No one looking along the windings of the Glen, and drawing in the ardent quietness of the summer warmth, would have supposed that fire and sword had been through it so lately. Its vastness of outline hid the ruined huts and black fragments of skeleton gable-ends that had smoked up into the mountain stillness. Homeless women and children had fled down its secret tracks; hunted men had given up their souls under its heights. The rich plainland of Angus had sent its sons to fight for the Prince in the North, and of those who survived to make their way back to their homes, many had been overtaken by the pursuit that had swept down behind them through the hills. No place had a darker record than Glen Esk.
Archie Flemington rode down the Glen with his companion some little way in front of the corporal and the three men who followed them. His left arm was in a sling, for he had received a sabre-cut at Culloden; also, he had been rolled on by his horse, which was killed under him, and had broken a rib. His wound, though not serious had taken a long time to heal, for the steel had cut into the arm bone; he looked thin, too, for the winter had been a time of strenuous work.
One of the three private soldiers, the last of the small string of horsemen, had a rope knotted into his reins, the other end of which was secured round the middle of a short, thickset man who paced sullenly along beside the horse. The prisoner’s arms were bound at his back, his reddish beard was unkempt, and his clothes ragged; he made a sorry figure in the surrounding beauty.
Nearly two months had gone by since the Battle of Culloden, and the search for fugitives was still going on in remote places. Cumberland, who was on the point of leaving Fort Augustus for Edinburgh on his way to London, had given orders for a last scouring of Glen Esk. The party had almost reached its mouth, and its efforts had resulted only in the capture of this one rebel; but, as there was some slight doubt of his identity, and as the officer who rode beside Archie was one whose conscience ranked a great way above his convenience, the red-bearded man had fared better than many of those taken by Cumberland’s man-hunters. If he were the person they supposed him to be, he was an Angus farmer distantly related to David Ferrier, and he was now being brought to his own country for identification.
Captain Callandar, the officer in command, was a long, lean, bony man with a dark face, a silent, hard-bitten fellow from Ligonier’s regiment. He and Archie had met very little before they started south together, and they had scarcely progressed in acquaintance in the few days during which they had ridden side by side. They had shared their food on the bare turf by day, lain down within a few yards of each other at night; they had gone through many of the same experiences in the North, and they belonged to the same victorious army, yet they knew little more of each other than when they started. But there was no dislike between them, certainly none on Archie’s side, and if the other was a little critical of the foreign roll of his companion’s r’s, he did not show it.
Archie’s tongue had been quiet enough. He was riding listlessly along, and, though he looked from side to side, taking in the details of what he saw from force of habit, they seemed to give him no interest. He puzzled Callandar a good deal, for he had proved to be totally different from anything that he had expected. The soldier was apt to study his fellow-men, when not entirely swallowed up by his duty, and he had been rather pleased when he found that Cumberland’s brilliant intelligence officer was to accompany him down Glen Esk. He had heard much about him. Archie’s quick answers and racy talk had amused the Duke, who, uncompanionable himself, felt the awkward man’s amazement at the readiness of others, and scraps of Flemington’s sayings had gone from lip to lip, hall-marked by his approval. Callandar was taciturn and grave, but he was not stupid, and he had begun to wonder what was amiss with his companion. He decided that his own society must be uncongenial to him, and, being a very modest man, he did not marvel at it.
But the sources of Archie’s discomfort lay far, far deeper than any passing irritation. It seemed to him now, as he reached the mouth of the Glen, that there was nothing left in life to fear, because the worst that could come upon him was looming ahead, waiting for him, counting his horse’s steps as he left the hills behind.
An apprehension, a mere suggestion of what might be remotely possible, a skeleton that had shown its face to him in sleepless or overwrought moments since Cumberland’s victory, had become real. To most people who are haunted by a particular dread, Fate plays one of the tricks she loves so much. She is an expert boxer, and whilst each man stands up to her in his long, defensive fight, his eye upon hers, guarding himself from the blow he expects to receive in the face, she hits him in the wind and he finds himself knocked out.