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

your quarters instantly. It means capture to return to Duncan Stewart’s.”

      Archie was attentive enough now. “I doubt if there is anyone else in the neighbourhood who is anxious for my presence.”

      “But it would be infinitely better to leave the neighbourhood altogether,” urged his cousin.

      Doctor Cameron considered. “I might lie for a while in the braes of Balquhidder on the far side of the loch—’tis solitary enough there. But if the soldiers are coming from Inversnaid it would be well to avoid that direction, and better to make at right angles through this wood and up the slopes of Beinn an-t-Sithein. . . . Yet, Ewen, ’tis sore hearing and hard believing that anyone can have informed of me. From whom was this letter which you——”

      The sound of a shot, followed by a scream, both quite near, killed the question on his lips, and drove the blood from Ewen’s heart, if not from the speaker’s own. In a moment more, as they both stood mute and tense, a patter of light running feet and the pound of heavier ones could be heard, and along the path which they had left came flying, with terror on her face, a little barefoot girl of about twelve, closely pursued by a soldier, musket in hand, who was shouting after her to stop.

      Both men started indignantly to make their way out of the undergrowth towards the pair, but Ewen turned fiercely on his companion.

      “Archie, are you quite mad?” he whispered. “Stay there—and down with you!” He gave him a rough push, and himself crashed through the bushes and burst out on to the path just in front of the runners. The little girl, sobbing with fright, almost collided with him; he seized her, swung her behind him, and angrily faced the panting soldier. “Put down that musket, you ruffian! This is not the Slave Coast!”

      The man’s face was almost the colour of his coat from his exertions, but, at least, there was no evil intent written there. “I were only trying . . . to stop the varmint!” he explained, very much out of breath. “She’s sent on ahead by some rebels in a farm . . . we marched by a while since . . . to carry a warning belike . . . I’ve bin a-chasing of her up and down hills for the last half-hour. Orders it was . . . I wouldn’t lay a finger on a child . . . got two of me own . . . only fired to frighten her into stopping—Hold her, or she’ll be off again!”

      But there did not seem much likelihood of that. The little girl was on her knees in a heap behind the Highlander, her hands over her ears. He stooped over her.

      “You are not hurt, my child, are you?” he asked in the Gaelic. “Then get you home again; you have done your work. You need not be frightened any more; the redcoat will not harm you.” And he took out a piece of money and closed her fingers over it.

      “What are you saying to her—what are you giving her money for?” demanded the soldier suspiciously. “I believe you’ll be in league with the rebels yourself!”

      “I should scarce tell her to go home if I were,” answered Ewen with an indifference which he was far from feeling. Good God, if next moment a picket should appear and search the bushes—or if Archie did not now remain motionless beneath them! “I do not know what you mean,” he continued, “about a warning, but between us we have stopped the child, and the sixpence I have given her will make her forget her fright the quicker—Off with you!” he repeated to the girl.

      Ewen’s words had no doubt conveyed to the child a sense that she had accomplished her mission, though the eyes under the elf-locks of rusty hair were still fixed on him, and her whole eager, thin little face asked a wordless question to which he dared not make a further reply. Then, without a sign, she sprang up and slipped into the undergrowth, apparently to avoid the proximity of the redcoat, emerged from it on the other side of him, and ran back the way she had come.

      Her late pursuer turned and looked after her, while Ewen’s fingers closed round one of Lord Aveling’s pistols in his pocket. What was the soldier going to do next? If he took a dozen steps off the path to his right he must see Archie crouched there; and if he did that he would have to be shot in cold blood. If he even stayed where he was much longer he would have to be accounted for somehow, since his mere presence would prevent the Jacobite from getting away unobserved. And get away he must, at once.

      “Where’s your main body?” asked Ardroy suddenly.

      The soldier turned round again. “D’ye think I’m quite a fool that you ask me that?” he retorted scornfully. “If you’re one of the disaffected yourself, as I suspect you are, from speaking Erse so glibly, you’ll soon find that out.” And swinging suddenly round again, he went off at a trot on the way he had come.

      “Why, the Duke of Argyll himself speaks Erse on occasions!” Ewen called after him mockingly. But there was no mockery in his heart, only the most sickening apprehension. He was right, only too right, about the warrant, and the child had been sent on ahead to carry a warning, just as Mrs. Stewart had said would probably happen. Had Mrs. Stewart herself sent her? No, the man said she had come from a farm.

      Directly the redcoat was out of sight Ardroy hurled himself into his cousin’s lair. Doctor Cameron was already on his feet.

      “You heard, Archie? There’s not a moment to lose! He’ll be back with a party, very like, from the child running this way . . . though how she knew . . .”

      “Yes, we must make for the side of Beinn an-t-Sithein,” said Archibald Cameron without comment. “That is to say, I must. You——”

      “Do you suppose I am going to leave you? Lead, and I’ll follow you.”

      “There’s no path,” observed the Doctor. “Perhaps ’tis as well; we’ll not be so easy to track.”

      For ten minutes or so Ewen followed his cousin uphill through the wood, sometimes pushing through tangle of various kinds, sometimes stooping almost double, sometimes running, and once or twice getting severely scratched by holly bushes. But they were not yet in sight of its upper edge when Doctor Cameron came to an abrupt stop and held up his hand.

      “Listen! I thought I heard voices ahead.”

      The wind, which had risen a good deal in the last half-hour, and now tossed the branches overhead, made it difficult to be sure of this. Ewen knelt and put his ear to the ground.

      “I hear something, undoubtedly.” He got up and looked at Archie anxiously. “If we should prove to be cut off from the hill-side, is there any place in the wood where we could lie hid—a cave or even a heap of boulders?”

      “There is nothing that I know of.—Ewen, where are you going?”

      “Only a little farther on, to reconnoitre. Oh, I’ll be careful, I promise you. Meanwhile stay you there!” And he was off before Archie could detain him.

      It took him but five minutes or so of careful stalking to be certain that there were soldiers between them and the slopes which they were hoping to gain. There were also, without doubt, soldiers somewhere in the lower part of the wood near the stream. If they could neither leave the wood, nor hide in it, Archie must infallibly be taken.

      Ewen slid round the beech-trunk against which he was pressed, meaning to retrace his steps immediately to the spot where he had left his kinsman, but for a moment he stood there motionless, with a horrible premonition at his heart. O God, it could not be that this was the end for Archie! A sort of blindness seemed to pass over his vision, and when it cleared he found his eyes fixed on something farther down the slope of the wood, a little to his left, something that he must have been looking at already without recognising it for what it was—a small thatched roof.

      It seemed like a miracle, an answer to prayer at the least. Ewen slipped back with all speed to the Doctor.

      “Yes, we are cut off,” he whispered, “and we cannot go back. But, Archie, there’s some kind of little building farther down the wood. I saw but its roof, yet it may serve us better than nothing. Let us go and look at it.”

      They hurried down the slope again. Here the dead