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

know the sympathetic and indignant feeling there is abroad. But, if you wish it, I will be there; nay, if it is your wish, I will make it mine too. . . . Yet even you will not ask me to remain until the end of all?” he added imploringly.

      “No,” said his cousin gravely but serenely, “not until that. Yet I think the end, thank God, will matter very little to me. In spite of the terms of the sentence and of Lord Chief Justice Lee, I have a good hope that I shall not be cut down until I am quite dead. . . . Ewen, Ewen, think it’s yourself that’s going to the gallows (as you nearly did once) and not I! You would not play the child over your own fate, I know that well!” For Ewen had his head on his arms, and his nails were digging into the table. He did not answer.

      “I could wish it were not Tyburn,” Archibald Cameron went on, as if to himself. “My lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino were luckier to suffer on Tower Hill, and by the axe. Yet I must not complain, being but a commoner; indeed, I should think of the great Marquis of Montrose, who was hanged likewise—and from a very lofty ladder too. And I thank my God I was always easier ashamed than frightened. . . . Ewen, Mr. Falconar will be here in a few minutes. Do you wish to make some preparation before you take communion with me?”

      Ewen roused himself, and mechanically knelt down by the table where he had been sitting, put his hands before his face and tried to say a prayer. But it was impossible. His whole soul was too pulsing with revolt to bow itself before that mystery of divine self-humiliation and pain and joy; he could not even say ‘Lord, I am not worthy’; his heart was nothing but a burning stone.

      Nevertheless he still knelt there, rising only when he heard the bolts withdrawn, and there came in, first a very tall, thin man in lay dress, who walked with a limp, and then, on the arm of Rainsford himself, Mrs. Cameron. The Deputy-Lieutenant considerately dismissed the warder and himself took the man’s place, and, almost before Ewen, dazed with pain, had realised it, the service was beginning. Archibald Cameron, his hand in his wife’s knelt at some distance from the improvised altar; Ewen a little way behind them. And, save that it was not dark, but a June evening, the bare masonry of the place might almost have suggested an Eucharist in the catacombs; but Ewen did not think of that. He seemed to be able to think of nothing, though he did perceive that Mr. Falconar, who appeared to be greatly moved, was using, not the English Communion Office, but the proscribed Scottish Liturgy of 1637.

      When the moment of communion approached, the two in front of him rose, and Archie glanced round at him, but Ewen shook his head, and so Doctor Cameron led his wife to one of the footstools and knelt beside her. But when Ewen saw them kneeling there without him, the ties of human affection drew him more strongly than his nonjuring training, with its strict doctrine of the Eucharist and his own fear of unworthy reception, held him back. So he got up after all, and knelt humbly on the floor by Archie’s side; and drinking of the cup after him whose viaticum it truly was, felt for the moment wonderfully comforted, and that the Giver of that feast, first instituted as it was in circumstances of betrayal and imminent death, had pardoned the hard and rebellious heart in him. And he remembered, too, that peaceful Eucharist by the winter sea in Kilmory of Ardnamurchan, and wished that Mr. Oliphant were here. Then he went back to the table where he had sat with Archie, and knelt down again there with his head against the edge, for a long time.

      At last he looked up. The service was over; Mr. Falconar was gone. Archie, with his back to him, had his wife in his arms. Ewen thought that if he also went, the two might have a moment or two together—save for the presence of the Deputy-Lieutenant, who, considerate as ever, was looking out of one of the little windows. But he could not go without a last word. He got to his feet, approached a little way, and said his cousin’s name.

      Doctor Cameron put his wife into a chair, and turned; and Ewen held out his hand.

      “I shall not see you again to have speech with,” he said in Gaelic. His very hands felt numb in Archie’s clasp. “I wish I could die with you,” he whispered passionately.

      Archie held his hands tightly. “Dear lad, what then would Alison do, wanting you, and your boys, and your tenants? You have work here; mine is over.”

      “Gentlemen,” came Rainsford’s voice from behind, “there remains but eleven minutes ere the gates are closed.”

      Time, the inexorable, had dwindled to this! Ewen caught his breath. “Good-bye,” he said after a second of struggle. “Good-bye, faithful and true! Greet Lochiel for me. I will keep the promise I have made you. Look for me there—give me a sign.” He embraced Archie and went out quickly, for the door was ajar, with the armed sentries close outside. Only Mrs. Cameron and General Rainsford remained behind.

      But outside, beyond the sentries, was still Mr. Falconar, with his handkerchief to his eyes. As for Ewen, he leant against the wall to wait for Mrs. Cameron and folded his arms tightly across his breast, as if by that constraint he could bridle a heart which felt as though it were breaking. Perhaps he shut his eyes; at any rate, he was roused by a touch on his arm. It was Mr. Falconar, still painfully agitated.

      “Sir, I shall spend this night praying less, I think, for him than for strength to carry me through this terrible business to-morrow without faltering.”

      “You mean the attending Doctor Cameron to the scaffold,” asked Ewen in a voice which sounded completely indifferent.

      “Yes,” said the clergyman. “I declare to you, sir, that I do not know how I am to come through it. Doctor Cameron’s composure shames me, who am supposed to uphold it. My great fear is lest any unworthy weakness of mine should shake his calm in his last moments—though that hardly seems possible.”

      Ewen was sorry for him. “You cannot withdraw now, I suppose, for he must have a minister with him.”

      “It is usual, I understand; but he does not need one, sir. He has not left it until the eleventh hour, like some, to make his peace with God. I must carry out as much of my office as he requires, but he does not need me to pray for him on the scaffold, priest though I be. I shall ask his prayers. I would ask yours, too, sir, that I do not by any weakness add to his burden to-morrow.”

      Ewen looked at him with a compassion which was shot through by a strange spasm of envy. This man, who dreaded it so, would see Archie once more at close quarters, be able to address him, hear his voice, go with him to the very brink. . . .

      Then through the half-open door came the Deputy-Lieutenant with Mrs. Cameron again on his arm. She looked half-fainting, yet she walked quite steadily. Mr. Falconar being now nearest the door, General Rainsford put her into his charge, and called hastily for the warder to take up his post again within. In a kind of dream Ewen watched the clergyman and the all but widow go down the stairs. His heart ached for her, little and brave and forlorn, her dress slipping slowly from one worn stone step to the next.

      He had started to follow her, and had descended a step or two, when he was aware of a voice calling hurriedly but softly to him from above. He went back again, wondering.

      It was the Deputy-Lieutenant who had called after him, and now met him at the top of the stairway. “Doctor Cameron has remembered something which he had intended to give his wife; but it was you whom he wished called back, if possible.” He pulled out his watch. “Four minutes, no longer, Mr. Cameron!”

      So he was to have speech with Archie once more. And, the warder being still outside, and the Deputy-Lieutenant not seeming to purpose coming in again, for that brief fraction of time they would be alone. Had Archie made a pretext to that end?

      He was standing in the middle of the room with something in his hand. “I forgot to give these to Jean, as I intended, for my eldest son.” And he held out to Ewen two shabby shoe-buckles of steel. “Bid Jean tell him from me,” he said earnestly, “that I send him these, and not my silver ones; and that if I had gold ones I would not send him the gold, but these, which I wore when skulking. For steel being hard and of small value is an emblem of constancy and disinterestedness; and so I would have him always to be constant and disinterested in the service of his King and country, and never to be either bribed or frightened from his duty.—Will you tell her that, Ewen?”

      No, he had not been sent for under