‘Perilous it should not be, General Campbell,’ said Redgauntlet, ‘or more perilous to others than to us, if others thought as I do even in this extremity.’
‘You forget yourself, my friend,’ said the unhappy Adventurer; you forget that the arrival of this gentleman only puts the cope-stone on our already adopted resolution to abandon our bull-fight or by whatever other wild name this headlong enterprise may be termed. I bid you farewell, unfriendly friends—I bid you farewell,’ (bowing to the general) ‘my friendly foe—I leave this strand as I landed upon it, alone and to return no more!’
‘Not alone,’ said Redgauntlet, ‘while there is blood in the veins of my father’s son.’
‘Not alone,’ said the other gentlemen present, stung with feelings which almost overpowered the better reasons under which they had acted. ‘We will not disown our principles, or see your person endangered.’
‘If it be only your purpose to see the gentleman to the beach,’ said General Campbell, ‘I will myself go with you. My presence among you, unarmed, and in your power, will be a pledge of my friendly intentions, and will overawe, should such be offered, any interruption on the part of officious persons.’
‘Be it so,’ said the Adventurer, with the air of a prince to a subject, not of one who complied with the request of an enemy too powerful to be resisted.
They left the apartment—they left the house—an unauthenticated and dubious, but appalling, sensation of terror had already spread itself among the inferior retainers, who had so short time before strutted, and bustled, and thronged the doorway and the passages. A report had arisen, of which the origin could not be traced, of troops advancing towards the spot in considerable numbers; and men who, for one reason or other, were most of them amenable to the arm of power, had either shrunk into stables or corners, or fled the place entirely. There was solitude on the landscape excepting the small party which now moved towards the rude pier, where a boat lay manned, agreeably to Redgauntlet’s orders previously given.
The last heir of the Stuarts leant on Redgauntlet’s arm as they walked towards the beach; for the ground was rough, and he no longer possessed the elasticity of limb and of spirit which had, twenty years before, carried him over many a Highland hill as light as one of their native deer. His adherents followed, looking on the ground, their feelings struggling against the dictates of their reason.
General Campbell accompanied them with an air of apparent ease and indifference, but watching, at the same time, and no doubt with some anxiety, the changing features of those who acted in this extraordinary scene.
Darsie and his sister naturally followed their uncle, whose violence they no longer feared, while his character attracted their respect, and Alan Fairford attended them from interest in their fate, unnoticed in a party where all were too much occupied with their own thoughts and feelings, as well as with the impending crisis, to attend to his presence.