The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

in his native tongue.

      His master sprang up in wrath. “Do you tell me that you have spent all I gave you? Death without a priest to you! Here, take this, and see you make it last longer!”

      Pulling a small handful of silver out of his breeches pocket, he flung a few coins towards him, and as Seumas meekly stooped to pick them up from the floor, sat down again and counted over the rest, his brow darkening.

      He really was poor—still. Yet, for all his pretence to Hector, no one stood in less danger than he of being again confined by the English Government, and well he knew it. But though that Government left him at large to continue his services it paid them chiefly in promises; and it is galling to have sold your soul, to betray your kin, your comrades, and, as far as in you lies, your Prince, and to get so few of the thirty pieces in return. Perhaps the paymasters thought but poorly of what they obtained from the informer.

      Did the letter-writer himself suspect that, as he sat there now, his chin on his hand, and that scowl darkening his face? It did not seem likely, for no services that Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian could render, however base, would ever appear to him other than great and valuable. Behind those strange light eyes was no place for remorse or shame; the almost crazy vanity which dwelt there left them no entrance to his spirit.

      CHAPTER X

       ‘AN ENEMY HATH DONE THIS’

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      The snow gave no signs of ceasing. It had never been blinding, it had never swirled in wreaths against one, yet this steady and gentle fall, only beginning about mid-day, had contrived to obliterate landmarks to a surprising degree, and to make progress increasingly difficult. When Ewen had started this morning he had not anticipated a snowstorm, though the sky looked heavy, and even now the fall was not enough to stop him, but he found his surroundings getting darker than was pleasant, and began to think that he might possibly be benighted before he reached the little clachan for which he was bound.

      Although it was the second week in February, Ardroy was still west of Loch Linnhe—in Sunart, in fact. At first, indeed, when, leaving his hiding-place on Meall Breac, he had wandered from croft to croft, seeking shelter at each for no more than a night or two, he had known that it would be folly on his part to attempt to cross the loch, since all the way southward from Fort William the soldiers must be on the look-out for him. Yet he had not gone far up Glen Clovulin when he heard that those whom he had so unluckily encountered that morning at Ardgour were a party on their way from Mingary Castle to relieve the guard quartered at Ballachulish over the body of James Stewart, in order that it should not be taken down for burial. They could not possibly have known at that time of his and Hector’s escape; perhaps, even, in their ignorance, they might not have molested the boat’s crew had they landed.

      But five weeks had elapsed since that episode, and it might be assumed that even Fort William was no longer keeping a strict look-out for the fugitives. Ewen was therefore working his way towards the Morven district, whence, crossing Loch Linnhe into Appin, he intended to seek his uncle’s house at Invernacree, and once more get into touch with his own kin. To Alison, his first care, he had long ago despatched a reliable messenger with tidings of his well-being, but his own wandering existence these last weeks had cut him off from any news of her, since she could never know where any envoy of hers would find him.

      Pulling his cloak—which from old habit he wore more or less plaid-fashion—closer about him, Ewen stopped now for a moment and took stock of his present whereabouts. The glen which he followed, with its gently receding mountains, was here fairly wide, so wide in fact that in this small, close-falling snow and fading light he could not see across to its other side. He could not even see far ahead, so that it was not easy to guess how much of its length he still had to travel. “I believe I’d be wiser to turn back and lie the night at Duncan MacColl’s,” he thought, for, if he was where he believed, the little farm of Cuiluaine at which, MacColl being an Appin man and a Jacobite, he had already found shelter in his wanderings, must lie about two miles behind him up the slope of the farther side of the glen. He listened for the sound of the stream in the bottom, thinking that by its distance from the track he could roughly calculate his position. Even in that silence he could hardly hear it, so he concluded that he must be come to that part of the valley where the low ground was dangerously boggy, though the track, fortunately, did not traverse it, but kept to higher ground. He was therefore still a good way from the mouth of the glen.

      But while he thus listened and calculated he heard, in that dead and breathless silence, not only the faint far-off murmur of water, but the murmur of human voices also. Hardly believing this, he went on a few steps and then paused again to listen. Yes, he could distinctly hear voices, but not those of persons talking in an ordinary way, for the speakers seemed rather to be repeating something in antiphon, and the language had the lilt of Gaelic. Once more Ardroy went forward, puzzled as to the whereabouts of the voices, but now recognising the matter of their recitation, for there had floated to him unmistakable fragments about the snare of the hunter, the terror by night, and the arrow by day. A snow-sprinkled crag suddenly loomed up before him, and going round it he perceived, somewhat dimly at first, who they were that repeated Gaelic psalms in the darkening and inhospitable landscape.

      A little below the track, on the flatter ground which was also the brink of the bog, rose two shapes which he made out to be those of an old man and a boy, standing very close together with their backs to him. A small lantern threw a feeble patch of light over the whitened grass on which it stood; beside it lay a couple of shepherd’s crooks and two bundles.

      Ewen was too much amazed to shout to the two figures, and the snow must have muffled his approach down the slope. The recitation went on uninterrupted:

      “ ‘There shall no evil happen unto thee,’ ” said the old man’s voice, gentle and steady.

      “ ‘Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,’ ” repeated the younger, more doubtfully.

      “ ‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee.’ ”

      “ ‘To keep thee in all——’ ” The lad who had turned his head, broke off with a shrill cry, “Sir, sir, he has come—the angel!”

      “ ‘To keep thee in all thy ways,’ ” finished the old man serenely. Then he too looked up and saw Ewen standing a little above them, tall, and white all over the front of him with snow.

      “I told you, Callum, that it would be so,” he said, looking at the boy; and then, courteously, to Ewen, and in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman, “You come very opportunely, sir, to an old man and a child, if it be that you are not lost yourself, as we are?”

      Ewen came down to their level, and, in spite of the falling snow, removed his bonnet. “I think I can direct you to shelter, sir. Do you know that you are in danger of becoming bogged also?”

      “I was beginning to fear it,” said the old man, and now there was a sound of weariness, though none of apprehension, in his voice. “We are on our way to Duncan MacColl’s at Cuiluaine, and have lost the path in the snow. If it would not be delaying you overmuch, perhaps you would have the charity to put us into it again.”

      “You are quite near the track, sir,” replied Ardroy. “But I will accompany you to Cuiluaine. Will you take my arm? The shortest way, and perhaps the safest, to regain the path, is up this slope.”

      The old man took the proffered support, while the boy Callum, who had never removed his soft, frightened gaze from the figure of the ‘angel’, caught a fold of Ewen’s wet cloak and kissed it, and the rescuer began to guide both wayfarers up the whitened hill-side.

      “But, sir,” protested the old traveller, breathing a little hard, when they were all back upon the path, “we are perhaps taking you out of your own road?”

      They