THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

“Mr. ROWL”

THE WOUNDED NAME

THE YELLOW POPPY

SIR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD

THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

BY
D. K. BROSTER

“But the heron’s flight is that of a celestial messenger bearing important, if not happy, tidings to an expectant people.”

—“V.”, As You See It.

1925

London: William Heinemann Ltd.

First published . . . 1925

Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

TO
VIOLET JACOB
IN HOMAGE

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE
A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER

THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON

PROLOGUE
A PROMISE OF FAIR WEATHER

(1)

The sun had been up for a couple of hours, and now, by six o’clock, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky; even the peaked summit of Ben Tee, away to the north-east, had no more than the faintest veil floating over it. On all the western slopes the transfiguring light, as it crept lower and lower, was busy picking out the patches of July bell-heather and painting them an even deeper carmine; and the mountains round were smiling (where sometimes they frowned) on Loch na h-Iolaire, to-day a shining jewel which to-morrow might be a mere blot of grey steel. It was going to be a very fine day, and in the West of Scotland such are none too plentiful.

Loch na h-Iolaire, the Loch of the Eagle, was not large—little more than a mile long, and at its greatest breadth perhaps a quarter of a mile wide. It lay among the encircling hills like a fairy pool come upon in dreams; yet it had not the desolate quality of the high mountain tarns, whose black waters lie shoreless at the foot of precipices. Loch na h-Iolaire was set in a level space as wide as itself. At one end was a multitude of silver-stemmed birches, of whom some loved the loch (or their own reflection) so dearly that they leaned over it until the veil of their hair almost brushed its surface; and with these court ladies stood a guard of very old pines, severe and beautiful, and here and there was the feathered bravery of a rowan tree. Everywhere underfoot lay a carpet of bogmyrtle and cranberry, pressing up to the feet of the pungent-berried junipers and the bushes of the flaming broom, now but dying fires. And where this shore was widest it unexpectedly sent out into the lake a jutting crag of red granite, grown upon in every cranny with heather, and crowned with two immense Scots pines.

The loch’s beauty, on this early summer morning of 1745, seemed at first to be a lonely and unappreciated loveliness, yet it was neither. On its northern shore, where the sandy bank, a little hollowed by the water, rose some three feet above it, a dark, wiry young Highlander, in a belted plaid of the Cameron tartan, was standing behind a couple of large juniper bushes with a fowling-piece in his hands. He, however, was plainly not lost in admiration of the scene, for his keen eyes were fixed intently on the tree-grown islet which swam at anchor in the middle of the loch, and he had all the appearance of a hunter waiting for his quarry.

Suddenly he gave an exclamation of dismay. Round the point of the island had just appeared the head, shoulder and flashing arm of a man swimming, and this man was driving fast through the barely rippled water, and was evidently making for the shore in his direction. The Highlander dropped out of sight behind the junipers, but the swimmer had already seen him.

“Who is there?” he called out, and his voice came ringing imperiously over the water. “Stand up and show yourself!”

The discovered watcher obeyed, leaving the fowling-piece on the ground, and the swimmer, at some six yards’ distance, promptly trod water, the better to see.

“Lachlan!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing there?”

And as the Highlander did not answer, but suddenly stooped and pushed the fowling-piece deeper into the heather at his feet, the occupant of the loch, with a few vigorous strokes, brought himself in until he was able to stand breast-high in the water.

“Come nearer,” he commanded in Gaelic, “and tell me what you are doing, skulking there!”

The other advanced to the edge of the bank. “I was watching yourself, Mac ’ic Ailein,” he replied in the same tongue, and in the sulky tone of one who knows that he will be blamed.

“And why, in the name of the Good Being? Have you never seen me swim before?”

“I had it in my mind that someone might steal your clothes,” answered Lachlan MacMartin, looking aside.

“Amadain!” exclaimed the swimmer. “There is no one between the Garry and the water of Arkaig who would do such a thing, and you know it as well as I! Moreover, my clothes are on the other side, and you cannot even see them! No, the truth, or I will come out and throw you into the loch!” And, balancing his arms, he advanced until he was only waist-deep, young and broad-shouldered and glistening against the bright water and the trees of the island behind him. “Confess now, and tell me the reason in your heart!”

“If you will not be angry I will be telling you,” replied Lachlan to his chieftain Ewen Cameron, who was also his foster-brother.

“I shall make no promises. Out with it!”

“I cannot shout it to you, Mac ’ic Ailein; it would not be lucky.”

“Do you think that I am coming out to hear it before I have finished my swim?”

“I will walk in to you if you wish,” said Lachlan submissively, and began to unfasten his plaid.

“Do not be a fool!” said the young man in the loch, half laughing, half annoyed; and, wading to the bank, he pulled himself up by the exposed root of a birch-tree, and threw himself unconcernedly down among the heather and bogmyrtle. Now it could be seen that he was some inches over six feet and splendidly made; a swift runner, too, it was likely, for all his height and breadth of shoulder. His thick auburn hair, darkened by the water to brown, was plaited for the nonce into a short pigtail like a soldier’s; his deepset blue eyes looked out of a tanned face, but where the sunburn ended his skin was as fair as a girl’s. He had a smiling and determined mouth.

“Now tell me truly why you are lurking here like a grouse on Beinn Tigh,” he repeated.

The half-detected culprit glanced from the naked young man at his feet to the only partially concealed fowling-piece. “You will not be pleased, I am thinking.”

“All the more reason for knowing, then,” responded his chieftain promptly, hugging his bent knees. “I shall stay here until you tell me . . . dhé, how these vegetables prick! No, I do not want your plaid; I want the truth.”

“I am here,” began Lachlan MacMartin with great unwillingness, “because there is something in the loch which may bring you ill-fortune, and——”

“In the loch! What, an each uisge, a water-horse?” He was smiling.

“No, not a water-horse. But my father says——”

“Ah, it is a matter of the two sights? Angus has been ‘seeing’ again! What was the vision?”

But at that moment the speaker himself saw something, though not by the supernatural gift to which he was referring. He stretched out a wet, accusing arm and pointed towards the juniper bush. “What is that gun doing here?” And at the very plain discomposure on its owner’s face a look of amusement came into his own. “You cannot shoot a water-horse, Lachlan—not with a charge of small shot!”

“It is not a water-horse,” repeated his foster-brother. He suddenly crouched down in the heather close to the swimmer. “Listen, Mac ’ic Ailein,” he said in a low, tense voice. “My father is much troubled, for he had a ‘seeing’ last night across the fire, and it concerned you, but whether for good or ill he could not tell; neither would he tell me what it was, save that it had to do with a heron.”

“It is a pity Angus cannot be more particular in his predictions,” observed the young man flippantly, breaking off a sprig of bogmyrtle and smelling it. “Well?”

“You know that I would put the hair of my head under your feet,” went on Lachlan MacMartin passionately. “Now on the island yonder there lives a heron—not a pair, but one only——”

The young chieftain laid a damp but forcible hand on his arm. “I will not have it, Lachlan, do you hear?” he said in English. “I’ll not allow that bird to be shot!”

But Lachlan continued to pour out Gaelic. “Eoghain, marrow of my heart, ask me for the blood out of my veins, but do not ask me to let the heron live now that my father has seen this thing! It is a bird of ill omen—one to be living there alone, and to be spying when you are swimming; and if it is not a bòchdan, as I have sometimes thought, it may be a witch. Indeed, if I had one, I would do better to put a silver bullet——”

“Stop!” said the marrow of his heart peremptorily. “If my father Angus has any warning to give me, he can tell it into my own ear, but I will not have that heron shot, whatever he saw! What do you suppose the poor bird can do to me? Bring your piece here and unload it.”

Out of the juniper bush and the heather Lachlan, rising, pulled the fowling-piece, and, very slowly and reluctantly, removed the priming and the charge.

“Yet it is an evil bird,” he muttered between his teeth. “You must know that it is unlucky to meet a heron when one sets out on a journey.”

“Yes,” broke in Ewen Cameron impatiently, “in the same way that it is unlucky to meet a sheep or a pig—or a snake or a rat or a mouse, unless you kill them—or a hare, or a fox, or a woman, or a flat-footed man . . . and I know not what besides! Give me the gun.” He examined it and laid it down. “Now, Lachlan, as you have not yet promised to respect my wishes in this matter, and a gun is easily reloaded, you shall swear on the iron to obey me—and that quickly, for I am getting cold.”

Startled, the Highlander looked at his young chieftain to see whether he were serious when he suggested the taking of so great and inviolable an oath. But, unable from his expression to be sure, and being blindly, fanatically devoted to him, he obediently drew his dirk from its sheath, and was about to raise it to his lips to kiss it when his foster-brother caught his arm.

“No, I was jesting, Lachlan. And . . . you do not keep your biodag very clean!”

“Not clean?” exclaimed its owner, lowering the formidable, hiltless blade. Then he bit his lip. “Dhia gleidh sinn! you are right—how came that rust there?”

“Rust? It is blood!” Ewen took it from him by its black handle of interlaced design and ran a finger down it. “No, I am wrong; it was only the early sun on the steel.”

For the weapon lay across his palm, spotless and shining, the whole foot and a half of it.

The dark Lachlan had turned very pale. “Give it to me, Mac ’ic Ailein, and let me throw it into the loch. It is not well to keep it if we both saw . . . what we saw.”

