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

me in order to assist an attainted rebel! Since you are his confederate, you shall swing with Doctor Cameron at Tyburn!”

      But Ewen was already unlocking the door of the room. His great dread was that the young man, strung up by rage and disillusionment to what in a woman would have been hysteria point, might forget his promise and proceed unwittingly to rouse the inn. He did not want to use the pistols in order to get clear of the premises, so he slipped as quickly as possible out of the room and locked the door on the outside, hearing, not without remorse, sounds from within which suggested that the boy had flung himself upon the bed and was weeping aloud.

      So ended, in dishonour and brutality, this encounter with his dead friend’s brother, who had acted so generously towards him, and to whom he had felt so strongly attracted. A moment only that thought flashed bitingly through Ewen’s brain; it was no time to indulge in regret or to think of consequences to himself—his immediate task was to warn Archie. To his crimes of treachery and violence he must, therefore, if he could, add that of horse-stealing.

      * * * * *

      And even as Ardroy cautiously lifted the latch of the stable door at Dalmally, away in the little rebuilt barracks near Inversnaid, on Loch Lomond, Captain Craven of Beauclerk’s regiment was reading the belated despatch from the Commander-in-Chief at Edinburgh which he had been roused from his bed to receive.

      “Too late to do anything to-night,” was his comment. Then his eyes fell upon the date which it bore. “Gad, man,” he said to the wearied messenger, “I should have received this warrant yesterday! The bird may be flown by to-morrow. What in God’s name delayed you so?”

      CHAPTER XIV

       IN TIME—AND TOO LATE

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      The fitful sun of the March afternoon came flooding straight through the open door of Mr. Stewart of Glenbuckie’s house into the hall, which was also the living-room, and through this same open door little Peggy Stewart, the room’s sole occupant, had she not been otherwise engaged, could have looked out across the drop in front of the high-standing house to the tossing slopes beyond the Calair burn. But Peggy had earlier begged from her mother, who had been baking to-day, a piece of dough, and, following the probably immemorial custom of children, had fashioned out of it, after countless remodellings, an object bearing some resemblance to the human form, with two currants for eyes. And while she sat there, regarding her handiwork with the fond yet critical gaze of the artist, before taking it to the kitchen to be baked, there suddenly appeared without warning, in the oblong of pale sunlight which was the doorway, the figure of a large, very tall man. This stalwart apparition put out a hand to knock, and then, as if disconcerted at finding the door open, withdrew it.

      Miss Peggy, who was no shyer than she need be, rose from her little stool near the spinning-wheel and advanced into the sunlight. And to a man who had ridden all night on a stolen horse, and had since, tortured by the feeling that every delay was the final and fatal one, stumbled and fought his way over the steep and unfamiliar mountain paths on the western slopes of Ben More and Stobinian, to such a man the appearance at Stewart of Glenbuckie’s door of a chubby little girl of six, dressed in a miniature tight-waisted gown of blue which almost touched the floor, and clasping in one hand what he took to be an inchoate kind of doll, was vaguely reassuring.

      “Is this the house of Mr. Duncan Stewart?” he asked.

      Gazing up at this tall stranger with her limpid blue eyes the child nodded.

      “Is he within, my dear?”

      Miss Peggy Stewart shook her curly head. “My papa is from home.”

      “And . . . have you a gentleman staying here?”

      “He is not here neither. Only Mother is here.”

      Instantly Ewen’s thoughts swung round to the worst. They had both been arrested, then, Stewart as well as Archie. The noticeable quiet of the house was due to its emptiness—only a woman and a child left there. He was too late, as he had expected all along. He put his head mutely against the support of the door, and so was found an instant later by Mrs. Stewart, who, hearing voices, had come from the kitchen.

      “Is aught amiss, sir? Are you ill?”

      Ardroy raised his head and uncovered. But this lady did not sound or look like a woman whose husband had recently been torn from her. Hope stirred again. “Madam, have the soldiers been here after . . . any person?”

      Mrs. Stewart’s calm, fair face took on a look of surprise. “No, sir, I am glad to say. But will you not enter?”

      At this bidding Ewen walked, or rather stalked, over the threshold; he was stiff. “Thank God for that!” he said fervently. “But they may be here at any moment.” He bethought him, and closed the door behind him. “There is a warrant out for . . . that person.”

      Mrs. Stewart lowered her voice. “Then it is fortunate that he is not in the house.”

      “He is away, with your husband?”

      “No, sir. Mr. Stewart is in Perth on affairs. I do not know where ‘Mr. Chalmers’ has gone this afternoon, but he will return before dark.”

      “He must at all costs be prevented from doing that, madam,” said Ewen earnestly, while Peggy tugged at her mother’s skirts whispering, with equal earnestness, something about her ‘bread mannie’ and the oven. “If he comes back here, he will be running into a trap. I cannot understand why the warrant has not already been executed, but, since it has not, let us take advantage of the mercy of heaven—My own name, by the way, madam, is Cameron, and I am ‘Mr. Chalmers’s’ near kinsman. He must be found and stopped before he reaches this house!”

      “Certainly he should be,” agreed Mrs. Stewart. “Unfortunately—be quiet, my child—unfortunately, I do not know in which direction he has gone, whether down the glen or up it.”

      “Mr. Chalmers was going to Balquhidder,” observed Peggy with composure. “He telled me; he said tell Mother, but I forgot—Mother, please put my bread mannie in the oven!”

      The two adults looked down anxiously at the source of this information.

      “Are you sure, Peggy, that that is where Mr. Chalmers has gone?—Yes, darling,” added her mother hastily, “I will have your bread mannie put in at once if this gentleman will excuse me.” She gave Ewen a look which seemed to say, ‘I am not usually so weak and indulgent, but it is politic in this case, for if she cries we shall get no more out of her.’

      Yet, as it happened, indulgence got no more either, for there seemed no more for Peggy to tell when she was asked, and so Ewen stood on the threshold of Mrs. Stewart’s spotless kitchen and watched with troubled eyes the consignment of Peggy’s masterpiece to the oven. And, with his own boys in mind, he found time to wonder at that world set apart, that fairy world in which children dwell, and to think how happily and uncomprehendingly they move amid the tragedies and anxieties of the other, touching them at every point, and often by sheer contrast heightening them, but usually unaffected by the contact. . . .

      Then Mrs. Stewart came out, saying over her shoulder to someone within, “Janet, keep the child with you for a while. Mr. Cameron, you’ll take some refreshment before you start?”

      But Ewen refused, hungry and spent though he was, for he would not spare the time. Mrs. Stewart, however, returned swiftly to the kitchen, and was heard giving orders for bread and meat to be made ready for him to take with him.

      “Now I’ll give you directions,” she said, hurrying out again. “Yet, Mr. Cameron, I cannot think that this is true about a warrant, for had there been any soldiers on the march from Loch Lomond side the country people would most certainly have sent messengers on ahead