Neither spoke for a minute. Archie was still sitting on the table. He had been looking on the ground, and he raised his eyes to his companion’s face.
Something stirred in him, perhaps at the thought of how he stood with fate. He was not given to thinking about himself, but he might well do so now.
“Callandar,” he said, “I dare say you don’t like me——” Then he broke off, laughing. “How absurd!” he exclaimed. “Of course you hate me; it is only right you should. But perhaps you will understand—I think you will, if you will listen. I was thrown against Logie—no matter how—but, unknowing what he did, he put his safety in my hands. He did more. I had played upon his sympathy, and in the generosity of his heart he came to my help as one true man might do to another. I was not a true man, but he did not know that; he knew nothing of me but that I stood in need, and he believed I was as honest as himself. He thought I was with his own cause. That was what I wished him to believe—had almost told him.”
Callandar listened, the lines of his long face set.
“I had watched him and hunted him,” continued Archie, “and my information against him was already in the beggar’s hands, on its way to its mark. I could not bring myself to do more against him then. What I did afterwards was done without mention of his name. You see, Callandar, I have been true to nobody.”
He paused, waiting for comment, but the other made none.
“After that I went to Edinburgh,” he continued, “and he joined the Prince. Then I went north with Cumberland. I was freed from my difficulty until they sent me here to take him. The Duke gave me my orders himself, and I had to go. That ride with you was hell, Callandar, and when we met the beggar to-day I had to make my choice. That was the turning-point for me. I could not go on.”
“He said it was not your wound that turned you aside.”
“He was a shrewd rascal,” said Flemington. “I wish I could tell how he knew so much about me.”
“It was your own tongue: once you spent the night in a barn together when you were light-headed from a blow, and you spoke all night of Logie. You said enough to put him on your track. That is what he told me as we went up Huntly Hill.”