The Dark Mile. D. K. Broster

were dwindled down nearly to their sockets that night ere Ian put to his cousin the question which had been secretly tearing at him all evening. For up till now they had spoken of nothing but the problem of the stolen cattle.

      “Ewen, is it true about Finlay MacPhair—that he has Doctor Cameron’s blood at his door?”

      Ewen’s eyes met his. The angry mortification still alight in their blue depths gave way to another emotion.

      “It is quite true. I will tell you how I know it. First of all, it was common talk among the Jacobites in London that Archie would never be brought to trial because the English Government would have had to produce evidence whose source they did not wish to reveal—in other words they had some valuable spy whose usefulness they did not intend to curtail by disclosing his identity. Next, with my own eyes I saw Finlay MacPhair coming secretly one night out of the house of Mr. Henry Pelham, my Lord Newcastle’s brother—he who died last year. When I charged Glenshian with this, in Hector’s presence, he denied it absolutely, and told us some fairy tale about a ‘double.’ Upon that we discovered in his lodging the very letter whose loss had caused some most damaging reflections on Hector’s honour—the cipher letter which he had written to Cluny Macpherson and which was stolen from him in the Highlands the previous autumn, when Archie came over, by some man who was either an agent of the Government’s or of Glenshian’s himself.”

      “That, I suppose,” commented Ian, “was the letter which Glenshian pretended this afternoon contained intelligence really meant for the Government, because it was not openly directed to Cluny?”

      “Yes. You see how he twisted that unlucky business, cunning as he is, in order to carry the war into the enemy’s country. I need not tell you that you might as well suspect me of purposely giving information as Hector Grant.—To resume, on finding this letter of his in Finlay’s possession Hector drew his sword upon him; I contrived to separate them before either had injured the other. Glenshian, who was recovering from an illness, swooned from the exertion, and Hector, going through his pockets in search of further evidence, found undeniable testimony that it was actually through his agency that he had been slandered. Finlay had taken steps to try to put the blame, or part of it, for Archie’s capture upon poor Hector’s shoulders. Why should he have done that, if it were not to ease his own?”

      One candle expired guttering in an overflow of wax. Neither of the men at the table even noticed it.

      “You mean to say, then, it was Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian who betrayed Archibald Cameron to death?” said the younger in accents of horror. “Ewen, I can scarce believe it! And if it be so, why in God’s name have you not warned everyone against him—why have you so kept your knowledge to yourself? I know you too well to suppose that it was from fear of any consequence to yourself; moreover if Glenshian knows that you know—and indeed you have now charged him with it to his face—you go always in danger of some measure of retaliation on his part, as you hinted a few nights ago at Invernacree.”

      “It looks somewhat as though that retaliation had already begun,” agreed Ewen with a wry smile. “Your question is very natural, Ian. But it is a different matter to be convinced of Finlay’s responsibility, as I am in my very bones, and to possess sufficient proof to warrant my accusing him directly to the King, or even to Secretary Edgar. I have warned a few friends, privately. But my only proofs are that I saw him coming out of Mr. Pelham’s door, and that Hector’s deciphered letter—and Samuel Cameron’s—were in his possession. Moreover, as I told you after Archie’s execution, the man who sent to the authorities intelligence of his actual whereabouts in Glenbuckie is still to find. He was probably in collusion with Glenshian, or even in his pay—but I have no proof of that whatever. Yet Finlay’s was the hand—I shall believe that to my dying day—though this unknown man was the dagger in it.”

      Ian sighed. A lost cause, indeed, whose adherents could so shamelessly betray a comrade. . . .

      “What was it,” he asked dully, after a moment, “that Glenshian said to you, as he was going away, about a glove and the gutter?”

      Ewen pushed back his chair and rose. “Oh, that! In Edinburgh last autumn he picked up a glove which Alison had dropped and returned it to her. I took it from her and threw it into the gutter. He must have seen me do it . . . I thought he had not . . . though I should have done it just the same. . . . Well, ’tis all one . . . and perhaps he is even with me now.”

      CHAPTER IV

       THE LADY FROM THE LOCH

       Table of Contents

      § 1

      June 19th—21st.

      The tide was running out very strongly from Loch Leven at Ballachulish two evenings later, and the passage across the ferry was consequently prolonged, so hard did the rowers have to strain to keep the ferry-boat even moderately in her course. Between the necessity of coaxing his mare to stand quiet for longer than usual in this craft, and the memory of the day before yesterday’s scene at Ardroy, which continued to play itself over in his brain, Ian Stewart had little thought to spare for the sunset across Loch Linnhe, which was transmuting to red gold the sentinel heights at the entrance to Glencoe. If he noticed it at all, it was but to be reminded of that, even more splendid, by the Loch of the Eagle, and what it had witnessed.

      One could not disembark on the Appin side of the passage without seeing what dangled from the gibbet on the hillock there; a thing which had once been a man, and a Stewart too—chained bones which testified to Campbell vengeance for a murdered Campbell. To-day Ian hardly looked up, but took the road by the gate of Ballachulish House and under the flanks of Lettermore, past the very spot where Campbell of Glenure had fallen, without thought of that three-year old tragedy. Another tragedy was engaging his mind—Archibald Cameron’s—and the incredible part which Finlay MacPhair seemed to have played therein. Really it was less abhorrent to think that Ewen had been mistaken, that his strong affection for his dead kinsman had led him into fixing the guilt of his judicial murder on a man who had indeed behaved in an equivocal fashion, but who, in his position and with his traditions, surely could not have deliberately betrayed a comrade. Besides, as even Ewen had admitted, there was always the actual informer to account for. If Finlay’s hands were smeared, his were dripping.

      The cousins had not spoken again of that black business. The whole of yesterday had been spent in trying to find the man who had so smirched his young laird’s honour by cattle-stealing, but all attempts had proved fruitless, and had only tended to injure the good feeling which existed between Ardroy and his dependents. Ian’s belief that the culprit must have been tracked by one of Glenshian’s people was shaken by the universal denials, not only of the theft, but of any smallest knowledge of it. The mystery of the stolen steers raged like a plague through the house as well; it seemed as if no one could talk of anything else—save, naturally, Ewen’s infant daughter, whom Ian had been allowed to see, and even, to his secret terror, to hold. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable, even unhappy day, and had, Ian feared, sown seeds of mistrust and ill-feeling between Ewen and his tenantry whose harvest might not easily be rooted up. Finlay MacPhair could hardly have planned a better revenge, upon a petty scale, than this which Fate had planned for him.

      But had the planning been entirely Fate’s? Ian went so far as to wonder whether the Chief of Glenshian could possibly have bribed some very poor gillie of Ewen’s to steal the animals, so that he, as owner, could come to Ardroy with the triumphant foreknowledge that he should find them there? Surely no Cameron or MacMartin would have lent himself to such a transaction! And yet . . . it had all fallen out so pat. . . .

      Immersed in these speculations, Ian rode on at a good pace. Duror of Appin was behind him; he would be home before long. The sunset had withered slowly, but now the mountains across Loch Linnhe were once more cloaking themselves in the grape-hued mystery of twilight. Young Invernacree, who loved them, and had something of the poet in him, came for a moment out of his absorption, some Gaelic verses about