Callandar turned his grave eyes on him.
“The idea displeases you?” said Archie.
“It would complicate our duty.”
He spoke like a humourless man, but one side of his mouth twitched downwards a little, and Flemington, who had the eye of a lynx for another man’s face, decided that the mere accident of habit had prevented it from twitching up. He struck him as the most repressed person he had ever seen.
“There would not be enough at headquarters to go round,” observed Archie.
Callandar’s mouth straightened, and, like the horses, he looked at nothing. Criticism was another thing not in his instructions.
“They have drunk well,” he said at last. “An hour will bring us to the foot of Huntly Hill. We can halt and feed them at the top before we turn off towards Brechin. You know this country better than I do.”
“Wait a little,” said Archie. “I am no rebel, and you may have mercy on me with a clear conscience.”
He had slipped his arm out of the sling and was resting it on his knee.
“You are in pain?” exclaimed Callandar, astonished.