“No,” said his master with more composure, “it is a good dirk, and too old a friend for that—and what I imagined can only have been some memory of the times when it has gralloched a deer for us two.” He gave it back. “We are neither of us taibhsear like your father. I forbid you to throw it away. Nor are you to shoot that heron—do you hear?”

If his young chief was not, Lachlan MacMartin was plainly shaken by what had happened. He thrust the dirk deep into the heather as though to cleanse it before he returned it to the sheath. “I hear,” he muttered.

“Then see that you remember!” Shivering slightly, the young man sprang to his feet. “Now, as you have forced me to land on this side of the loch, Lachlan, I shall dive off the creag ruadh. A score of times have I meant to do it, but I have never been sure if there were enough water below. So, if a water-horse gets me, you will know whose was the fault of it!” And laughing, disregarding entirely his foster-brother’s protests, which went so far as the laying of a detaining hand on his bare shoulder, he slid down the bank, ran along the narrow strip of sand below it, and disappeared round a bend of the shore. A moment or two later his white figure was seen clambering up the heather-clad side of the red crag which gave the whole property its name. A pause, then he shot down towards the lake in the perfect dive of the athlete; and the water received him with scarcely a splash.

“The cross of Christ be upon us!” murmured Lachlan, shutting his eyes; and, though he was no Papist, he signed himself. When he opened them the beloved head had reappeared safely, and he watched it till the island once more hid it from his view.

Still tingling with his dive, Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, when he had reached the other side of the little island, suddenly ceased swimming and, turning on his back, gave himself to floating and meditation. He was just six-and-twenty and very happy, for the sun was shining, and he felt full of vigour, and the water was like cold silk about him, and when he went in to breakfast there would be Alison, fresh as the morning, to greet him—a foretaste of the mornings to come when they would greet each other earlier than that. For their marriage contract was even now in his desk at Ardroy awaiting signature, and the Chief of Clan Cameron, Lochiel himself, Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, Ewen’s near kinsman by marriage as well as his overlord, was coming to-morrow from his house of Achnacarry on Loch Arkaig to witness it.

Lochiel indeed, now a man of fifty, had always been to his young cousin elder brother and father in one, for Ewen’s own father had been obliged to flee the country after the abortive little Jacobite attempt of 1719, leaving behind him his wife and the son of whom she had been but three days delivered. Ewen’s mother—a Stewart of Appin—did not survive his birth a fortnight, and he was nursed, with her own black-haired Lachlan, by Seonaid MacMartin, the wife of his father’s piper—no unusual event in a land of fosterage. But after a while arrived Miss Cameron, the laird’s sister, to take charge of the deserted house of Ardroy and to look after the motherless boy, who before the year had ended was fatherless too, for John Cameron died of fever in Amsterdam, and the child of six months old became ‘Mac ’ic Ailein,’ the head of the cadet branch of Cameron of Ardroy. Hence Ewen, with Miss Cameron’s assistance—and Lochiel’s supervision—had ruled his little domain for as long as he could remember, save only for the two years when he was abroad for his education.

It was there, in the Jacobite society of Paris, that he had met Alison Grant, the daughter of a poor, learned and almost permanently exiled Highland gentleman, a Grant of Glenmoriston, a plotter rather than a fighter. But because Alison, though quite as much in love with her young chieftain as he with her, had refused to leave her father alone in exile—for the brother of sixteen just entering a French regiment could not take her place—Ewen had had to wait for four long years without much prospect of their marriage. But this very spring Mr. Grant had received intimation that his return would be winked at by the Government, and accordingly returned; and so there was nothing to stand in the way of his daughter’s marriage to the young laird of Ardroy in the autumn. And Alison’s presence here now, on a visit with her father, was no doubt the reason that, though her lover was of the same political creed as they, never questioning its fitness, since it was as natural to him as running or breathing, he was not paying very particular attention to the rumours of Prince Charles Edward’s plans which were going about among the initiated.

With deliberate and unnecessary splashings, like a boy, Ewen now turned over again, swam for a while under water, and finally landed, stretched himself in the sun, and got without undue haste into a rather summary costume. There was plenty of time before breakfast to make a more ordered toilet, and his hair would be dry and tied back with a ribbon by then. Perukes and short hair were convenient, but, fashionable or no, he found the former hot. When he was Lochiel’s age, perhaps, he would wear one.

Before long he was striding off towards the house, whistling a French air as he went.

(2)

Between the red crag and the spot where he had rated his foster-brother that morning Ardroy stood alone now with his betrothed. The loch was almost more beautiful in the sunset light than when its waters had closed over his head all those hours ago, and even with Alison on his arm Ewen was conscious of this, for he adored Loch na h-Iolaire with little less than passion. So they stood, close together, looking at it, while here and there a fish rose and made his little circle, widening until it died out in the glassy infinity, and near shore a shelduck with her tiny bobbing brood swam hastily from one patch of reeds to another.

Presently Ewen took off his plaid and spread it for Alison to sit upon, and threw himself down too on the carpet of cranberries; and now he looked, not at the loch, but at her, his own (or nearly his own) at last. Alison’s hand, waited for so patiently . . . no, not always so patiently . . . strayed among the tiny leaves, and Ewen caught the little fingers, with his ring upon the least but one, and kissed them.

“And to think,” he said softly, “that by this time to-morrow we shall be contracted in writing, and you not able to get away from me!”

Alison looked down at him. In her dark eyes swam all kinds of sweetness, but mischief woke and danced now at the corners of her small, fine, close-shut mouth, which could be so tender too.

“Oh, Ewen, does the contract make you more sure of me? You’d not hold me to a bit of paper if I were to change my mind one fine morning and say, ‘Ardroy, I’m sweir to tell it, but wed you I cannot’?”

“Would I not hold you to it! Try, and see!”

One of Alison’s dimples appeared. “Indeed, I’m minded to try it, just for that, to see what you would do. What would you do, Eoghain mhóir?”

“Carry you off,” replied Ewen promptly.

“And marry me by force?”

“And marry you by force.”

“There speaks the blood of Hieland reivers! I’d think shame to say such a thing!”

“And are you not Hieland yourself, Miss Grant?” enquired her lover. “And was there never cattle-lifting done in Glenmoriston?”

“Cattle!” exclaimed Alison, the other dimple in evidence. “That I should be likened, by him that’s contracted to be married to me, to a steer or a cow!”

“I likened you to no such thing! You are like a hind, a hind that one sees just a glimpse of before it is gone, drinking at the lake on a misty morning. Oh, my heart’s darling,” he went on, dropping into Gaelic, “do not make jests upon our marriage! If I thought that you were in earnest—Alison, say that you are not in earnest!”

Alison Grant looked into the clear blue eyes, which had really grown troubled, and was instantly remorseful. “Oh, my dear, what a wretch am I to torment you thus! No, no, I was teasing; Loch na h-Iolaire shall run dry before I break my troth to you. I’ll never force you to carry me off; ’tis like I’ll be at the kirk before you.” She let him draw her head without words upon his shoulder, and they sat there silent, looking at happiness: both the happiness which they knew now, and the greater, the long happiness which was coming to them—as stable and secure in their eyes as the changeless mountains round them.

Yet Alison knew her lover’s mind, or at least a part of it, so well that she presently said, “And yet I am not jesting, Ewen, when I say that I think you would be hard put to it to choose between me and Loch na h-Iolaire—Loch na h-Iolaire and the house of Ardroy.”

His arm tightened round her. “Alison, how can you——”

“But you’ll never have to choose, m’eudail. I love this place most dearly already. I have never had a home like it to love, living as we have for so long, now in France, now in Holland. But your heart is as strongly rooted here as . . . the red crag yonder.”

Ewen gave a little sigh. “You see a long way into my heart, you that are the core of it. Indeed, when I am dying I think this is the last place I shall have sight of in my mind. I hope I may be seeing it with my eyes also.”

Alison did not shudder or change the subject, or implore him not to speak of such things, for she was Highland too, with her race’s half-mystical preoccupation with the dead. But she thought, “I hope I’ll die the same day, the same hour. . . .”

The shadows on the loch crept a little farther. Behind them Ben Tee changed colour for the hundredth time; his pointed peak seemed to soar. It grew cooler too, and Ewen wrapped the ends of the plaid about his lady.

“On Wednesday we will spend the day at Loch Arkaig,” he announced. “We will take ponies, and you and Mr. Grant shall ride.”

“And Miss Cameron?”

“Aunt Marget detests such jaunts. Meals for the parlour, and the parlour for meals, that is her creed.—Alison, are you not cold?”

“In this?” She fingered the plaid where it hung over her shoulders, and added after a moment: “How strange it will be, to wear another tartan than one’s own!”

“You shall always wear the Grant if it pleases you better.”

“No, it does not please me better,” answered Alison softly. “I feel . . . very warm in the Cameron.”

He kissed her for that, smiling, and, raising his head from his kiss, became aware of a dark object beating towards them out of the sunset sky. It was the solitary heron of the island, winging his strong way home with a deceptive slowness. The sight reminded Ewen of his morning’s encounter with Lachlan, and he was about to tell Alison of it when Fate’s messenger, who for the last five minutes had been hurrying round the loch, came past the red crag of Ardroy, and Ewen’s quick ear caught the snap of a breaking stick under the deerskin brogues. He looked quickly round. A bearded Highlander was trotting towards them under the birches and pines.

