She laid her hand upon his shoulder, a light, snow-white hand, yet one that held him now in a clasp of steel.
"Child! answer me at your peril! Tell me of him whom you call your master. Tell me all—quick—quick!"
"You are his friend?"
"His friend? My Heaven! Speak on!"
"He bade me tell no more on peril of his heaviest anger; but if you are his friend, I sure may speak what you should know without me. It is a poor friend, lady, who has need to ask whether another be dead or living!"
The scarlet blood flamed in the Countess's blanched face, she signed him on with impetuous command; she was unused to disobedience, and the child's words cut her to the quick.
"Sir Fulke sails for the French coast to-morrow night," the boy went on, in tremulous haste. "He was left for dead—our men ran one way, and Argyll's men the other—on the field of Sheriff-Muir; and sure if he had not been strong indeed, he would have died that awful night, untended, on the bleak moor, with the winds roaring round him, and his life ebbing away. He was not one of those who fled; you know that of him if you know aught. We got him away before dawn, Donald and I, and hid him in a shieling; he was in the fever then, and knew nothing that was done to him, only he kept that bit of lace in his hand for weeks and weeks, and would not let us stir it from his grasp. What magic there was in it we wondered often, but 'twas a magic, mayhap, that got him well at last; it was an even chance but that he'd died, God bless him! though we did what best we could. We've been wandering in the Highlands all the year, hiding here and tarrying there. Sir Fulke sets no count upon his life. Sure I think he thanks us little for getting him through the fever of the wounds, but he could not have borne to be pinioned, you know, lady, like a thief, and hung up by the brutes of Whigs, as a butcher hangs sheep in the shambles! The worst of the danger's over—they've had their fill of the slaughter; but we sail to-morrow night for the French coast—England's no place for my master."
Cecil Castlemaine let go her hold upon the boy, and her hand closed convulsively upon the dainty handkerchief—her gage sent so faithfully back to her!
The child looked upon her face; perchance, in his master's delirium, he had caught some knowledge of the story that hung to that broidered toy.
"If you are his friend, madame, doubtless you have some last word to send him?"