The Collected Works of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

me to Tyburn to-morrow, is to bring me the Sacrament at five o’clock. I would have wished to take it to-morrow morning before I set out, but then Jean could not have received it with me, nor you, if you wish to do so?”

      “Will it be here?”

      “Yes.” The Doctor pointed to where a little table, covered with a white cloth, stood against the wall, with two or three footstools ranged before it. “And Jean herself will be brought hither. But I have said farewell to her already. . . . Ewen, be patient with her—though, indeed, she has the bravest heart of any woman living.”

      “You do not need to urge that,” said Ardroy.

      “I know that I do not. It is you who are to take her away from the Tower, too, God bless you!”

      “Shall I . . . take her back to Lille?”

      “It is not necessary; that is arranged for.” Archie got up suddenly; Ewen had a glimpse of his face, and knew that he was thinking of the fatherless children to whom she would return.

      He sat there, rapidly and quite unconsciously fluttering over the leaves of the book lying on the table, and then said in a voice which he could scarcely command, “Archie, is there nothing else that I can do for you?”

      Doctor Cameron came and sat down again. “There is something. But perhaps it is too hard to ask.”

      “If it be anything which concerns me alone it is not too hard.”

      “Then . . . I would ask you to be there to-morrow.”

      Ewen recoiled. “I . . . I did not dream that you would ask that!”

      “You would rather stay away?”

      “Archie—what do you think I am made of?”

      Archibald Cameron looked at him rather wistfully. “I thought—but it was, I see, a selfish thought—that I should like to see one face of a friend there, at the last. I have heard that a Tyburn crowd, accustomed to thieves and murderers, is . . . not a pleasant one; and I have been warned that there will be very many people there.”

      “They will not be hostile, Archie; that I can stake my soul on. You do not know the sympathetic and indignant feeling there is abroad. But, if you wish it, I will be there; nay, if it is your wish, I will make it mine too. . . . Yet even you will not ask me to remain until the end of all?” he added imploringly.

      “No,” said his cousin gravely but serenely, “not until that. Yet I think the end, thank God, will matter very little to me. In spite of the terms of the sentence and of Lord Chief Justice Lee, I have a good hope that I shall not be cut down until I am quite dead. . . . Ewen, Ewen, think it’s yourself that’s going to the gallows (as you nearly did once) and not I! You would not play the child over your own fate, I know that well!” For Ewen had his head on his arms, and his nails were digging into the table. He did not answer.

      “I could wish it were not Tyburn,” Archibald Cameron went on, as if to himself. “My lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino were luckier to suffer on Tower Hill, and by the axe. Yet I must not complain, being but a commoner; indeed, I should think of the great Marquis of Montrose, who was hanged likewise—and from a very lofty ladder too. And I thank my God I was always easier ashamed than frightened. . . . Ewen, Mr. Falconar will be here in a few minutes. Do you wish to make some preparation before you take communion with me?”

      Ewen roused himself, and mechanically knelt down by the table where he had been sitting, put his hands before his face and tried to say a prayer. But it was impossible. His whole soul was too pulsing with revolt to bow itself before that mystery of divine self-humiliation and pain and joy; he could not even say ‘Lord, I am not worthy’; his heart was nothing but a burning stone.

      Nevertheless he still knelt there, rising only when he heard the bolts withdrawn, and there came in, first a very tall, thin man in lay dress, who walked with a limp, and then, on the arm of Rainsford himself, Mrs. Cameron. The Deputy-Lieutenant considerately dismissed the warder and himself took the man’s place, and, almost before Ewen, dazed with pain, had realised it, the service was beginning. Archibald Cameron, his hand in his wife’s knelt at some distance from the improvised altar; Ewen a little way behind them. And, save that it was not dark, but a June evening, the bare masonry of the place might almost have suggested an Eucharist in the catacombs; but Ewen did not think of that. He seemed to be able to think of nothing, though he did perceive that Mr. Falconar, who appeared to be greatly moved, was using, not the English Communion Office, but the proscribed Scottish Liturgy of 1637.

      When the moment of communion approached, the two in front of him rose, and Archie glanced round at him, but Ewen shook his head, and so Doctor Cameron led his wife to one of the footstools and knelt beside her. But when Ewen saw them kneeling there without him, the ties of human affection drew him more strongly than his nonjuring training, with its strict doctrine of the Eucharist and his own fear of unworthy reception, held him back. So he got up after all, and knelt humbly on the floor by Archie’s side; and drinking of the cup after him whose viaticum it truly was, felt for the moment wonderfully comforted, and that the Giver of that feast, first instituted as it was in circumstances of betrayal and imminent death, had pardoned the hard and rebellious heart in him. And he remembered, too, that peaceful Eucharist by the winter sea in Kilmory of Ardnamurchan, and wished that Mr. Oliphant were here. Then he went back to the table where he had sat with Archie, and knelt down again there with his head against the edge, for a long time.

      At last he looked up. The service was over; Mr. Falconar was gone. Archie, with his back to him, had his wife in his arms. Ewen thought that if he also went, the two might have a moment or two together—save for the presence of the Deputy-Lieutenant, who, considerate as ever, was looking out of one of the little windows. But he could not go without a last word. He got to his feet, approached a little way, and said his cousin’s name.

      Doctor Cameron put his wife into a chair, and turned; and Ewen held out his hand.

      “I shall not see you again to have speech with,” he said in Gaelic. His very hands felt numb in Archie’s clasp. “I wish I could die with you,” he whispered passionately.

      Archie held his hands tightly. “Dear lad, what then would Alison do, wanting you, and your boys, and your tenants? You have work here; mine is over.”

      “Gentlemen,” came Rainsford’s voice from behind, “there remains but eleven minutes ere the gates are closed.”

      Time, the inexorable, had dwindled to this! Ewen caught his breath. “Good-bye,” he said after a second of struggle. “Good-bye, faithful and true! Greet Lochiel for me. I will keep the promise I have made you. Look for me there—give me a sign.” He embraced Archie and went out quickly, for the door was ajar, with the armed sentries close outside. Only Mrs. Cameron and General Rainsford remained behind.

      But outside, beyond the sentries, was still Mr. Falconar, with his handkerchief to his eyes. As for Ewen, he leant against the wall to wait for Mrs. Cameron and folded his arms tightly across his breast, as if by that constraint he could bridle a heart which felt as though it were breaking. Perhaps he shut his eyes; at any rate, he was roused by a touch on his arm. It was Mr. Falconar, still painfully agitated.

      “Sir, I shall spend this night praying less, I think, for him than for strength to carry me through this terrible business to-morrow without faltering.”

      “You mean the attending Doctor Cameron to the scaffold,” asked Ewen in a voice which sounded completely indifferent.

      “Yes,” said the clergyman. “I declare to you, sir, that I do not know how I am to come through it. Doctor Cameron’s composure shames me, who am supposed to uphold it. My great fear is lest any unworthy weakness of mine should shake his calm in his last moments—though that hardly seems possible.”

      Ewen was sorry for him. “You cannot withdraw now, I suppose, for he must have a minister with him.”

      “It is usual, I understand; but he does not need one, sir. He has not left it until the eleventh hour, like some, to make his peace with God. I must carry out as much of my office