“It is Neil—what can he want? Forgive me!” He rose to his feet, and Neil MacMartin, who was Lachlan’s elder brother and Ewen’s piper, broke into a run.

“Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has just sent this by a man on horseback,” he said somewhat breathlessly, pulling a letter from his sporran.

Ewen broke the seal. “Perhaps it is to say that Lochiel cannot come to-morrow,” he observed to his betrothed. But as he read his face showed stupefaction. “Great God!”

Alison sprang to her feet. “Ewen! Not bad news?”

“Bad? No, no!” He waved Neil out of hearing and turned to her with sparkling eyes. “The Prince has landed in Scotland!”

She was at first as amazed as he. “The Prince! Landed! When . . . where?”

Ewen consulted his letter again. “He landed at Borradale in Arisaig on the twenty-fifth. Lochiel desires me to go to Achnacarry at once.”

“He has come—at last!” said Alison to herself, almost with awe. “And you will go with Lochiel to kiss his hand, to—Oh, Ewen, how I envy you!”

The light which had come into her lover’s eyes died out a little. “I do not know that Lochiel is going to Arisaig, darling.” He glanced at the letter again. “He is troubled, I can see; there are no troops with the Prince, none of the hoped-for French help.”

“But what of that?” cried the girl. “It is not to be thought of that Lochiel’s sword, of all others, should stay in the scabbard!”

“Lochiel will do what is right and honourable; it is impossible for him ever to act otherwise,” answered Ewen, who was devoted to his Chief. “And he wants speech with me; I must set out at once. Yes, Clan Cameron will rise, not a doubt of it!”

And, youth and the natural ardour of a fighting race reasserting themselves, he snatched up his bonnet and tossed it into the air. “Ah, now I know why Lachlan and I thought we saw blood on his dirk this morning!” Then he caught Alison to him. “My dearest on earth, give me your kiss!”

It was the title of one of the ancient pibrochs that he was quoting, and the Highland girl put her arms round his neck and gave him what he asked.

Loch na h-Iolaire, bereft of the echoing voices, sank into a silence that was not broken until the heron rose again from the island and began to fly slowly towards the sunset. Then the stillness was rent by a sharp report; the great bird turned over twice, its wings beating wildly, and fell all huddled into the lake. A little boat shot out from the side of the creag ruadh, and in a moment or two Lachlan MacMartin, leaving his oars, was bending over the side with the end of a cord in his hand. There was a splash as he threw overboard the large stone to which the cord was fastened; and having thus removed the evidence of his blind effort to outwit destiny, he pulled quickly back to the shelter of the crag of Ardroy.

Soon the same unbroken calm, the same soft lap and ripple, the same gently fading brightness were once more round Loch na h-Iolaire; yet for all those who to-day had looked on its waters the current of life was changed for ever.

I
THROUGH ENGLISH EYES

“One of them asked . . . how he liked the Highlands. The question seemed to irritate him, for he answered, ‘How, sir, can you ask me what obliges me to speak unfavourably of a country where I have been hospitably entertained? Who can like the Highlands—I like the inhabitants very well.’”

—Boswell. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

CHAPTER I

In all Lochaber—perhaps in all the Western Highlands—there was no more bored or disgusted man this sixteenth of August than Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots, as he rode down the Great Glen with a newly-raised company of recruits from Perth; and no more nervous or unhappy men than the recruits themselves. For the first time in their lives the latter found themselves far north of ‘the Highland line’, beyond which, to Lowland as well as to English minds, there stretched a horrid region peopled by wild hill tribes, where the King’s writ did not run, and where, until General Wade’s recent road-making activities, horsed vehicles could not run either. Yesterday only had they reached Fort Augustus, two companies of them, and this afternoon, tired and apprehensive, were about half-way through their thirty-mile march to Fort William. As for the English officer, he was cursing with all his soul the young Adventurer whose absurd landing on the coast of Moidart last month had caused all this pother.

Had it not been for that event, Captain Windham might have been allowed to return to Flanders, now that his wound of Fontenoy was healed, to engage in real warfare against civilised troops, instead of marching through barbarous scenery to be shut up in a fort. He could not expect any regular fighting, since the savage hordes of these parts would probably never face a volley. Nevertheless, had he been in command of the column, he would have judged it more prudent to have a picket out ahead; but he had already had a slight difference of opinion with Captain Scott, of the other company, who was senior to him, and, being himself of a temper very intolerant of a snub, he did not choose to risk one. Captain Windham had no great love for Scotsmen, though, ironically enough, he bore a Scottish Christian name and served in a Scottish regiment. As it happened, he was no more responsible for the one fact than for the other.

It was hot in the Great Glen, though a languid wind walked occasionally up Loch Lochy, by whose waters they were now marching. From time to time Captain Windham glanced across to its other side, and thought that he had never seen anything more forbidding. The mountain slopes, steep, green and wrinkled with headlong torrents, followed each other like a procession of elephants, and so much did they also resemble a wall rising from the lake that there did not appear to be space for even a track between them and the water. And, though it was difficult to be sure, he suspected the slopes beneath which they were marching to be very nearly as objectionable. As a route in a potentially hostile country, a defile, astonishingly straight, with a ten-mile lake in the middle of it, did not appeal to him.

However, the mountains on the left did seem to be opening out at last, and General Wade’s new military road, upon which they were marching, was in consequence about to leave the lake and proceed over more open moorland country, which pleased Captain Windham better, even though the wide panorama into which they presently emerged was also disfigured by high mountains, in particular by that in front of them, which he had been told was the loftiest in Great Britain. And about twelve miles off, under those bastions, lay Fort William, their destination.

But where was the river which, as he knew, they had first to cross? In this wide, rough landscape Captain Windham could not see a sign of it. Then, farther down the slope and about a mile ahead of them, he discerned a long, thick, winding belt of trees, and remembered to have heard an officer of Guise’s regiment at Fort Augustus say last night that the Spean, a very rapid stream, had carved so deep a channel for itself as almost to flow in a ravine, and that Wade must have had some ado to find a spot where he could carry his road over it. He had done so, it appeared, on a narrow stone structure whose elevation above the river-bed had earned it the name of High Bridge. Indeed the Englishman now saw that the road which they were following was making for this deeply sunken river at an angle which suggested that General Wade had had little choice in the position of his bridge.

Ahead of Captain Windham on his mettlesome horse the scarlet ranks tramped down the gently sloping road through the heather; ahead of them again, at the rear of the foremost company, Captain Scott sat his white charger. The English officer looked with an unwilling curiosity at the great mountain mass over Fort William; it actually had traces of snow upon it . . . in August! What a country! Now in Flanders—— What the devil was that?

It was, unmistakably, the skirl of a bagpipe, and came from the direction of the still invisible bridge. But if the bridge was not to be seen, something else was—tartan-clad forms moving rapidly in and out of those sheltering trees. Evidently a considerable body of Highlanders was massing by the river.

The senior officer halted his men and came riding back. “Captain Windham, I believe there is an ambush set for us down yonder.”

“It does not sound like an ambush, egad!” replied his colleague rather tartly, as the heathenish skirling grew louder. “But I certainly think there are Highlanders posted at the bridge to dispute our crossing.”

“I’ll just send forward a couple of men to get some notion of their numbers,” said Scott, and rode back again. Keith shrugged his shoulders. “Somewhat of a tardy precaution!” he thought to himself.

A sergeant and a private were thereupon dispatched by Captain Scott to reconnoitre. Their fate was swift and not encouraging, for they had not gone far ere, before the eyes of all their comrades, they were suddenly pounced upon by two Highlanders who, with a yell, darted out from the trees and hurried them out of sight.

The intimidated recruits began to shuffle and murmur. Captain Windham spoke vigorously to his subaltern, and then rode forward to consult with his senior.

Captain Scott wheeled his horse to meet him. “This is unco awkward,” he said, dropping his voice. “The Deil knows how many of those fellows there are down yonder, but do you observe them, Captain Windham, skipping about like coneys among the trees? The bridge, I’ve heard, is uncommon narrow and high, with naught but rocks and torrent below. I doubt we can get the men over.”

“We must!” retorted Keith. “There’s no other means of reaching Fort William. The Royals to hesitate before a few beggarly cattle-thieves!”

Alas, the Royals did more than hesitate. Even as he spoke there were signs that the half-seen ‘cattle-thieves’ on the bridge were preparing for a rush, for loud orders could be heard, and the piping swelled hideously. And at that the scarlet-clad ranks on the slope wavered, broke, turned, and began to flee up the rise as fast as their legs could carry them.

It was in vain that their two captains endeavoured to rally them. A man on a horse cannot do much to stem a flood of fugitives save perhaps on a narrow road, and here the road had unlimited space on either side of it. Helter-skelter the recruits ran, and, despite their fatigue and their accoutrements, never ceased running for two miles, till they stopped, exhausted, by Loch Lochy side once more.

By that time Captain Windham was without suitable words in which to address them; his vocabulary was exhausted. Captain Scott was in like case. There was another hasty consultation beneath the unmoved stare of those steep green mountains. Scott was for sending back to Fort Augustus for a detachment of Guise’s regiment to help them force the bridge, and Captain Windham, not seeing what else was to be done, concurred in this opinion. Meanwhile the recruits should be marched at an easy pace in the direction of Fort Augustus to their junction with these reinforcements, which were, of course, to come up with all speed. There had been no sign of pursuit by the successful holders of the bridge, and it might be hoped that in a little the morale of the fugitives would be somewhat restored.

