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

saw?”

      “I did both, though with difficulty, being at the back of the court, which was crammed with persons like myself, and suffocatingly hot. The proceedings were quite short. The Doctor was extremely composed, neither defiant nor a whit overwhelmed; he appeared, too, in good health. Nor did he attempt to deny that he was the person named in the Act of Attainder.”

      “Did he make no defence—had he not an advocate?”

      “No. The only defence which he made was to say that he could not have acted otherwise than he did, having to follow Lochiel, his brother and Chief, that in the troubles he had always set his face against reprisals or harsh treatment, of which he gave some instances, and that his own character would bear investigation in the same light. Then came that barbarous sentence for high treason, pronounced by one of the three judges present—the Lord Chief Justice, I think it was—and, Ewen, it was not imagination on my part that he laid particular emphasis on those words respecting the hanging, ‘but not till you are dead’, glowering at the Doctor as he uttered them. Many people remarked it, and were talking about it afterwards. But Doctor Cameron was perfectly calm, and merely made a civil bow at the end; after that, however, he asked earnestly that the execution of the sentence, which had been fixed for this day fortnight, might be deferred a little in order to enable him to see his wife, to whom he had already had permission to write bidding her come to him from France. And he added that she and their seven children were all dependent upon him, and that it would be worse than death to him not to see her again. So the Court decided to instruct the Attorney-General that the sentence should not be carried out until a week later, on the seventh of June, in order to permit of this. Then the Doctor was removed, and everyone fought their way out again; and I came away feeling that if I really believed my rashness and carelessness last September were the cause of Archibald Cameron’s standing there . . . and where I suppose he may stand in three weeks’ time—even though no one accused me of it I would blow my brains out to-night!”

      “Be reassured, Hector, they are not the cause!” said Ardroy in an emotionless voice. But his face was very haggard. “ ’Tis I am the person most immediately responsible, for it was I who found that accursed hut in the wood at Glenbuckie and persuaded him to lie hid in it. . . . Yes, I expected this news, but that makes it no easier to bear—Hector, he must be saved somehow, even if it should mean both our lives!”

      “I am quite ready to give mine,” answered young Grant simply. “It would be the best means, too, of clearing my honour; far the best. But we cannot strike a bargain with the English Government, Ewen, that they should hang us in his place. And I hear that the Tower is a very strong prison.”

      “Let us go to Westminster and see Mr. Galbraith,” said his brother-in-law.

      They walked for some distance in silence, and when they were nearing the top of St. James’s Street Ewen pulled at his companion’s arm.

      “Let us go this way,” he said abruptly, and they turned down Arlington Street. “Just from curiosity, I have a desire to know who lives in a certain new house in the bottom corner there.”

      Hector, usually so alert, seemed too dulled by his recent experience to exhibit either surprise or curiosity at this proceeding. They walked to the end of Arlington Street.

      “Yes, that is the house,” observed Ewen after a moment’s scrutiny. “Now to find out who lives in it.”

      “Why?” asked Hector. And, rousing himself to a rather perfunctory attempt at jocularity, he added, “Remember that you are in company with Alison’s brother, Ardroy, if it’s the name of some fair lady whom you saw go into that house which you are seeking.”

      “ ’Twas a man whom I saw come out of it,” replied Ewen briefly, and, noticing a respectable-looking old gentleman in spectacles advancing down Arlington Street at that moment, he accosted him with a request to be told who lived at Number Seventeen.

      “Dear me,” said the old gentleman, pushing his spectacles into place, and peering up at the tall speaker, “you must, indeed, be a stranger to this part of the town, sir, not to know that Number Seventeen is the house of Mr. Henry Pelham the chief minister, brother to my Lord Newcastle.”

      “I am a stranger,” admitted Ewen. “Thank you, sir.” He lifted his hat again, and the old gentleman, returning the courtesy, trotted off.

      “Mr. Pelham the minister?” remarked Hector with reviving interest. “And whom pray, did you see coming out of Mr. Pelham’s house?”

      “That is just what it might be useful to discover,” replied Ewen musingly, “now that one knows how important a personage lives there.”

      “But I suppose that a good many people must come out of it,” objected the young officer. “Why does the particular man whom you happened to see so greatly interest you?”

      “Because he was a Highlander, and it was close upon midnight. And as a Highlander—though, naturally, a Whig—if one could interest him on a fellow-Highlander’s behalf . . . and he an intimate of Mr. Pelham’s——”

      “How did you know that he was a Highlander, since I take it that he was not wearing the Highland dress?”

      “Because I heard him rate his servant in Erse.”

      “That’s proof enough,” admitted Hector. “Would you know him again if you saw him?”

      “I think so. However, the chances are against my having the good fortune to do so.” Ewen began to walk on. “I wonder what Mr. Galbraith will have to say about this morning’s affair.” And he sighed heavily; there was always much to be said—it was rather, what was to be done.

      (2)

      Darkness had fallen for some time when Ewen neared his lodging in Half Moon Street again; in fact it was nearly eleven o’clock. But when he was almost at the door he realised that to enter was out of the question. He must do something active with his body, and the only form of activity open to him was to walk—to walk anywhere. So, not knowing or caring where he was going, he turned away again.

      His brain was swimming with talk—talk with Hector, talk at Mr. Galbraith’s, talk at the ‘White Cock’, where the three of them had supped. There it had been confidently announced that public opinion would be so stirred over Doctor Cameron’s hard case that the Government would be obliged to commute the sentence, for already its severity seemed like to be the one topic throughout London. It was reported that many Whigs of high standing were perturbed about it and the effect which it might have upon public opinion, coming so long after the rising of ’45, and having regard to the blameless private character of the condemned man. It was even said—the wish having perhaps engendered the idea—that sentence had only been passed in order that the Elector might exercise his prerogative of mercy, and by pardoning Doctor Cameron, perhaps at the eleventh hour, gain over wavering Jacobites by his magnanimity. But one or two others, less optimistic, had asked with some bitterness whether the party were strong or numerous enough now to be worth impressing in this way.

      For fully half an hour Ewen tramped round streets and squares until, hearing a church clock strike, he pulled himself out of the swarm of unhappy thoughts which went with him for all his fast walking, saw that it was between half-past eleven and midnight, and for the first time began to consider where he might be.

      He had really become so oblivious of his surroundings as he went that it was quite a surprise to find himself now in a deserted, narrow, and not particularly reputable-looking street. Surely a few moments ago—yet on the other hand, for all the attention he had been paying, it might have been a quarter of an hour—he had been in a square of large, imposing mansions. Had he merely imagined this; were grief and anxiety really depriving him of his senses? He turned in some bewilderment and looked back the way he had come. London was a confusing town.

      It was a light spring night, and he could see that beyond the end of this narrow street there were much larger houses, mansions even. He was right. But he also saw something which kept him rooted