"'Look here, Jack,' said he, 'you'd better ride back to Nairn at once—without me. I shall come on later—perhaps not until to-morrow morning. Ride back as quickly as you can, and see the Duke of Cumberland. If you can't see him, go to Major Wolfe. Tell him—tell either of them—that the rebel army is only some four thousand strong, but that the Pretender has determined to attack the King's troops to-morrow. I have just heard this by accident. The three of them—Charles Stuart, my father, and that young scamp Neil—have been closeted together. But I overheard them talking and unfolding their plans. There was only a thin curtain between us, and I heard every word. I heard my father saying that he had a store of arms and ammunition here in the castle for the use of the Highlanders. Two hundred muskets and as many swords, as well as ten thousand pounds in gold. These he offered to Stuart, bidding him send for them at eleven o'clock to-night. The arms and the money[!-- [Pg 138] --] are to be delivered to the messengers by my brother Neil at the postern gate in the castle garden. They will be delivered, Jack, if—if I don't prevent it, as I mean to do.'"
Colonel Ossington paused in his narrative. His gaze was fixed upon the earnestly attentive eyes and the white face of Colin Leslie. The boy seemed mentally to be associating this fact of the delivery of arms at the postern gate with the recently seen apparition of Neil Leslie. As for Sir Donald, he had now ceased to doubt Colonel Ossington's affirmations, and was as deeply interested in the narrative as was his grandson, although the sympathies of the two were directly at variance.
"Ten thousand pounds in gold!" ejaculated Sir Donald in astonishment. "Where on earth did it all come from?"
"I do not know," returned Ossington. "Probably it represented the contributions of the wealthy Jacobites of the immediate neighbourhood."
"And did the Highlanders get those guns and things in time to use them in the next day's battle?" Colin ventured to ask. He breathed a sigh of disappointment when Colonel Ossington answered, with more conviction than the mere words implied—
"I believe not. Alan Leslie remained behind with the purpose of frustrating their delivery."
"Ay, and did frustrate it, I'll be bound," interposed the grandfather. "Alan was brave, he was strong and determined. He would stick at nothing! When did you next see him, colonel?"
"I never saw him again," replied Ossington. "Since that night when I left him his fate has been to me a complete mystery. On the next day, at Nairn, when the muster-roll was called, he was absent. We advanced to Culloden, and the battle was fought—if battle it may be called which was a mere rout. But Alan Leslie was nowhere on the field. When the Highlanders had retreated,[!-- [Pg 139] --] vanquished, and the Duke of Cumberland was pursuing his too terrible vengeance upon the innocent and the guilty alike, I searched among the wounded and the dead for my missing comrade, but nowhere could I find him. Afterwards, I came here. Your castle had been attacked and partly demolished by Hawley's dragoons. Sir John Leslie, I heard, had gone the night before with Charles Stuart to the house of Lord Lovat, to be present at a council of war. He afterwards escaped with the fugitives—probably in company with his son Neil."
"Ay!" added Sir Donald; "and Neil, I'll be bound, did not neglect to carry off the gold with him, and use it for his own selfish purposes; for the Pretender never got the money. I'm thankful for that at least. That he should have it were worse even than that Neil should squander it." The old man began again to stride to and fro across the floor. "Neil was a villain!" he cried; "an ingrain villain and scoundrel. He ought to have been hanged with the rest of them! I could almost be content at the loss of the family fortunes if I might only know that the rascal had died an outlaw's death on the gallows. It was doubtless he who prevented Alan from getting back to his regiment that night."
Colonel Ossington meditated a few moments in silence.