The wretch had been bound upon a horse—a tall, middle-aged man in coarse home-spun clothing, his eye defiant, but his countenance white with the anxieties of his situation. He was surrounded by a troop of sabres; the horses' hoofs made a great clatter upon the hard road, and Count Victor, walking abstractedly along the river-bank, came on them before he was aware of their proximity. As he stood to let them pass he was touched inexpressibly by the glance the convict gave him, so charged was it with question, hope, dread, and the appetite for some human sympathy. He had seen that look before in men condemned—once in front of his own rapier,—and with the utmost feeling for the unhappy wretch he stood, when the cavalcade had gone, looking after it and conjuring in his fancy the last terrible scene whereof that creature would be the central figure. Thus was he standing when another horseman came upon him suddenly, following wide in the rear of the troops—a civilian who shared the surprise of the unexpected meeting. He had no sooner gazed upon Count Victor than he drew up his horse confusedly and seemed to hesitate between proceeding or retreat. Count Victor passed with a courteous salute no less formally returned. He was struck singularly by some sense of familiarity. He did not know the horseman who so strangely scrutinised him as he passed, but yet the face was one not altogether new to him. It was a face scarce friendly, too, and for his life the Frenchman could not think of any reason for aversion.
He could no more readily have accounted for the action of the horseman had he known that he had ridden behind the soldiers but a few hundred yards after meeting with Count Victor when he turned off at one of the hunting-roads with which the ducal grounds abounded, and galloped furiously back towards the castle of Argyll. Nothing checked him till he reached the entrance, where he flung the reins to a servant and dashed into the turret-room where the Duke sat writing.
“Ah, Sim!” said his Grace, airily, yet with an accent of apprehension, “you have come back sooner than I looked for: nothing wrong with the little excursion, I hope?”
MacTaggart leaned with both hands upon the table where his master wrote. “They're all right, so far as I went with them,” said he; “but if your Grace in my position came upon a foreigner in the wood of Strongara—a gentleman by the looks of him and a Frenchman by his moustachio, all alone and looking after Sergeant Donald's company, what would your Grace's inference be?”
Argyll, obviously, did not share much of his Chamberlain's excitement. “There was no more than one there?” he asked, sprinkling sand upon his finished letter. “No! Then there seems no great excuse for your extreme perturbation, my good Sim. I'm lord of Argyll, but I'm not lord of the king's highway, and if an honest stranger cares to take a freeman's privilege and stand between the wind and Simon MacTaggart's dignity—Simon MacTaggart's very touchy dignity, it would appear—who am I that I should blame the liberty? You did not ride ventre à terre from Strongara (I see a foam-fleck on your breeches) to tell me we had a traveller come to admire our scenery? Come, come, Sim! I'll begin to think these late eccentricities of yours, these glooms, abstractions, errors, and anxieties and indispositions, and above all that pallid face of yours, are due to some affair of the heart.” As he spoke Argyll pinched his kinsman playfully on the ear, quite the good companion, with none of the condescension that a duke might naturally display in so doing.
MacTaggart reddened and Argyll laughed, “Ah!” he cried. “Can I have hit it?” he went on, quizzing the Chamberlain. “See that you give me fair warning, and I'll practise the accustomed and essential reel. Upon my soul, I haven't danced since Lady Mary left, unless you call it so that foolish minuet. You should have seen her Grace at St. James's last month. Gad! she footed it like an angel; there's not a better dancer in London town. See that your wife's a dancer, whoever she may be, Sim; let her dance and sing and play the harpsichord or the clarsach—they are charms that will last longer than her good looks, and will not weary you so soon as that intellect that's so much in fashion nowadays, when every woman listens to every clever thing you say, that she may say something cleverer, or perhaps retail it later as her own.”
MacTaggart turned about impatiently, poked with his riding crop at the fire, and plainly indicated that he was not in the mood for badinage.
“All that has nothing to do with my Frenchman, your Grace,” said he bluntly.
“Oh, confound your Frenchman!” retorted the Duke, coming over, turning up the skirts of his coat, and warming himself at the fire. “Don't say Frenchman to me, and don't suggest any more abominable crime and intrigue till the memory of that miserable Appin affair is off my mind. I know what they'll say about that: I have a good notion what they're saying already—as if I personally had a scrap of animosity to this poor creature sent to the gibbet on Leven-side.”
“I think you should have this Frenchman arrested for inquiry: I do not like the look of him.”