He breathed his team when he reached the top of the hill; for he was a scientific driver, and he had some way to go. He cast a glance down at the place he had left, rejoicing that no one had followed him out of it. When he was on his own errands he did not like company, preferring, like most independent characters, to develop his intentions in the perfect freedom of silence.
When he drew near enough to distinguish the Venture, a dark spot under the lee of Ferryden, he saw the white puffs of smoke bursting from her, and the answering clouds rising from the island. There had been no time to hear the rumours of the morning before he met the pale young man, or he would have learned that a body of Prince Charles’s men under Ferrier had left Brechin last night whilst he lay sound asleep in the straw among his dogs. He could not imagine where the assailants had come from who were pounding at the ship from Inchbrayock.
The fields sloped away from him to the water, leaving an uninterrupted view. He pressed on to the cross-roads at which he must turn along the Basin’s shore. From there on, the conformation of the land, and the frequent clumps of trees, would shut out both town and harbour from his sight until he came parallel with the island.
He halted at the turning for a last look at the town. The firing had ceased, which reconciled him a little to the eclipse of the distant spectacle; then he drove on again, unconscious of the sight he was to miss. For, unsuspected by him, as by the crowd thronging the quays of Montrose, the French frigate was creeping up the coast, and she made her appearance in the river-mouth just as Wattie began the tamer stage of his journey.
The yellow cur and his companions toiled along at their steady trot, their red tongues hanging. The broadside from the French ship rang inland, and the beggar groaned, urging them with curses and chosen abuse. His intimate knowledge of the neighbourhood led him to steer for the identical spot on which Flemington, crouched in his whin-bush, had looked down on the affray, and he hoped devoutly that he might reach that point of vantage while there was still something to be seen from it. Silence had settled on the strait once more.
Not far in front a man was coming into sight, the first creature Wattie had seen since leaving Brechin, whose face was turned from the coast. He seemed a person of irresolute mind, as well as of vacillating feet, for every few yards he would stop, hesitating, before resuming his way. The beggar cursed him heartily for a drunkard, for, though he had a lively sympathy with backsliders of that kind, he knew that accurate information was the last thing to be expected from them. Before the wayfarers had halved the distance between them the man stopped, and sitting down by the tumbledown stone dyke at the roadside, dropped his head in his hands. As the cart passed him a few minutes later, he raised a ghastly face, and Skirling Wattie pulled up astounded, with a loud and profane exclamation, as he recognized Flemington.
Though Archie had been glad to escape from the beggar yesterday, he was now thankful to see anyone who might pass for a friend. He tried to smile, but his eyes closed again, and he put out his hand towards the dyke.
“I’m so devilish giddy,” he said.
Wattie looked at the cut on his head and the stains of blood on his coat.
“Ye’ve gotten a rare dunt,” he observed.