sunless sky was still bright overhead. "First of all, have the soldiery been prowling around your Manor or its neighborhood?"
"Until lately they have scarcely shown themselves near us. Colonel Danforth and his dragoons are stationed at Neith—as you too well know—with orders from the Duke of Cumberland to arrest any suspected Jacobites. But we have seen nothing of Danforth or his band."
"And what of the Duke himself and the garrison to the northeast, at Fort Augustus?"
"They have been equally quiet. The Manor lies midway between both garrisons; the troopers have harried the settlements closer to their hand. But—but—there is a better reason, my lord, for Windlestrae's being let alone."
"And what is that? Your father's friend, at Sheilar, I think hinted at some special one. I did not pay the heed which I should to his words."
"Why, my lord, my grandfather was an Englishman like yourself; and my father lived thirty years upon English ground, and spoke the English tongue before he came hither to live. Our Scottish neighbors have always counted us Whigs! They have never ceased to suspect my father of favoring the cause of King George—though he has said many a bold word for the Lost Cause. Worse still, my father was too ill to enlist under the Prince, as he would gladly have done; and this has set our neighbors yet more bitterly against him. We have no character as patriots, sir."
"You think that the English troops in the town and at the Fort hold your father a good partisan of their own king?"
"Exactly, my lord; and hence is it, I am sure, that our Manor has been so let alone by the enemy during these past weeks of spying and searching. The ill-color of my father's name shall stand you in good stead. There is no house in Scotland where a Jacobite would less be thought a-lurking or protected. But my father has felt the unkind opinions of his Scotch neighbors very deeply."
"Strange!" said Lord Geoffry, as if to himself, "the hand of heaven seems to lead me still. To find, in the heart of Scotland, Englishmen who are loyal to the Stewarts!"
While they spoke the lad guided Lord Geoffry rapidly along the flinty, steep path, which did not admit of their now walking side by side. It so continually twisted and turned and the trees shut it in so closely that Lord Armitage presently confessed that he could not imagine which point of the compass lay before him.