Captain Scott thereupon suggested that Captain Windham should lend one of the lieutenants his horse, which was much faster than his own white charger—no other officers but they being mounted—but Keith objected with truth that a strange rider would never manage his steed, and offered to make over his company to his lieutenant and himself ride back to Fort Augustus if Captain Scott thought good. And Captain Scott hastily agreed to what both officers felt was a somewhat unusual course justified by circumstances.

To a man who, three months ago, had borne his part in the wonderful retreat at Fontenoy, that epic of steadiness under fire, and who had even been complimented by the Duke of Cumberland on his conduct, the last half-hour had been a nightmare of shame, and Keith Windham, glad to be able to extricate himself from it with the confidence that he was not abandoning his men on the eve of a fight, he set spurs to his horse with great relief.

He had gone about five miles along the loch—always with those abominable mountains on either side of him—when a report echoed soundingly among them, and a bullet struck the road a little ahead of him. His pulling, nervous horse reared and plunged; and Keith swore. He was not unobserved, then, and might very well be picked off by some unseen marksman up there. Bullets, however, did not discompose him like cowardice, and, cramming his hat farther down upon his head, he merely urged the animal to greater speed.

In the next few miles, as occasional bullets winged their way at varying distances past his person, Keith Windham began to think that the hapless Royals behind him were perhaps being outflanked by some enemy marching parallel to them on the hillside—and marching much faster. The prospect of their being attacked seemed by no means so remote. Still, in any case, it was now his business to go on. But when he came in sight of the village beyond the end of Loch Lochy through which they had passed that morning, he could see armed Highlanders there in such numbers that it was unlikely he would be allowed to ride through it. Gad! he thought, the rout at the bridge had served, then, as a spark to all this tinder! For a moment—since under a mask of indifference and cynicism he was a very hot-tempered young man—the sting of that knowledge prompted him to attempt cutting his way through regardless of consequences. Then common sense triumphed. Better to avoid the enemy altogether by crossing to the farther side of the smaller lake just ahead of him (he did not know its name) on the wide flat isthmus which separated it from Loch Lochy. If there were no ambushes on that side he would yet reach Fort Augustus, since, as the Highlanders did not appear to have horses, he was safe from mounted pursuit.

It became, however, a question whether he would get to the isthmus in time to evade the enemy ahead, of whom half a dozen or so, suspecting his intention, were running down the road towards him, targe on arm and broadsword in hand, to cut him off. Keith spurred his horse hard, fired at the foremost figure (which he missed) and next moment dropped his own pistol with an exclamation, his arm tingling to the shoulder. A bullet had struck the barrel, ricocheting off Heaven knew where; in any case it was one of the nearest escapes which he had ever experienced. For the moment his right arm was useless; but here, at last, was the end of the waters of this interminable Loch Lochy. He turned his almost frantic horse and galloped like mad across the green, spongy isthmus, pursued now only by ineffectual yells which he soon ceased to hear.

The neck of land, though narrow, was longer than he remembered; there were perhaps two miles of it before the next lake came to separate him from his enemies. But, whether or no the fact of his having a fast horse deterred them from pursuit, not one Highlander attempted to cross after him. Possibly they were reserving their forces undiminished for the attack on the main body of the Royals, a thought which caused the Englishman to maintain his headlong pace. Fortunately this side of the lake seemed deserted; no man was going to stop him now!

And no man did. But he had not gone a mile by the lake side when a large grey-and-white object flapped up suddenly from the water’s edge almost under the nose of his excited horse; the beast shied, swerved, crossed its legs and came heavily down, flinging its rider against a fallen tree with a force which knocked him senseless.

Captain Windham was not stunned for very long, though to him it was an unknown space of time that he lay sprawling in the dust by the side of the pine-trunk. When he dizzily raised himself and looked about him no human being was in sight, but there on the road, within a few feet of him, with snorting nostrils and terrified eyes, lay his unfortunate horse, trying desperately and repeatedly to get to its feet again, despite a broken foreleg. For an instant Keith stared at the poor sweating, plunging brute, then, passing a hand over his bruised and bleeding forehead, he got to his own feet. There was only one thing to be done; though the sound of a shot would very likely draw undesirable attention upon himself, he could not leave the animal there in agony. His remaining pistol was in his holster, and during the process of extracting it he realized that he had twisted an ankle in his fall. A moment or two later the sound of a shot went ringing over the waters of Loch Oich, and the troubles of Captain Windham’s charger were over.

But his were not; indeed he fancied that they had but just begun. Dismounted, his brilliant scarlet-and-blue uniform rendering him in the highest degree conspicuous, his head aching, and in one place excoriated by contact with the tree-trunk, he saw that he could never summon reinforcements in time now; it was doubtful whether he would reach Fort Augustus at all. His ankle, as he soon discovered, was swollen and painful; moreover he had somehow to get back to Wade’s road when he reached the end of this lake. With his hand to his head he glanced in disgust at the prostrate trunk with which it had just made such painful acquaintance. Detestable country, where even the wildfowl and the vegetation were in league with the inhabitants!

Hearing a sound of water, he looked about till he found a tiny ice-cold spring between the track and the lake, and, dipping his handkerchief into this, bathed his forehead. Had he known of the seven gory severed heads which had been washed in that innocent-looking little source less than a hundred years before, perhaps he would not have done so. Hardly had he reloaded his pistol, his next care, when a distant noise, like many running feet, sent him hurriedly to the shelter of the steep, tree-clad hillside on his left. Here, among the scanty undergrowth, he crouched as best he could while, some minutes later, a score of armed Highlanders poured past on the track below him. So this side of the lake was gathering, too!

Captain Windham waited in his concealment until the way was clear and silent again, and then descended, since it was impossible for him to keep in cover if he meant to reach Fort Augustus—and where else should he make for? Leaning on the branch of oak which he had broken off to assist his steps, he began to trudge grimly forward.

There soon came in sight, on its rock by the lake side, the keep of Invergarry Castle. Captain Windham did not know that it belonged to the chief of Glengarry, but he was sure that it was the hold of some robber or other, and that he himself might not improbably see the inside of it. It looked ruinous, but that was no safeguard—on the contrary. And here were some dwellings, little, roughly thatched buildings, but obviously inhabited. Yet all he saw of their occupants were a few white-haired children who ran screaming away, and one old woman at her door, who crossed herself devoutly at sight of him. So, to add to all their other vices, the people of these parts were Papists!

The next obstacle was a river, which he had to cross as best he could on insecure and slippery stones, and the difficulties of doing this with an injured ankle took his mind off remoter possibilities, so that when he was safely over he was surprised to find the ominous tower well behind him, and he went on somewhat cheered. The sun was now getting lower, and though the other side of the glen was in full warm light, this side felt almost cold. Another peculiarity of this repulsively mountainous district. Gently swelling hills one could admire, but masses of rock, scored with useless and inconvenient torrents, had nothing to recommend them. He did not wonder at the melancholy complaints he had heard last night from the officers quartered at Fort Augustus.

And what would the garrison there say when they heard of this afternoon’s disgrace? Captain Windham’s thoughts went angrily back to it. What, too, had happened to those chicken-hearted recruits by this time? He pulled out his watch; to his surprise it was already after six o’clock. And he still had the watch in his hand when his ear was caught by the sound of horse’s hoofs behind him. He stopped to listen. The pace, a smart trot, did not seem hurried; the rider might be some unconcerned traveller. But he might on the other hand be an enemy. Keith Windham looked for cover, but here there was none convenient as a while ago, and the best he could do was to hobble on ahead to where a solitary oak-tree reared itself by the side of the road, for he was minded to have something to set his back against if necessary.

When he was nearly there he looked round, and saw the rider, a big Highlander on a grey horse. He was not alone, for at his heels came another, keeping up with the horse with long loping strides like a wolf’s. To Keith one tartan was as yet like another, so, for all he knew, these two might be of a friendly clan. He awaited them by the oak-tree.

As the horseman came on Keith saw that he was young, vigorous-looking and well armed. He wore trews, not a kilt like the other. But as he came he rose in his stirrups and shouted something in which Keith clearly caught the word ‘surrender’. So he was not friendly. Very well then! Captain Windham raised the pistol which he had ready, and fired—rather at the horse than the rider. The young Highlander, with a dexterity which he could not but admire, pulled aside the animal in the nick of time, and the shot missed. Keith’s sword leapt out as, with a yell, the man on foot flung himself past the horse towards him, dirk in hand. But the rider called out something in Gaelic, which had an immediate effect, for the gillie, or whatever he was, came to an abrupt stop, his eyes glowering and his lips drawn back, as like a wolf about to spring as possible.

Meanwhile, to Keith’s surprise, the horseman sprang to earth, flung the reins to his henchman, and came forward empty-handed—a magnificent specimen of young manhood, as the soldier could not help admitting.

“I advise you to surrender, sir,” he said courteously, lifting his bonnet, in which were fastened two eagle’s feathers. “I am sorry to take advantage of an injured man, but I have my Chief’s orders. You are completely cut off, and moreover your men are all prisoners—indeed Captain Scott is at this moment in Lochiel’s custody. If you will give up your sword I shall be honoured to take you into mine.”

