As Archie dismounted and saw who was behind the bracken, he recoiled. It was to him as if all that he most loathed in the past came to meet him in the beggar’s face. Here, at the confines of the Lowland country, the same hateful influences were waiting to engulf him. His soul was weary within him.
He barely replied to Wattie’s familiar greeting.
“Do you know this person?” inquired Callandar.
He assented.
“Ay, does he. Him and me’s weel acquaint,” said Wattie, closing an eye. “Hae, tak’ yon.”
He held out the letter to Flemington.
The young man opened it slowly, turning his back to the cart, and his brows drew together as he read.
His destiny did not mean him to escape. Logie had been marked down, and the circle of his enemies was narrowing round him. Flemington was to go no farther, and he was to remain with Callandar to await another message that would be brought to their bivouac on Huntly Hill, before approaching nearer to Brechin.
He stood aside, the paper in his hand. Here was the turning-point; he was face to face with it at last. He could not take part in Logie’s capture; on that he was completely, unalterably determined. What would be the end of it all for himself he could not think. Nothing was clear, nothing plain, but the settled strength of his determination. He looked into the mellowing light round him, and saw everything as though it were unreal; the only reality was that he had chosen his way. Heaven was pitiless, but it should not shake him. Far above him a solitary bird was winging its way into the spaces beyond the hills; the measured beat of its wings growing invisible as it grew smaller and smaller and was finally lost to sight. He watched it, fascinated, with the strange detachment of those whose senses and consciousness are numbed by some crisis. What was it carrying away, that tiny thing that was being swallowed by the vastness? His mind could only grasp the idea of distance . . . of space. . . .