Murray, too amazed to move, hesitated in the doorway, and catching up a stick Lovat struck him down before he could raise an arm to defend himself, or avert the blows. Indeed, he lay as though stunned with horror or too broken in body to protect himself.
There was a noise of footsteps outside and a dozen men prevented the Fraser from injuring him further, and after a while he rose and leaving the hut reached his boat. His face was white as death, but in his eyes, hollow with fever and privation, there gleamed like a secret fire such a mad hate and anger that the boatman pulling him out upon the silent loch watched him narrowly until they reached the shore. For a minute or two he did not move, but still crouched with his eyes upon the way they had come, then groping with his hands until he reached the beach, paid them without question, and saying no word passed up the shore and out of their sight—a man long since broken in health for the cause and full of bitterness of heart, but now fired with an undying personal hatred.
CHAPTER XVI
THE CAVE IN GLENMORISTON
"Muckle John," said Rob, as the cart came to a standstill, and his companion had kept a tight mouth for a full half-hour after his last curt words, "Muckle John, why did you rescue me?"
"Why indeed?" he replied dourly enough.
Acting on a sudden impulse Rob leapt over the side of the cart upon the bank of grass beside it, and began to walk in the direction they had come.
"Where are you going?" cried Muckle John, startled for once.
Rob paused and spoke over his shoulder.
"I'm not the one to take favours from you nor any one," he said. "I know fine why you wanted to keep me safe; and now that you've lost the thing you sought I'm no more to you than a peewit's egg." With that he set off again towards Fort Augustus.