“The deuce you will!” exclaimed Keith, secretly astonished at the polish of his manner—a man who wore a plaid! “And who are you, pray?”

“Cameron of Ardroy,” answered the young man. “Lochiel’s second cousin,” he added.

“I don’t care whose second cousin you are, Mr. Cameron of Ardroy,” returned Captain Windham to this, “but if you think that you are going to have my sword for the asking, you and your cut-throat there, you are vastly mistaken!”

For provided—but it was a big proviso—that the two did not rush upon him at once he thought that he could deal with each separately. Splendidly built as this young Highlander was, lean too, and, doubtless, muscular, he probably knew no more of swordplay than was required to wield that heavy basket-hilted weapon of his, and Captain Windham himself was a good swordsman. Yes, provided Lochiel’s second cousin did not use the pistol that he wore (which so far he had made no motion to do) and provided that the wolf-like person remained holding the horse . . .

“Come on and take me,” he said provocatively, flourishing his sword. “You are not afraid, surely, of a lame man!” And he pointed with it to the rough staff at his feet.

Under his tan the large young Highlander seemed to flush slightly. “I know that you are lame; and your forehead is cut. You had a fall; I came upon your dead horse. That is why I do not wish to fight you. Give up your sword, sir; it is no disgrace. We are two to one, and you are disabled. Do not, I pray you, constrain me to disable you further!”

Hang the fellow, why did he behave so out of his cateran’s rôle? “You are considerate indeed!” retorted Captain Windham mockingly. “Suppose you try first whether you can disable me further!—Now, Mr. Cameron, as I don’t intend to be stopped on my road by mere words, I must request you to stand out of my way!” And—rashly, no doubt, since in so doing he no longer had one eye on that murderous-looking gillie—he advanced sword in hand upon his reluctant opponent. Frowning, and muttering something under his breath, the young man with the eagle’s feathers at last drew his own weapon, and the blades rang together.

Thirty seconds of it, and Keith Windham knew that he had attacked a swordsman quite as good if not better than himself. Breathing hard, he was being forced back to the trunk of the oak again, and neither his aching head nor his damaged ankle was wholly to blame for this. Who said that broadsword play was not capable of finesse? This surprisingly scrupulous young barbarian could have cut him down just then, but he drew back when he had made the opening. The certitude of being spared irritated the soldier; he lost his judgment and began to fight wildly, and so the end came, for his sword was suddenly torn from his hand, sailed up into the oak-tree above him, balanced a moment on a branch, and then fell a couple of yards away. And his adversary had his foot upon it in a second.

As for Keith Windham, he leant back against the oak-tree, his head all at once going round like a mill-wheel, with the noise of a sluice, too, in his ears. For a flash everything was blank; then he felt that someone was supporting him by an arm, and a voice said in his ear, “Drink this, sir, and accept my apologies. But indeed you forced me to it.”

Keith drank, and, though it was only water, sight was restored to him. It was his late opponent who had his arm under his, and who was looking at him with a pair of very blue eyes.

“Yes, I forced you to it,” confessed Captain Windham, drawing a long breath. “I surrender—I can do nothing else, Mr. . . . Cameron.”

“Then I will take you home with me, and your hurts can be dressed,” said the Highlander, showing no trace of elation. “We shall have to go back as far as the pass, but fortunately I have a horse. Lachuin, thoir dhomh an t’each!”

The gillie, scowling, brought forward the grey. His captor loosed Keith’s arm and held the stirrup. “Can you mount, sir?”

“But I am not going to ride your horse!” said Keith, astonished. “It will not carry two of us—and what will you do yourself?”

“I? Oh, I will walk,” answered the victor carelessly. “I assure you that I am more accustomed to it. But you would never reach Ardroy on foot, lame as you are.” And as Keith hesitated, looking at this disturbing exponent of Highland chivalry, the exponent added, hesitating a little himself, “There is only one difficulty. If you are mounted, I fear I must ask you for your parole of honour?”

“I give it you—and that willingly,” answered Keith, with a sudden spurt of good feeling. “Here’s my hand on it, if you like, Mr. Cameron!”

CHAPTER II

If to ride along a road in these mountain solitudes was distasteful, to be following a mere track (and that a very steep one) in amongst their very folds was worse. When first he had seen the path which they were to ascend, and the V-shaped depression, sharp against the sunset sky, up to which it led, Captain Windham had with difficulty repressed an exclamation of alarm. However, he could not really believe that Mr. Cameron of Ardroy was taking him up this terrifying route in order to slay him, since he could already have done this with so much less trouble on level ground. Therefore, though he had raised his eyebrows, he had said nothing. After all, it was the horse, and not he, who had to do the climbing. And now they were half-way up.

The wolf-like attendant, carrying the surrendered sword, kept in the rear, but Captain Windham was almost physically conscious of his frown behind him. This unattractive person was, he felt, no willing party to his capture; he would much have preferred that the redcoat should have been left cold beneath the oak-tree. Meanwhile his master, the young chieftain, or whatever he was, walked with a mountaineer’s elastic step at the horse’s head, occasionally taking hold of the bridle; rather silent, but uncommonly well-made and good-looking, thought his captive again, glancing down at him.

Captain Windham’s own dark, rather harsh features were not unpleasing, save when he frowned, which he was somewhat given to doing, nor were they devoid of a certain distinction, and he had really fine hazel eyes. But his mouth had already taken a cynical twist unusual in a young man of thirty. If he had a passion left in life, it was military ambition. Earlier he had known others, and they had brought him nothing but unhappiness. As a boy he had had an extraordinary devotion to his lovely mother—whom he had not been alone in thinking fair. But she, too, was ambitious, and her second marriage, to the Earl of Stowe, with its attendant advantages, was more to her than the claims of her own son. Then the beautiful boy she bore to Lord Stowe usurped the place which Keith had never had in her heart. So, in respect of affection, sometimes even of ordinary attention, he had passed through a neglected childhood and a starved boyhood, and they had left an indelible mark on him—more indelible, though he did not guess it, than the scars of another woman’s betrayal of him four years ago.

The consequence was that at thirty, with a nature at bottom passionate and impulsive, he had become as disillusioned, as little prone to enthusiasms, as a man of twice his age. His creed was that it was a mistake to desire anything very much—a fatal mistake to desire a place in any person’s affections, or to admit anyone, man or woman, to a place in your own. By the end of life, no doubt, every human being had discovered this truth; he had done so early, and could count himself the more fortunate.

At the same time it needed a rather different kind of detachment to take his present situation philosophically; and yet, to his own surprise, Keith Windham knew that he was doing so, even though he had by now gleaned from his captor the later history of the day’s disaster, and had learnt its mortifying completeness. Matters had fallen out for the unfortunate recruits almost exactly as Captain Windham had afterwards feared; for another body of Highlanders was following them unseen on the hillside, and near the head of Loch Lochy further progress had been barred by those who had attempted to stay Keith himself. Though Captain Scott too had tried to cross the isthmus, it was impossible, since more Highlanders were hastening to the spot from that direction also. Too tired and panic-stricken to use their muskets to good effect, the redcoats had, on the contrary, received a fire which had killed five of them and wounded a dozen, including Captain Scott himself. Some leader called ‘Keppoch’, Captain Windham heard, had then called on the Royals to surrender, or they would be cut to pieces, and to save his men Captain Scott had done so. Immediately on this had come up Ewen Cameron’s chief, Lochiel (who had been asked for assistance), with a number of his clan, including the present narrator, had taken charge of the prisoners, and marched them off to his house of Achnacarry. But as the Highlanders from the far side of Loch Oich reported having seen a dead charger on the road, and one company of the redcoats was plainly captainless, Lochiel had sent his young kinsman, since he happened to be mounted, in pursuit of the missing officer. (And at this point the officer in question had remarked rather stiffly that he trusted Mr. Cameron knew that his absence from the scene of conflict was due only to his having gone for reinforcements, and Mr. Cameron had replied politely that no other explanation had even occurred to him.)

They were at the top of the pass at last, and had a fine view before them; but the captive did not find it so, the mountains being too high for his taste and the downward path too steep. Stones rolled away from beneath the grey’s hoofs; now and then he slipped a trifle, for which his owner, leading him carefully by the bridle, apologised. He would not have come this way, he said, but that it was the shortest from the spot where he and Captain Windham had ‘chanced to meet’, as he put it. And then all at once the descent was less steep and they were looking down on a glen among the mountains, with a little lake, some signs of cultivation, grazing sheep and cattle, and, in the midst of trees, the roof and chimneys of a house, whence a welcome smoke ascended.

“There is Loch na h-Iolaire,” said the young Highlander at Captain Windham’s bridle, pointing to the sheet of water; and he paused after he had said it, because, though Captain Windham could not guess it, he never came upon the loch from any point of the compass without a little fountain of joy bubbling up and singing to itself in his heart. “And there is the house of Ardroy, our destination. I am sure that you will be glad of a meal and a bed, sir.”

Keith admitted it, and the descent continued, in the face of the sunset afterglow. His captor did not live in a cave, then—but the Englishman had abandoned that idea some time ago. Indeed Mr. Cameron was apparently a landed proprietor with tenants, for besides sheep, goats and cows, there were a good many roughly constructed cottages scattered about. By and by, skirting the end of the little lake and its birch-trees, they struck into another track, and Keith saw the house in front of him, a simple but not undignified two-storeyed building of which one end was slightly lower than the other, as if it had been added to. Over the porch was a coat-of-arms, which successive layers of whitewash had made difficult to decipher.

