But in order to divert his attention Mac-Gregor asked him as to the skirmish, and what had happened afterwards. It was with genuine agony that Rob Roy listened to the tale which Frank had to tell—though he modified, as far as he could, the treatment the Bailie and himself had met with from the Mac-Gregors.
"And the excise collector," said Rob Roy; "I wish he may not have been at the bottom of the ploy himself! I thought he looked very queer when I told him that he must remain as a hostage for my safe return. I wager he will not get off without ransom!"
"Morris," said Frank, with great solemnity, "has paid the last great ransom of all!"
"Eh—what?" cried the Mac-Gregor, "what d'ye say? I trust it was in the skirmish that he was killed?"
"He was slain in cold blood, after the fight was over, Mr. Campbell!"
"Cold blood!" he muttered rapidly between his teeth, "how fell this? Speak out, man, and do not Mister or Campbell me—my foot is on my native heath, and my name is Mac-Gregor!"
Without noticing the rudeness of his tone, Frank gave him a distinct account of the death of Morris. Rob Roy struck the butt of his gun with great vehemence on the ground, and broke out, "I vow to God, such a deed might make one forswear kin, clan, country, wife, and bairns! And yet the villain wrought long for it. He but drees the doom he intended for me. Hanging or drowning—it is just the same. But I wish, for all that, they had put a ball or a dirk through the traitor's breast. It will cause talk—the fashion of his death—though all the world knows that Helen Mac-Gregor has deep wrongs to avenge."
Whereupon he quitted the subject altogether, and spoke of Frank Osbaldistone's affairs. He was glad to hear that he had received the stolen papers from Diana Vernon's own hands.
"I was sure you would get them," he said; "the letter you brought me contained his Excellency's pleasure to that effect, and it was for that purpose I asked ye to come up the glen in order that I might serve you. But his Excellency has come across Rashleigh first."
Rob Roy's words made much clear to the young man, yet some things remained mysterious. He remembered that Diana Vernon had left the library and immediately returned with the letter which was afterwards claimed by Rob Roy in the tolbooth of Glasgow. The person whom he now called his Excellency must therefore have been in Osbaldistone Hall at the same time as himself, and unknown to all except Diana and possibly to her cousin Rashleigh. Frank remembered the double shadows on the windows, and thought that he could now see the reason of those.
