The moon was climbing into the sky as they stepped towards their prisoner; but Cameron first took Rob aside and whispered in his ear:
"What I buried," said he, speaking in the Lowland tongue, "would set the Highlands in a blaze. It is a merciful Providence you turned up as you did. For now we can hide it all the easier in another place, or maybe two places. But give me your oath on the naked dirk that no word of it will ever pass your lips except to the Prince."
"The Prince?" echoed Rob, who had followed him with difficulty.
"And who else? Did ye no jump to what the bonny casks meant? French gold, boy—enough to buy every claymore in the Highlands and Argyll as well. Now d'ye see? Come, Rob."
With that, Cameron approached the man upon the ground and motioned Rob to take his legs while he grasped him by the arms. So they made for a hollow place, and as they laid him down he groaned and opened his eyes, and at that moment the moon, clearing the tops of the trees, played its pale shafts upon the ghastly face of Ephraim Macaulay, late schoolmaster in Inverness.
CHAPTER VI
THE WATCHERS BY NIGHT
Darkness overtook Muckle John to the south of Loch Garry in the Macdonald country. He had travelled without halt all day, keeping to the less frequented roads, and seeing on every side traces of the panic that followed Culloden. In every village was the same terror and the same frantic haste—some burying claymores with desperate hands so that they remained only half covered—others taking to the hills with their wives and little ones. Once a party of two hundred or more passed him on the road making for the south-west. They wore the look of men utterly dispirited, limping in broken ranks for all the blithe playing of a piper at their head.
Then plunging on through the heather he put mile after mile between him and Fort Augustus.
It was about three on the same afternoon that he pulled in his horse very sharply and swinging about gazed back. He was not sure that he had heard anything. It was more a premonition than anything else, but a northerner pays close heed to such things.