“I expect that my aunt, who keeps house for me, and my guests are already supping,” observed the young owner of this domain, assisting his prisoner to dismount. “We will join them with as little delay as possible. Excuse me if I precede you.” He walked in and opened a door on his right. “Aunt Marget, I have brought a visitor with me.”

From behind him the ‘visitor’ could see the large raftered room, with a long table spread for a meal, and a generous hearth, by which were standing an elderly man and a girl. But in the foreground was a middle-aged lady, well-dressed and comely, exclaiming, “My dear Ewen, what possesses you to be so late? And what’s this we hear about a brush with the Elector’s troops near Loch Lochy? . . . Mercy on us, who’s this?”

“A guest whom I have brought home with me from the Glen,” replied the late-comer. “Yes, there has been a skirmish.—Captain Windham, let me present you to my aunt, Miss Cameron, to Miss Grant, and to Mr. Grant, sometime of Inverwick.”

Keith bowed, and the two ladies curtseyed.

“You are just going to sit down to supper?” queried the master of the house. “We shall be glad of it; and afterwards, Aunt Margaret, pray find some bandages and medicaments for Captain Windham, who has met with a bad fall.”

“I had perhaps better tell you, madam,” interpolated Keith at this point, holding himself rather erect, “that, though Mr. Cameron is kind enough to call me a guest, I am in reality his prisoner.—But not one who will put you to any inconvenience of wardership,” he added quickly, seeing the look which passed over the lady’s expressive countenance. “I have given Mr. Cameron my parole of honour, and I assure you that even ‘the Elector’s’ officers observe that!” (For he believed so then.)

Miss Cameron surveyed him with humour at the corners of her mouth. “Every country has its own customs, Captain Windham; now I warrant you never speak but of ‘the Pretender’ in London. You are English, sir?”

“I have that disability, madam.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Cameron, breaking into a smile, “even at that, no doubt you can eat a Highland supper without choking. But take the Captain, Ewen, and give him some water, for I’m sure he’ll be wanting to wash off the traces of battle.”

“I should be grateful indeed,” began Keith uncomfortably, wondering how much blood and dirt still decorated his face; but his captor broke in: “You must not think that I am responsible for Captain Windham’s condition, Aunt Margaret. His horse came down as he was riding to fetch reinforcements from Kilcumein, and he was disabled before ever I overtook him.”

“An accident, sir—or was the poor beast shot?” queried Miss Cameron.

“An accident, madam,” responded Keith. “A heron, I presume it was, rose suddenly from the lake and startled him; I was riding very fast, and he came down, breaking his leg. I twisted my ankle, besides being stunned for a while, so that I must apologise if my appearance——” And this time he put up his hand to his forehead.

“A heron, did you say?” exclaimed Ewen Cameron’s voice beside him, surprised and almost incredulous. “A heron brought your horse down?”

“Yes,” replied Keith, surprised in his turn. “Why not, Mr. Cameron? An unusual mischance, I dare say, and none of my seeking, I assure you; but it is true.”

“I don’t doubt your word, sir,” replied the young man; yet there was something puzzled in the gaze which he turned on his prisoner. “It is . . . yes, unusual, as you say. Herons, as a rule——” He broke off. “If you will come with me, Captain Windham, you shall refresh yourself before we eat.”

Captain Windham sat down to a better supper than he had met since he left London, and even in London he would not have tasted such trout and venison, and might well have drunk worse claret. Out of regard for him, perhaps, or out of discretion, the conversation never touched on political matters, though he thought that he could feel a certain excitement simmering below the surface of the talk. (And well it might, he reflected; had not the master of the house this day committed himself to overt hostilities against His Majesty’s Government?) The elderly gentleman in the grey wig, who appeared to have been living recently in Paris, discoursed most innocuously of French châteaux and their gardens, with frequent references to Versailles and Marly, and appeals to his daughter—“You remember the day of our little expedition to the château of Anet, my dear?” Keith would have thought the deserted shrine of St. Germain a more likely goal of pilgrimage, for he took Mr. Grant, from his mere presence here, to be a Jacobite.

But surely his daughter would have preferred to this mild talk of parterres and façades a recital by Mr. Ewen Cameron of his afternoon’s prowess! As far as their personal conflict went, Captain Windham was perfectly willing that this encounter should be related by a victor who was evidently disposed to allow the fullest weight to the physical disabilities of the vanquished; yet he was grateful for the tact with which Mr. Cameron (in his presence at least) had glossed over the flight of the Royal Scots from the bridge. Only questions, indeed, drew from him the partial information which he furnished. He would tell them more afterwards, no doubt. . . . Who was this pretty Miss Grant with the blue fillet in her dark hair—a kinswoman? If she was the future mistress of the house, young Cameron had good taste. So, to be just, had the lady.

But, despite the courtesy shown him, the unwilling guest was not sorry when, very soon after supper, it was suggested that he should retire, for his ankle was painful and one shoulder ached, though he protested that he could look after his own hurts. His conqueror showed him to his bedchamber exactly as a host might have done. The room was of a fair size, and had good old-fashioned furniture; and, presumably because it had been for some time unused, there was even a fire burning. An elderly woman brought up a crock of hot water, a salve and linen for bandages, and the Englishman was then left to her ministrations. And it was not long before his discreet questions had drawn from this dame, who was not very communicative, and spoke English as though it were a foreign tongue to her, the information that Miss Grant was to marry the laird in the autumn. Keith privately hoped that the prospective bridegroom might not find himself in prison before that time, as a consequence of having laid hands on himself—if of nothing worse—though, after that venison, he resolved that he would not lift a finger to send him there.

When his ankle had been bathed and bound up, and the elderly servant had withdrawn, the soldier removed his sash, coat and wig, and extended himself in a comfortable chair in front of the fire, with his bandaged foot on another. There were books to his hand, as he discovered by reaching up to a shelf on the wall; but, having pulled some down, he did not, at first, find that the effort had repaid him. He had captured a Terence, a Horace, Télémaque, and Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes. They all had Ewen Cameron’s name written in them.

Keith whistled. He was turning over the leaves of the Lettres when there was a knock and his host—or gaoler—re-entered.

“I hope that Marsali has made you comfortable, sir?—Those books are not very entertaining, I am afraid. If you intend reading into the night—which I fear must mean that your foot is paining you—I will see whether I cannot find you something else. I believe that my aunt has Mr. Fielding’s novel of Joseph Andrews somewhere.”

“Pray do not trouble, sir,” replied Keith. “I intend to go to bed and sleep; it was only idleness which directed my hand to that shelf there. I see that you read French and Latin, Mr. Cameron?” And even as he uttered the words he thought how ill-bred was the remark, and the surprise which he had not been able entirely to keep out of his tone.

But the young Highlander answered quite simply, in his gentle, rather slow voice: “I was partly educated in France—for that, you know, is easier for us Jacobites. As to Latin, yes, I can read it still, though I am afraid that my iambics would only procure me the ferule nowadays.”

Captain Windham’s ideas about the Northern barbarians were undergoing startling changes. He had already noticed that none of the inmates of this house used the vernacular which he was accustomed to hear in the Lowlands; they spoke as good English as himself, if with an unfamiliar and not displeasing lilt. A little to cover his annoyance at his own lack of breeding he remarked, “France, yes; I suppose that your connection is close. And now that the . . . that a certain young gentleman has come thence——”

“Yes?” asked the other in a slightly guarded manner.

“No, perhaps we had best not engage upon that topic,” said Keith, with a slight smile. “I will imitate your own courteous discretion at supper, Mr. Cameron, in saying so little about the episode at the bridge, of which indeed, as a soldier, I am not proud.—By the way, having myself introduced that subject, I will ask you if you can make clear a point in connection with it which has puzzled me ever since. How was it that no attempt at pursuit—or at least no immediate attempt—was made by the body posted there?”

“That is easily explained,” replied Ewen Cameron promptly. “The Keppoch MacDonalds there dared not let you see how few they were, lest your men should have rallied and crossed the bridge after all.”

“How few?” repeated Captain Windham, thinking he had not heard aright. “But, Mr. Cameron, there were a quantity of Highlanders there, though, owing to the trees it was impossible to form an accurate estimate of their numbers.”

“No, that would be so,” said his captor, looking at him rather oddly. “You may well have thought the bridge strongly held.”

“You mean that it was not?” And, as his informant merely shook his head, Keith said impatiently, but with a sudden very unpleasant misgiving, “Do you know how many men were there, Mr. Cameron?”

Mr. Cameron had taken up a fresh log, and now placed it carefully in position on the fire before answering. “I believe,” he said, with what certainly sounded like reluctance, “that there were not above a dozen there—to be precise, eleven men and a piper.”

Keith’s fingers closed on the arms of his chair. “Are you jesting, sir?”

“Not in the least,” replied the young man, without any trace either of amusement or of elation. “I know it to be a fact, because I spoke afterwards with their leader, MacDonald of Tiendrish. They used an old trick, I understand, to pass themselves off as more than they really were.”

He continued to look at the fire. Captain Windham, with a suppressed exclamation, had lowered his injured foot to the ground, and then remained silent, most horribly mortified. Two companies of His Majesty’s Foot turning tail before a dozen beggarly Highlanders with whom they had not even stayed to exchange shots! The solace, such as it had been, of reflecting that the recruits had in the end been surrounded and outnumbered, was swept clean away, for he knew now that they would never have come to this pass but for their initial poltroonery. Keith had lost all desire for further converse, and every instinct of patronage was dead within him. Why the devil had he ever asked that question?

