The Dark Mile. D. K. Broster

two nights ago, was not likely ever to trouble his house, standing in a very haughty manner almost upon its hearthstone. He had not seen Finlay MacPhair face to face—though he had seen his back—since the revelation of his treachery, two years ago, in the Chief’s London lodging, when he himself had interposed between his sword and Hector Grant’s. He stopped, speechless, in the doorway.

      * * * * *

      “You are surprised to see me, Ardroy?” said the visitor, showing no embarrassed consciousness at all of their last meeting. “But when you hear why I am come, I can’t but think that you will put fewer obstacles in my path than your good aunt here has seen fit to do.”

      “I wonder!” thought Aunt Margaret. Her nephew’s dour expression suggested that there was one path at least in which he would place no obstacles, and that was Mr. MacPhair’s homeward one. His lips were so firmly closed that, to her, it seemed as if he were only keeping back with difficulty the utterance of this sentiment; but the traditions of Highland hospitality were too strong for him to give way to his visible desire.

      “In what then can I serve you, Glenshian?” he asked in the most frigid tones, laying his hat and a riding whip upon the table as he spoke.

      And Finlay the Red answered him with much directness: “By restoring to me the cattle which your tenants have lifted from me.”

      A quick flush dyed Ewen’s fair skin. “I think I cannot have heard you aright, sir. My tenants do not lift cattle . . . from anyone!”

      The young Chief smiled a half pitying smile. “Not with your knowledge, perhaps; I do not suggest that. But, as I was just remarking to Miss Cameron, who knows what goes on behind the laird’s back?”

      “In the case of a man with so many dependents as yourself, that question may perhaps be asked,” retorted Ewen. “But I, with my mere handful”—there was no humility, rather the reverse, in his tone—“I flatter myself that I know their employments pretty well.”

      Glenshian sniggered. “I would not be too ready to claim that knowledge if I were in your place, Ardroy. In the end it might prove awkward for you.”

      But, before her nephew could reply to this innuendo, Aunt Margaret, already standing at the door, had slipped out of the room. Although by nature she relished a fight, it seemed to her that Ewen would prefer to have out this preposterous business unhampered by the presence of a woman. Moreover she must prepare Alison for the onslaught of her small sons. The sound of their excited voices and of racing feet was even now audible upstairs, and the hall door had just opened to admit a man in riding costume whom she recognised, without much surprise, as young Invernacree.

      “Is that Ian Stewart?” she asked, and, Ian coming forward to salute her, she went on, in a voice which, despite herself, showed signs of trouble, “MacPhair of Glenshian is here, making a great pother about a couple of steers which he swears Ewen’s people have lifted from him. Whether you’d best go in on them or not I don’t know. Ewen looks very angry, but I suppose they’ll not come to blows—at least I hope not.”

      Ian hesitated a moment; then he remembered something which Ewen had let fall about a dark night and a sgian dubh. “I can always leave the room if necessary,” he answered, and opening the parlour door, went in, on the sound of a voice which was not his cousin’s, to catch the words, “. . . if you refuse to put it to the proof!”

      By the inflection it was the end of a sentence, and then he saw the speaker, standing at the far end of the room, young, arrogant-looking, red-haired and tall. Ewen (still taller) who faced this visitor, swung round for a second as the door opened, saw his kinsman, then turned back and said, rather as if he were hurling a missile at the man on his hearthstone:

      “Very good, then! It shall be put to the proof—and here is a witness. Ian, let me present you to Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian, who has come here to accuse me of stealing two of his cattle. Glenshian, this is my cousin, Mr. Stewart the younger of Invernacree.”

      CHAPTER III

       BRANDED

       Table of Contents

      § 1

      June 17th (continued).

      Ian Stewart knew his kinsman well enough to divine that he was in a towering rage, though a stranger might not have guessed it. Across the room the red-haired young man returned his own bow by a slight inclination of the head.

      “Your servant, Mr. Stewart.—Perhaps hardly an unbiassed witness, Ardroy, in view of that kinship; but let that pass. Truth will always out.”

      Ian heard his cousin give an exclamation under his breath. “Is it possible that you are learning that at last?” he asked.

      The new Chief moved forward a little from his stand by the hearth. “You’ll not advance your cause by being offensive, Ewen Cameron!” he retorted, his eyes lighting up. “There’s one thing you have certainly no need to learn, and that’s the advantage of having some relative or other at your heels in your dealings with me! This time, however, I trust that your intervention will not be required to save me from assassination by your henchman, as it was in the case of Mr. Grant. I owe you thanks for that intervention, if for nothing else.”

      A brief but tingling silence succeeded this speech, to Ian so startling that he almost thought his ears could not have conveyed its purport aright. But one glance at Ewen’s face and pose convinced him that battle was now joined between him and the speaker over a matter more serious than a few supposedly stolen cattle.

      “Since you have brought up what occurred at our last meeting, Mr. MacPhair,” said Ardroy with extreme grimness “—though I should have thought you would have preferred it to remain in oblivion—we had best go into it thoroughly. If you wish, I will ask Mr. Stewart to withdraw.”

      “By no means,” responded Finlay the Red, folding his arms. “For I do not know what account you may have given him of that occasion.” He turned to Ian. “Your kinsman here, Mr. Stewart, most unwarrantably invaded my premises in London, and his satellite, Mr. Hector Grant, took from me, at the point of the sword, a treacherous paper of his own writing which, since it came by good chance into my hands, I had been able to hinder from fulfilling its black purpose. I——”

      He got no further. Ewen had stridden forward, overriding him. “Don’t listen to him, Ian! God’s name, this impudence surpasses everything.—Who stole that letter, Finlay MacPhair, who deciphered it and sent it to the English Government, who——”

      “ ’Tis much more to the point,” broke in Glenshian with an unpleasant smile, “to ask who wrote it, full of secret information as it was, and handed it over, under pretext of having been robbed, to a Government agent in the Highlands? Mr. Stewart had better know the answer to that. It was the same Mr. Hector Grant who was so anxious to get his damning property into his own hands again that he was ready to cut my throat for it!”

      “That’s a foul lie!” cried Ewen passionately. “Hector Grant’s letter was written and intended for the eyes of Cluny Macpherson and no man else.”

      “And had no direction upon it!” sneered Glenshian. “A curious kind of ‘letter.’ ’Twas nothing else but a paper of information, and if I had not rescued it——”

      “ ‘Rescued it!’ ” burst out Ardroy, unable to contain himself. “You ‘rescued’ it from your ally, Mr. Pelham, I suppose! Did you also ‘rescue’ the letter from that dirty traitor, Samuel Cameron, which was in your pocket that day? You did not save him from being drummed out of the regiment for his complicity. And the noblest blood that has been shed in England this many a year . . . do you ever look at your hands, Glenshian?”

      At that unmistakeable insinuation the much perturbed Ian expected the Chief either to spring at his accuser’s throat or to crumple up entirely.