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

this when you have finished with it.’ But they are not signed.”

      “The question is,” said Ewen reflectively, “whether Mr. Pelham handed over the letter to Glenshian, for whatever purpose, or whether Glenshian sent it to him in the first instance.”

      “Yes, that is the question. And how, in the latter case, did it first come into Glenshian’s hands?”

      Dark and slippery paths indeed, such as Archie had hinted at last autumn! Ewen looked round the room. There was a writing-desk in one corner. Should they break it open? The key, no doubt, was on that limp, unstirring figure on the bed, but Ewen, at least, could not bring himself to search for it there. Hector was apparently less troubled with scruples or repugnance. He went and stooped over it, and came back not with keys, but with a pocket-book, and pulled the contents out on to the table.

      “More bills,” said he. “A paper of accounts . . . an assignation, or what looks like it . . . a letter in cipher, addressed to Mr. Alexander Jeanson (who is he? ’tis probably an alias) and—hallo, here’s a letter from Lille!”

      He caught it up, ran his eyes over it, uttered a sound as if he had been stabbed to the heart, and handed it to Ewen.

      Ewen read: ‘Lille, February 15th, 1753. I shall punctually attend to the recommendation which you sent me by the young gentleman from Troy, and should it come to pass that my namesake is taken, I’ll contrive that the loss which that gentleman has sustained shall serve as a cloak to cover Pickle, to whom commend me. C. S.’

      “I don’t understand,” said Ewen, puzzled. “Who signs ‘C. S.’—is it a pretended letter from the Prince? Who is ‘Pickle’, and who is ‘the young gentleman from Troy’?”

      “Myself,” answered Hector in a suffocated voice. “Is not my name a Trojan one? And ‘C. S.’—I know his writing; he has but reversed his initials, and see the reference to ‘my namesake’s’ capture—is that fox Samuel Cameron, of my regiment, to whom, to oblige Glenshian there, I took a letter in January . . . the very letter, probably, that told him of my loss, which Glenshian had just learnt from me! Was there ever such infamy—double infamy!” He glared at the bed. “And he made me his catspaw—made me myself the instrument of what may yet be my ruin. I think I’ll——”

      But Ewen, as white as a sheet, was gripping his arms with vice-like strength.

      “Hector, let’s go, let’s go! A terrible thought has just come to me, and if I stay I, too, shall be tempted to run my sword through him! God preserve us both from murdering a senseless man! Come, come quickly!”

      “But what ails you—what is it, your thought?”

      Ewen shuddered, and began to drag at him. “Come!” He glanced at the bed in a kind of horror. “I saw him move; he is coming to himself.”

      He unlocked the door, still with the same nervous haste, and only just in time to avert suspicion, for steps were hurrying up the stair. A thin, pale young man, who seemed a servant, stopped at the top on seeing the two gentlemen in the doorway.

      Hector kept his head. “We were just about to seek assistance for your master, Seumas,” he said in Gaelic. “He has had some kind of a fainting fit, and we have laid him on his bed.”

      The gillie uttered an inarticulate cry and rushed past them. Exclamations of grief and of endearment, in the same tongue, floated out through the open door.

      “We need not stay to listen to that!” said Hector scornfully. “And the dog will recover to do fresh mischief. But when he does——”

      “I think he has done the worst he can ever do,” said Ewen almost inaudibly, as they went down the stairs, and he put a shaking hand to his head as though he had received a physical shock.

      “That was his gillie,” whispered young Grant when they were outside. “Did you recognise him as the man who held the torch that night?”

      “Instantly,” answered Ardroy, who had a strange look, as of a man sleep-walking. “But it needed not that. That was not the first time his master had come out of that door! . . . Oh, Hector, Hector, now I know, I think, on whose account it was that Archie had no trial. For whether Finlay MacPhair himself, or the unknown man who sent the information to Edinburgh from Glenbuckie, be the ‘Pickle’ whom Samuel Cameron—of Archie’s own clan and regiment—has slandered you to shield, there’s not a doubt that the centre of the black business is Finlay—a MacPhair and a Chief’s son! God help us all! is there no faith or loyalty left . . . save in the Tower?”

      CHAPTER XXII

       ‘STONE-DEAD HATH NO FELLOW’

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      “Aveling,” said the Earl of Stowe with determination, one morning eight days later, “I have decided to go about this matter to-day to one of the Secretaries of State, Jardyne for choice.”

      “But, my lord,” protested his son in astonishment, “you cannot—you are quite unfit to leave the house.”

      For the enemy whose approach Lord Stowe had announced to Ewen Cameron a fortnight ago, if still kept more or less at bay, had not yet withdrawn from the assault; and his lordship was still confined to his bedroom, where he sat at this moment in a dressing-gown, one swathed foot supported on a rest.

      “My dear child,” said Lord Stowe, “consider the situation! Here we are at the second of June, and in five days, unless a miracle be performed for him, that unfortunate gentleman suffers at Tyburn. For all my promises to Mr. Cameron, and for all the representations which I have made to those in authority, I have accomplished nothing on his kinsman’s behalf. Nor can I see any sign of the petitions delivered to His Majesty and the two princesses at the beginning of this week having had any effect whatsoever. I must make yet another effort, for when a man’s life is at stake, what is a gouty toe? Call Rogers, let him dress me, and I will be carried down to my coach, and go to see Mr. Jardyne.”

      Lord Aveling looked at his father with real admiration; and, indeed, who shall say that heroism is confined to the young and heroic? Then he rang the bell for Rogers, and to that horrified elderly valet Lord Stowe conveyed his self-sacrificing intention.

      Meanwhile Aveling went to visit his mother, whom he found at her toilet-table, her woman in attendance.

      “Your father is completely crazy,” she said, on hearing the news. “I have no patience with such foolishness! Why should he so put himself about for this Doctor Cameron, who is less than nothing to him? If the Government mean to hang and quarter him they will, and no amount of inflammation to my lord’s toe will save him—Willis, give me the hare’s foot and the last pot of rouge that I commanded, the new kind. I am a thought too pale to-day.”

      “I do not think,” said her son, studying his mother’s delicate profile as she leant forward to the mirror and put the last touches to her complexion—he was never admitted at any unbecoming stage of her toilet, and all fashionable people rouged as a matter of course—“I do not think that the Earl is doing this entirely on Doctor Cameron’s account. He considers, as you know, that he owes a heavy debt to Mr. Ewen Cameron, and to use his influence on his kinsman’s behalf is the manner in which he undertook to discharge it.”

      Lady Stowe dabbed with the hare’s foot a moment before saying anything, and when she spoke her tone was a curious one. “I, too, made an offer to that young man—that I would tell him anything he wished to know about your poor brother, and that he should be admitted for that purpose at any hour when I was not receiving. I cannot learn that he has ever tried to avail himself of the opportunity.”

      “No doubt he has been very much occupied,” suggested Lord Aveling. “It was probably he who escorted Mrs. Cameron when she