“I think, sir,” observed his captor, turning round at last, “that it would be better, would it not, if you went to bed? I hope that you have been given everything that is necessary?”

“Everything, thank you,” replied Keith shortly. “And also, just now, something that I could well have done without.” He tried to speak lightly, yet nothing but vexation, he knew, sounded in his tone.

“I am sorry,” said the Highlander gravely. “I would not have told you the number had you not pressed me for it. Forget it, sir.” He went to the door. “I hope that your injured ankle will not keep you awake.”

That ill office was much more likely to be performed by the piece of news which he had presented to the sufferer. “Eleven men and a piper!” repeated Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots when the door was shut; and with his sound leg he drove his heel viciously into the logs of Highland pine.

CHAPTER III

Captain Keith Windham, unwillingly revisiting the neighbourhood of High Bridge, which was populated with leaping Highlanders about nine feet high, and permeated, even in his dream, with the dronings and wailings of the bagpipe, woke, hot and angry, to find that the unpleasant strains at least were real, and were coming through the window of the room in which he lay. He remained a moment blinking, wondering if they portended some attack by a hostile clan; and finally got out of bed and hobbled to the window.

In front of the house a bearded piper was marching solemnly up and down, the ribbons on the chanters of his instrument fluttering in the morning breeze. There was no sign of any armed gathering. “Good Gad, it must be the usual reveillé for the household!” thought the Englishman. “Enough to put a sensitive person out of temper for the rest of the day.” And he returned to bed and pulled the blankets over his ears.

At breakfast, an excellent meal, and a pleasant one also, where very civil enquiries were made concerning the night he had spent and the state of his injuries, Miss Cameron expressed a hope that he had not been unduly disturbed by Neil MacMartin’s piobaireachd, adding that he was not as fine a piper as his father Angus had been. Keith was then thankful that he had not heard Angus.

When the meal was over he strayed to the window and looked out, wondering how he should occupy himself all day, but determined upon one thing, that he would not let these Camerons guess how bitterly he was mortified over the matter of the bridge. Outside the porch his host (save the mark!) was already talking earnestly to a couple of Highlanders, in one of whom Captain Windham had no difficulty in recognising the ‘cut-throat’ of the previous day; the other, he fancied, was the musician of the early morning. “I wish I could persuade myself that Mr. Cameron were putting a ban upon that performance,” he thought; but he hardly hoped it.

Presently the young laird came in. He was wearing the kilt to-day, and for the first time Keith Windham thought that there was something to be said for that article of attire—at least on a man of his proportions.

“Is not that your attendant of yesterday out there?” remarked the soldier idly.

“Lachlan MacMartin? Yes. The other, the piper who, I am afraid, woke you this morning, is his brother Neil.—Captain Windham,” went on the piper’s master in a different tone, “what I am going to tell you may be news to you, or it may not, but in either case the world will soon know it. To-day is Saturday, and on Monday the Prince will set up his standard at Glenfinnan.”

There was a second’s silence. “And you, I suppose, Mr. Cameron, intend to be present . . . and to cross the Rubicon in his company?”

“All Clan Cameron will be there,” was the reply, given with a probably unconscious lift of the head. “And as in consequence of this I shall be pretty much occupied to-day, and little at home, I would advise you, if I may, not to go out of sight of the house and policies. You might——” Ewen Cameron hesitated for a moment.

“I might find myself tempted to abscond, you were going to say?” struck in his captive . . . and saw at once, from the bleak look which came into those blue eyes, that his pleasantry did not find favour.

“I should not dream of so insulting you,” replied Ardroy coldly. “I was merely going to say that it might not be oversafe for you, in that uniform, if you did.” And as he was evidently quite offended at the idea that he could be supposed to harbour such a suspicion of his prisoner, there was nothing for the latter to do but to beg his pardon, and to declare that he had spoken—as indeed he had—in the merest jest.

“But perhaps this young mountaineer cannot take a jest,” he thought to himself when they had parted. “I’ll make no more—at least outwardly.” But he was not to keep this resolution.

And indeed he had little but occasional glimpses of young Ardroy or of any of the family that morning. The whole place was in a bustle of preparation and excitement. Tenants were (Keith surmised from various indications) being collected and armed; though only single Highlanders, wild and unintelligible persons, appeared from time to time in the neighbourhood of the house. Miss Cameron and Miss Grant seemed to be equally caught up in the swirl, and Mr. Grant was invisible. The only idle person in this turmoil, the captive Englishman, sat calmly on the grass plot at a little distance from the house, with The History of the Adventures of Mr. Joseph Andrews in his hand, half amused to see the inhabitants of this ant-heap—thus he thought of them—so busy over what would certainly come to nothing, like all the other Jacobite attempts.

And yet he reflected that, for all the futility of such preparations, those who made them were like to pay very dearly for them. Ewen Cameron would get himself outlawed at the least, and somehow he, whom Ewen Cameron had defeated yesterday, would be sorry. The young Highlander had certainly displayed towards his captive foe the most perfect chivalry and courtesy, and to this latter quality Keith Windham, who could himself at will display the most perfect rudeness, was never blind. And yet—a sardonically comforting reflection—a rebel must find the presence of an English soldier not a little embarrassing at this juncture.

It was partly a desire to show that he too possessed tact, and partly pure boredom, which caused Captain Windham, in the latter half of the afternoon, to disregard the warning given him earlier, and to leave the neighbourhood of the house. He helped himself to a stout stick on which to lean in case of necessity, though his ankle was remarkably better and hardly pained him at all, and started to stroll along the bank of the loch. Nobody had witnessed his departure. And in the mild, sometimes obscured sunshine, he followed the path round to the far side, thinking that could the little lake only be transported from these repellent mountains and this ugly purple heather into more civilised and less elevated surroundings, it would not be an ill piece of water.

Arrived on the farther side, he began idly to follow a track which led away from the lake and presently started to wind upwards among the heather. He continued to follow it without much thinking of what he was doing, until suddenly it brought him round a fold of the mountain side to a space of almost level ground where, beside a group of pine trees, stood three low thatched cottages. And there Captain Windham remained staring, not exactly at the cottages, nor at the score or so of Highlanders—men, women, and children—in front of these dwellings, with their backs turned to him, but at the rather puzzling operations which were going forward on top of the largest croft.

At first Captain Windham thought that the man astride the roof and the other on the short ladder must be repairing the thatch, until he saw that, on the contrary, portions of this were being relentlessly torn off. Then the man on the roof plunged in his arm to the shoulder and drew forth something round and flat, which he handed to the man on the ladder, who passed it down. Next came something long that glittered, then another round object, then an unmistakable musket; and with that Keith realised what he was witnessing—the bringing forth of arms which should have been given up at the Disarming Act of 1725, but which had been concealed and saved for just such an emergency as the present.

Now there came bundling out several broadswords tied together and another musket. But a man in a bright scarlet coat with blue facings and long white spatterdashes is altogether too conspicuous a figure in a mountain landscape, and Keith had not in fact been there more than a minute before a boy who had turned to pick up a targe saw him, gave a yell, and pointing, screamed out something in Gaelic. Every face was instantly turned in the intruder’s direction, and moved by the same impulse each man snatched up a weapon and came running towards him, even he on the roof sliding down with haste.

Captain Windham was too proud to turn and flee, nor would it much have advantaged him; but there he was, unarmed save for a staff, not even knowing for certain whether these hornets upon whose nest he had stumbled were Mr. Cameron’s tenants or no, but pretty sure that they would not understand English, and that he could not therefore convince them of his perfect innocence. Deeply did he curse his folly in that moment.

He had at any rate the courage not to attempt to defend himself; on the contrary, he deliberately threw his stick upon the ground, and held out his hands to show that they were empty. The foremost Highlander, who was brandishing one of those unpleasant basket-hilted swords, hesitated, as Keith had hoped, and shouted something; on which the rest rushed round, and as many hands as possible laid hold of Captain Windham’s person. He staggered under the impact, but made no resistance, for, to his great relief, he had already recognised in the foremost assailant with the broadsword the scowling visage of Lachlan MacMartin, and beside him the milder one of his brother Neil, Mr. Cameron’s piper. Even if they did not understand English, these two would at least know who he was.

“I am your master’s prisoner,” he called out, wishing the others would not press so upon him as they clutched his arms. “You had better do me no harm!”

In Lachlan’s face there was a sort of sullen and unwilling recognition. He spoke rapidly to his brother, who nodded and gave what was presumably an order. Reluctantly the clutching hands released their grip of Keith, their owners merely glowering at him; but they did not go away, though the circle now opened out a little. A couple of women had joined the group, and a small child or two; all talked excitedly. Keith had never thought to feel gratitude towards the wolf-like Lachlan, but at this moment he could almost have embraced him, since but for him and Neil his own might well have been the first blood on those resuscitated claymores.

His preserver now advanced, his hand on his dirk, and addressed the soldier, rather to his surprise, in English. “You may pe the laird’s prisoner,” he said between his teeth, “but why did you come up here?—You came to spy, to spy!” He almost spat the words in the intruder’s face. “And with spiess, who haf seen what they should not haf seen, there iss a ferry short way . . . either thiss,” he unsheathed an inch or two of his dirk, “or the lochan down yonder with a stone round the neck!”

