“No,” broke in Donald. “Something tells me the end is even nearer than you think—a tame end to a life that has dreamed so much of ancient battles.”
Hardcastle humoured his mood, garrulous but constantly returning to the one clouded purpose. For pride’s sake he needed to explain how Causleen and he came to be travelling the roads, and presently his mind grew clear.
“We had ever been Stuart men in the old days—losing, and hoping, and fighting—till little was left me when my time came to be laird in the dreadful days of honour and peace. That little went, and Causleen had to make her choice. There was a rich wooer came. A great name he had, and nothing against him but the one thing that damned all.”
“Go on, Donald.”
“You will not understand. How should you? The Stuarts were discrowned and out of mind long since, you’d say; but in the Highlands they can never be discrowned. And the wooer who came was of a clan that had sold the old allegiance for gold—just for guinea-pieces to jangle in a purse.”
The fire of youth kindled in Donald’s voice. Consuming wrath was in his eyes. And Hardcastle understood better than the pedlar guessed; for Logie moorlands knew the way of staunchness to their own allegiance.
“I left the choice to Causleen, though I’d rather have seen the child in her shroud than linked to him. ‘He can save the house for us with his gold,’ I said, to prove her. And, ‘He cannot,’ said she, ‘for there’s Stuart blood on it. A hundred years is not enough to cleanse it.’ So we took the roads together, she and I.”
His eyes closed for awhile. One purpose was achieved; but another clamoured for fulfilment, and he had little time to spare. He was alert again.
“She took the roads as bravely as she took her choice—but soon she will be travelling alone.”
There was question in the pedlar’s glance—a pleading that was command almost. And out of doors a breeze plucked and rattled at the windows, as if to deepen fear of what the lone highways had in store for Causleen.