James knew the harbour of Montrose as men know the places which are the scenes of the forbidden exploits of their youth. This younger son, who was so far removed in years from the rest of his family as to be almost like an only child, was running wild in the town among the fisher-folk, and taking surreptitious trips across the bar when the staid David was pursuing his respectable career at a very different kind of bar in Edinburgh. He was the man that Montrose needed in this emergency, and to-night he was on his way to the town; for he would come there a couple of times in the week, as secretly as he could, to meet one David Ferrier, a country gentleman who had joined the regiment of six hundred men raised by Lord Ogilvie, and had been made deputy-governor of Brechin for the Prince.
Ferrier also was a man well calculated to serve the cause. He owned a small property and a farm not far from the village of Edzell, situated at the foot of a glen running up into the Grampians, and his perfect knowledge of the country and its inhabitants of all degrees gave him an insight into every turn of feeling that swept through it in those troubled days. The business of his farm had brought him continually into both Brechin and Montrose, and the shepherds, travelling incessantly with their flocks from hill to strath, formed one of his many chains of intelligence. He had joined Lord Ogilvie a couple of months earlier, and, though he was now stationed at Brechin with a hundred men of his corps, he would absent himself for a night at a time, staying quietly at Montrose in the house of a former dependent of his own, that he might keep an eye upon the movements of an English ship.
The Government sloop-of-war Venture had come into the harbour, carrying sixteen guns and about eighty men, and had anchored south of the town, in the strait made by the passage of the River Esk into the sea. Montrose, apparently, was to suffer for the work she had done as a port for Stuart supplies, for the Venture, lying at a convenient distance just under the fishing village of Ferryden, had fired heavily on the town, though no Jacobite troops were there. The commander had unrigged the shipping and burned two trading barques whose owners were townsmen, and he had landed a force at the fort, which had captured the town guns and had carried them on board a vessel lying at the quay.
Ferrier looked with complete trust to James Logie and his brother Balnillo. The old man, during his judicial career, had made some parade of keeping himself aloof from politics; and as his retirement had taken place previous to the landing of the Prince, he had sunk the public servant in the country gentleman before the world of politicians began to divide the sheep from the goats. For some time few troubled their heads about the peaceable and cautious old Lord of Session, whose inconspicuous talents were vegetating among the trees and grass-parks that the late Lady Balnillo had husbanded so carefully for him. As to his very much younger brother, who had been incessantly absent from his native land, his existence was practically forgotten. But because the Government’s Secret Intelligence Department on the east coast had remembered it at last with some suspicion, Flemington had been sent to Montrose with directions to send his reports to its agent in Perth. And Flemington had bettered his orders in landing himself at Balnillo.
As Archie heard a steady tread approaching, he shrank farther back under the stair. He could only distinguish a middle-sized male figure which might belong to anyone, and he followed it with straining eyes to within a few feet of the lamp. Here it paused, and, skirting the light patch, stepped out into the middle of the way.
He scarcely breathed. He was not sure yet, though the man had come nearer by half the street; but the height matched his expectation, and the avoidance of the solitary light proved the desire for secrecy in the person before him. As the man moved on he slipped from his shelter and followed him, keeping just enough distance between them to allow him to see the way he went.
The two figures passed up the High Street, one behind the other, Flemington shrinking close to the walls and drawing a little nearer. Before they had gone a hundred yards, his unconscious guide turned suddenly into one of those narrow covered-in alleys, or closes, as they are called, which started at right angles from the main street.
Archie dived in after him as unconcernedly as he would have dived into the mouth of hell, had his interests taken him that way. These closes, characteristic of Scottish towns to this day, were so long, and burrowed under so many sightless-looking windows and doors, to emerge in unexpected places, that he admired James’s knowledge of the short cuts of Montrose, though it seemed to him no more than natural. The place for which he conceived him to be making was a house in the New Wynd nicknamed the ‘Happy Land,’ and kept by a well-known widow for purposes which made its insignificance an advantage. It was used, as he had heard, by the Jacobite community, because the frequent visitors who entered after dusk passed in without more comment from the townspeople than could be expressed in a lifted eyebrow or a sly nudge. It was a disconcerting moment, even to him, when the man in front of him stopped, and what he had taken for the distant glimmer of an open space revealed itself as a patch of whitewash with a door in it. The close was a cul-de-sac.
Flemington stood motionless as the other knocked at the door. Flight was undesirable, for James might give chase, and capture would mean the end of a piece of work of which he was justly proud. He guessed himself to be the fleeter-footed of the two, but he knew nothing of the town’s byways, and other night-birds besides Logie might join in. But his bold wit did not desert him, for he gave a loud drunken shout, as like those he had heard at the North Port as he could make it, and lurched across the close. Its other inmate turned towards him, and as he did so Archie shouted again, and, stumbling against him, subsided upon the paved floor.