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

“I shall be glad enough to lie at Mr. MacColl’s myself to-night,” he answered. “I was almost on the point of turning back when I heard your voices. Do I go too fast for you, sir?”

      “Not at all; and I hope I do not tire this strong arm of yours? We were just coming in our psalm a while ago to ‘And they shall bear thee in their hands, that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone’.” He turned round with a smile to the boy following behind. “You see how minutely it is fulfilled, Callum!—Are you of these parts, sir?”

      “No,” answered Ewen. “I am a Cameron from Lochaber.”

      “Ah,” observed the old man, “if you are a Cameron, as well as being the Lord’s angel to us, then you will be of the persecuted Church?”

      “An Episcopalian, do you mean, sir? Yes,” answered Ewen. “But not an angel.”

      “Angelos, as you are no doubt aware, Mr. Cameron, means no more in the original Greek than a messenger.” He gave the young man the glimpse of a beautiful smile. “But let us finish the psalm together as we go. You have the Gaelic, of course, for if we say it in English, Callum will not be able to join with us.”

      And, going slowly, but now more securely, on the firmer ground, they said the remaining four verses together. To Ewen, remembering how as a child he had wondered what it would be like to ‘go upon the lion and adder’, and whether those creatures would resent the process, the whole episode was so strange as to be dreamlike. Who was this saintly traveller, so frail looking and so old, who ventured himself with a boy of sixteen or so through bogs and snow in a Highland February?

      Ere they reached Duncan MacColl’s little farm up the other side of the glen he had learnt his identity. His charge was a Mr. Oliphant, formerly an Episcopal minister in Perthshire, who had been moved by the abandoned condition of ‘these poor sheep’ in the Western Highlands to come out of his retirement (or rather, his concealment, for he had been ejected from his own parish) to visit them and administer the Sacraments. He was doing this at the risk of his liberty, it might be said of his life, for transportation would certainly kill him—and of his health in any case, it seemed to Ewen, for, indomitable and unperturbed though he seemed in spirit, he was not of an age for this winter travelling on foot. When he had learnt his name Ewen was a little surprised at Mr. Oliphant having the Gaelic so fluently, but it appeared that his mother was Highland, and that for half his life he had ministered to Highlanders.

      The light from the little farmhouse window on the hill-side above them, at first a mere glow-worm, cheered them through the cold snowy gloom which was now full about the three. Nearer, they saw that the door, too, stood open, half-blocked by a stalwart figure, for Duncan MacColl was expecting Mr. Oliphant, and in considerable anxiety at his delay. He greeted the old man with joy; he would have sent out long before this to search for him, he said, but that he had no one of an age to send—he was a widower with a host of small children—and was at last on the point of setting forth himself.

      “But now, thank God, you are come, sir—and you could not have found a better helper and guide than Mr. Cameron of Ardroy,” he said warmly, ushering them all three into the living-room and the cheerful blaze. “Come ben, sirs, and you, little hero!”

      “ ’Twas not I found Mr. Cameron,” said Mr. Oliphant, with his fine, sweet smile. “He was sent to us in our distress.”

      “Indeed, I think it must have been so,” agreed MacColl. “Will you not all sit down and warm yourselves, and let the girl here dry your cloaks? You’ll be wise to take a dram at once.” He fussed over the old priest as a woman might have done, and, indeed, when Ewen saw Mr. Oliphant in the light he thought there could hardly be anyone less fitted for a rough journey in this inclement weather than this snowy-haired old man with the face of a scholar and a saint.

      But there was for the moment no one but the boy Callum with them in the kitchen when Mr. Oliphant turned round from the fire to which he had been holding out his half-frozen hands.

      “Angelos, will you take an old man’s blessing?”

      “I was about to ask for it, sir,” said Ewen, bending his head; and the transparent hand was lifted.

      So Ardroy had a private benediction of his own, as well as that in which the house and all its inmates were included, when Mr. Oliphant read prayers that night.

      * * * * *

      Ewen was up betimes next morning, to find the snow gone from the ground, and a clear sky behind the white mountain-tops.

      “Ay, I was surprised to see that fall,” observed Duncan MacColl. “We have had so strangely mild a winter; there were strawberries, they say, in bloom in Lochiel’s garden at Achnacarry near Christmas Day—though God knows they can have had little tending. Did ye hear that in Lochaber, Mr. Cameron? ’Twas a kind of a portent.”

      “I wish it may be a good one,” said Ewen, his thoughts swinging regretfully back to forfeited Achnacarry and his boyish rambles there. “By the way, you have no news, I suppose, of someone who owns a very close connection with that name and place—you know whom I mean?”

      “ ‘Mr. Chalmers’?” queried the farmer, using the name by which Doctor Cameron often passed. “No, I have heard nothing more since I saw you a few weeks syne, Mr. Cameron, until last Wednesday, when there was a cousin of mine passed this way and said there was a rumour that the Doctor was in Ardnamurchan again of late.”

      “Do you tell me so?” exclaimed Ewen. “To think that all this time that I have been in Ardgour and Sunart I have never heard a whisper of it, though I know he was there before Christmas. Yet it is possible that he has returned, mayhap to his kinsman Dungallon.” For Doctor Cameron’s wife was a Cameron of Dungallon, and there were plenty of the name in Ardnamurchan.

      “I think it will likely be no more than a rumour,” said Mr. MacColl. “Forbye, from what he told me last night, there will soon be another man in Ardnamurchan who’ll need to walk warily there, though not for the same reason.”

      “You mean Mr. Oliphant? Yes, I know that he is set on going there, despite the presence of the garrison at Mingary Castle. And ’tis an uncommon rough journey for a man of his age and complexion. He should have someone with him besides that lad. Could not some grown man be found to accompany him?”

      Duncan MacColl shook his head. “Not here, Mr. Cameron. I would offer to go myself, but that I have the whole work of the farm on my hands just now, for my herdsman is ill. Yet it’s true; he needs a stronger arm than yon Callum’s.”

      Ewen stood in the doorway reflecting, a tribe of shy, fair children peeping at him from odd corners unnoticed. The idea which had come to him needed weighing. He did greatly long to get back across Loch Linnhe, and if he offered himself as Mr. Oliphant’s escort he would be turning his back upon Appin and all that it meant, even if it were but for a short time. On the other hand, supposing Archie were in Ardnamurchan after all . . . As so often, two half-motives coalesced to make a whole. And when Mr. Oliphant had breakfasted he made his proposal.

      “But, my dear Mr. Cameron, you admitted last night that you were already on your way towards Appin!”

      Ewen replied that this morning, because of some news which Mr. MacColl had just given him, he was, on the contrary, desirous of going into Ardnamurchan. “And if you would allow me to be your escort, sir,” he added, “I should account it a privilege.”

      And he meant what he said. There clung to this gentle and heroic old man, going on this entirely voluntary and hazardous mission, that air of another sphere which either attracts or repels. Both from instinct and from training it strongly attracted Ardroy, who felt also that for once in his life he could render a real service to the Church of his baptism, continually persecuted since the Revolution and now, since Culloden, driven forth utterly into the wilderness—and become the dearer for it.

      “You make a sacrifice, however, Mr. Cameron,” said the old priest, looking at him with eyes as keen as they had ever been. “Be sure that it will be repaid to you in some manner.”