“I am not a spy,” retorted Captain Windham haughtily. “I knew nothing of there being cottages here; I was taking a walk, and came upon you entirely by accident.”

“A walk, when yesterday your foot wass so hurt that you must ride the laird’s horse!” hissed Lachlan, bringing out all the sibilants in this not ineffective retort. “All thiss way for pleasure with a foot that iss hurt! And then you will pe going back to the saighdearan dearg—to the red soldiers—at Kilcumein and pe telling them. . . . Ach, it will certainly pe petter . . .” And his fingers closed round the black hilt at his groin; Keith had never seen fingers which more clearly itched to draw and use a weapon.

But at this point Neil the piper intervened, laying his hand on his brother’s arm, shaking his head, and speaking earnestly in their native tongue, and Keith, concluding that a professional musician (if that term could possibly be extended to one who produced sounds like this morning’s) would be a man of peace, felt more secure, not knowing that in a fray the piper habitually gave his pipes to his boy and fought with the best. But he heartily wished himself back at the house again; it would have been far better had he taken his host’s warning to heart instead of making a foolish jest about it.

During the colloquy, however, there approached the group a handsome, venerable old man whom Keith had not previously noticed. He came towards them tapping the ground with a long staff, as if of uncertain sight, and said something first to Lachlan and then to Neil. The piper appeared to listen with attention, and on that turned to the captive.

“My father iss asking you,” he said, in a manner which suggested that he was seeking for his words in an unfamiliar tongue, “to permit him to touch you, and to pe speaking with you. He iss almost blind. He hass not the English, but I will pe speaking for him.”

“Certainly, if he wishes it,” replied Captain Windham with resignation, thinking that ‘permission’ to touch him might well have been asked earlier, and not taken so violently for granted.

Neil took his father’s hand, and led him up to the interview. The old man, who was obviously not completely blind, peered into the Englishman’s face, while his hands strayed for a moment or two over his shoulders and breast. He then addressed a question to his elder son, who translated it.

“He asks if you wass meeting a curra yesterday?”

“If I had any notion what a curra was,” returned Keith, “I might be able to satisfy your father’s curiosity. As it is——”

“A curra,” explained Neil, struggling, “iss . . . a large bird, having a long . . . a long . . .”

“It iss called ‘heron’ in the English,” interposed Lachlan. And he added violently, “Mallachd ort! wass you meeting a heron yessterday?”

The Erse sounded like an objurgation (which it was) and the speaker’s eyes as they glared at Keith had turned to dark coals. It was evidently a crime in these parts to encounter that bird, though to the heron’s victim himself it wore rather the aspect of a calamity. Ignoring this almost frenzied query he replied shortly to the official interpreter: “Yes, unfortunately I did meet a heron yesterday, which by frightening my horse led to—my being here to-day.”

Lachlan MacMartin smote his hands together with an exclamation which seemed to contain as much dismay as anger, but Neil contented himself with passing on this information to his parent, and after a short colloquy turned once more to the Englishman. “My father iss taibhsear,” he explained. “That iss, he hass the two sights. He knew that the heron would pe making Mac—the laird to meet with you.”

“Gad, I could wish it had not!” thought Keith; but judged it more politic not to give this aspiration utterance.

“And he asks you whether you wass first meeting Mac ’ic Ailein near watter?”

“If that name denotes Mr. Ewen Cameron,” replied Keith, “I did. Near a good deal of ‘watter’.”

This was passed on to the seer, involving the repetition of a word which sounded to Captain Windham like “whisky,” and roused in his mind a conjecture that the old man was demanding, or about to demand, that beverage. None, however, was produced, and after thanking the Englishman, in a very courtly way, through the medium of his son, the soothsayer departed again, shaking his head and muttering to himself; and Keith saw him, when he reached the cottages, sit down upon a bench outside the largest and appear to fall into a reverie.

Directly he was safely there, Lachlan MacMartin reverted with startling suddenness to his former character and subject of conversation.

“You haf seen what you should not haf seen, redcoat!” he repeated fiercely. “Pefore you go away from thiss place you shall be swearing to keep silence!”

“That I certainly shall not swear to do,” replied Captain Windham promptly. “I am not accustomed to take an oath at any man’s bidding, least of all at a rebel’s.”

Again the dark flame shone in the Highlander’s eyes.

“And you think that we will pe letting you go, Sassenach?”

“I think that you will be extremely sorry for the consequences if you do not,” returned the soldier. “You know quite well that if you lay a finger upon me you will have to answer for it to your master or chief, or whatever he is!”

“We are the foster-brothers of Mac ’ic Ailein,” responded Lachlan slowly. (“What, all of you?” interjected Keith. “I wish him joy of you!”) “He knows that all we do iss done for him. If we should pe making a misstake, not knowing hiss will . . . or if you should fall by chance into the loch, we should pe sorry, but we could not help it that your foot should pe slipping, for it wass hurt yessterday . . . and you would nefer go back to Kilcumein to tell the saighdearan dearg what you haf peen seeing.”

He did not now seem to be threatening, but rather, with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, thinking out a plausible course of action with regard to the intruder, and it was a good deal more disquieting to the latter than his first attitude. So was the expression on the faces of the other men when Lachlan harangued them volubly in his own language. His brother Neil alone appeared to be making some remonstrance, but in the end was evidently convinced, and almost before the unlucky officer realised what was toward, the whole group had launched themselves upon him.

Keith Windham fought desperately, but he had no chance at all, having been surrounded and almost held from the outset, and in a moment he was borne down by sheer weight of numbers. Buttons came off his uniform, his wig was torn bodily from his head by some assailant who probably imagined that he had hold of the Sassenach’s own hair, he was buffeted and nearly strangled, and lay at last with his face pressed into the heather, one man kneeling upon his shoulders, while another tied his hands behind his back, and a third, situated upon his legs, secured his ankles. Outraged and breathless, the soldier had time for only two sensations: surprise that no dirk had yet been planted in him, and wonder whether they really meant to take him down and throw him into the lake.

The struggle had been conducted almost in silence; but conversation broke out again now that he was overpowered. Only for a moment, however; then, as suddenly, it ceased, and the heavy, bony knees on Captain Windham’s shoulder-blades unexpectedly removed themselves. A sort of awestruck silence succeeded. With faint thoughts of Druids and their sacrifices in his mind Keith wondered whether the patriarchal soothsayer were now approaching to drive a knife with due solemnity into his back . . . or, just possibly, to denounce his descendants’ violence. But he could not twist himself to look, for the man on his legs, though apparently smitten motionless, was still squatting there.

And then a voice that Keith knew, vibrating with passion, suddenly shouted words in Erse whose purport he could guess. The man on his legs arose precipitately. And next moment Ewen Cameron was kneeling beside him in the heather, bending over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Captain Windham, are you hurt? God forgive me, what have they been doing? Tied!” And in a moment he had snatched a little knife out of his stocking and was cutting Keith’s bonds. “Oh, why did I let you out of my sight! For God’s sake tell me that you are not injured!”

He sounded in the extreme of anxiety—and well he might be, thought the indignant Englishman, who made no haste to reply that, if exhausted, he was as yet unwounded. He made in fact no reply at all, while the young chieftain, white with agitation and anger, helped him to his feet. When at last he stood upright, hot and dishevelled, and very conscious of the fact, Captain Windham said, in no friendly tone:

“You were just in time, I think, Mr. Cameron—that is, if, now that you are here, your savages will obey you.”

From pale the young man turned red. “I warned you, if you remember,” he said rather low, and then, leaving Captain Windham to pick up his hat and wig and to restore some order to his attire, strode towards the silent and huddled group of his retainers, who had retreated in a body nearer to the crofts. Angry and humiliated as Keith felt, it was some consolation to him, as he brushed the pieces of heather off his uniform, and pulled his wig once more over his own short dark hair, to observe that, whatever their master was saying to them in the Erse, it seemed to have a most salutary and withering effect. Even the redoubtable Lachlan, who hoarsely uttered some remark, presumably an excuse, was reduced to complete silence, either by the very terse and vigorous reply which he drew upon himself, or by the threatening attitude of the speaker.

All this time the prophetic elder had sat at his cottage door listening, with his head tilted back in the manner of the blind, but taking no part in the reckoning which was falling upon the offenders, just as (presumably) he had sat throughout the assault. And having made short work of the culprits, the rescuer now seemed in haste to remove the rescued, and came towards him, his eyes still very blue and fierce.

“If you will allow me, Captain Windham, I will take you back to the house, away from these savages, as you rightly call them.”

“Thanks, I can return safely enough, no doubt,” replied Keith indifferently, pulling down his waistcoat. “There are no more encampments of them, I believe, on the way back.”

“I should prefer to escort you,” returned Ardroy, most acutely vexed, as was evident. And, since his vexation did not at all displease the Englishman, he picked up his staff and preceded him in silence off the plateau.

They had gone some way down the mountain path before Ewen Cameron spoke again.

“I had no right to accept your sword,” he said, in a voice still bitter with mortification, “if I could not protect you against my own followers. I would not have had this happen for a thousand pounds. I can offer you no apologies that are deep enough for such an outrage.”

“Except for the loss of some buttons, I am not much the worse,” replied Keith dryly without turning his head.