Callandar sat still, looking round the tent vaguely for something to distract his heavy thoughts. A card lay on the ground and he picked it up. It was an ace, and the blank space of white round it was covered with drawing. His own consideration had procured pens and books—all that he could find to brighten the passing days for his prisoner. This was the result of some impulse that had taken Flemington’s artistic fingers.
It was a sketch of one of the sentries outside the tent door. The figure was given in a few lines, dark against the light, and the outline of the man’s homely features had gained some quality of suggestiveness and distinction by its passage through Archie’s mind, and by the way he had placed the head against the clouded atmosphere made by the smoke rising from the camp. Through it, came a touched-in vision of the horizon beyond the tents. He looked at it, seeing something of its cleverness, and tossed it aside.
When Archie had ended his letter, he read it through:
“When this comes to your hands perhaps you will know what has become of me,” he had written, “and you will understand the truth. I ask you to believe me, if only because these are the last words I shall ever write. A man speaks the truth when it is a matter of hours with him.
“You know what brought me to Balnillo, but you do not know what sent me from it. I went because I had no courage to stay. I was sent to find out how deep you were concerned in the Stuart cause and to watch your doings. I followed you that night in the town, and my wrist bears the mark you set on it still. That morning I despatched my confirmation of the Government’s suspicions about you. Then I met you and we sat by the Basin of Montrose. God knows I have never forgotten the story you told me.
“Logie, I went because I could not strike you again. You had been struck too hard in the past, and I could not do it. What I told you about myself was untrue, but you believed it, and would have helped me. How could I go on?
“Then, as I stood between the devil and the deep sea, my orders took me to the Venture, and we met again on Inchbrayock. I had made sure you would be on the hill. When I would have escaped from you, you held me back, and as we struggled you knew me for what I was.
“You know the rest as well as I do, and you know where I was in the campaign that followed. Last of all I was sent out with those who were to take you on the Muir of Pert. I had no choice but to go—the choice came at the cross-roads below Huntly Hill. It was I who sent the warning to you from the little house on the Muir. You had directed me there for a different purpose. I sent no name with my message, knowing that if I did you might suspect me of a trick to entrap you again. That is all. There remained only the consequences, and I shall be face to face with them to-morrow.
“There is one thing more to say. Do not let yourself suppose that I am paying for your life with mine. I might have escaped had I tried to do so—it was my fault that I did not try. I had had enough of untruth, and I could no longer take the king’s money; I had served his cause ill, and I could only pay for it. I have known two true men in my life—you and the man who has promised that you shall receive this letter. If you will think of me without bitterness, remember that I should have been glad.
“ARCHIBALD FLEMINGTON.”