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

fooled me, why you urged him to tear from me what I knew, having first made sure that I knew it—it needs no explanation! You wanted to pay off old scores—Edinburgh, Loch Oich side. Be content, you have done it—you have more than done it!”

      “Ardroy, no, no, as God’s my witness,” struck in Keith desperately, “I had no such thought!” But he was not heeded, for Ewen tore on hoarsely:

      “Since you desired so greatly to be even with me for a moment of triumph, could you not have let me be shot, and watched it? Or was that not sufficient for you because I did not know that you were there? . . . Oh, if God would but give me back that moment against the shieling wall, and allow it to finish as it was meant to! Then I should not be to-day what you have made me—a worse traitor than you are yourself!”

      After that there was silence. What use in talking of his good faith and his charitable intentions when they had resulted in this! For it was true then—Ardroy had given the information. Indeed the fact was written on his haunted face.

      But at last Keith said, in a scarcely audible voice and with his eyes on the floor, “What did they . . . do to you?”

      There was no answer, and, looking up, he saw that the wounded man’s outburst had exhausted him; breathing fast, he had put his head back against the edge of the seat behind him, and his eyes were half shut. His appearance was so ghastly that Keith went forward and seized a bowl of water from the floor beside him.

      But a shaking hand came up to keep him off, and he hesitated. “What, are you trying to act that night over again?” asked Ewen bitterly. And Keith stood there helpless, his fingers tightening on the bowl. Was this anguished hostility utterly to defeat him?

      The Highlander looked as if he had not slept for nights and nights; his eyes, naturally rather deepset, were fearfully sunk, and glittered with a feverish brilliance. All his courtesy, all his self-command, his usual rather gentle address, every quality which Keith had observed and carelessly admired in him, seemed obliterated by the event which had brought him almost to breaking-point. “Will you not go?” he gasped out, clenching his hands; “will you not go now that you are satisfied?”

      Keith put down the bowl; the action seemed symbolic. “Ardroy, if you would only listen for a moment!” he pleaded. “Indeed it is not as you think! I never betrayed you—I would as soon betray my own brother! There has been a horrible——”

      “Why must I endure this, too, after all the rest?” broke out Ewen violently. “You cannot make a fool of me again, Major Windham! Have a little pity at the last, and leave me!”

      “No, for your own sake you must hear me!” urged Keith. “It is Major Guthrie who is respon——”

      But Ewen Cameron, with a face like stone (save that no stone image ever had eyes like that), had put his hands over his ears.

      It was hopeless then! Baffled, Keith slowly turned and went to the door. He had wrecked his own career to no purpose. . . . But it was not of that catastrophe which he thought as, having rapped to be let out, he stood there with bent head. He was not even conscious of resentment at the more than taunts which had been flung at him, for it was he who had brought the man who uttered them to this pass.

      He knocked again, louder; but the sergeant must have gone away, possibly to keep watch below. It came to Keith dimly, like a shape seen through fog, that Ardroy and he had once before been locked in together. . . . Then he was aware that the half-prostrate man on the floor had moved a little, that he was leaning on his left hand, and that those glittering blue eyes were on him again.

      “Cannot you get out?” There was impatience in the icy voice.

      “No, for I also am locked in,” answered Keith very low.

      “You—the informer!”

      Keith swallowed hard. “I am a prisoner . . . like you.” But the words would hardly come.

      “Why?”

      “For neglect of duty,” replied Keith wearily. “For turning back while carrying a despatch.”

      “So you cannot even serve your own side faithfully!” observed Ewen with contempt.

      Keith turned a little whiter and gripped the handle of the locked door. For an instant the flame of his hot temper flickered, only to subside among the ashes. “No,” he answered after a moment; “no, so it seems. I have disgraced myself, as well as ruining you. . . . The gaoler must have gone away, I am afraid, and I cannot relieve you of my presence until he returns.”

      “It is of no moment,” replied Ewen coldly, and he shifted himself a trifle so as to look at his visitor no longer, and propped his head on his clenched fist. The plaid in which he was partly wrapped had slipped from his shoulders when he put his hands up to his ears, and there was now nothing to hide his torn and dirty shirt—which, after all, was only of a piece with the general neglect of his person. The only evidence of care or cleanliness was the fresh bandage round his sword-arm. . . . ‘So that has been recently dressed,’ thought Keith, ‘and he can use it. . . . That must be the plaid which I spread over him in the shieling. He was a very different man then. . . .’

      He was surprised, after another appreciable silence, to find himself being addressed again, though not looked at.

      “Why did you turn back?”

      “What is the use of telling you—you will not believe me! Indeed I wonder whether you believe me when I say that I am under arrest; that might be a lie also.”

      He had at least succeeded in gaining Ardroy’s attention, for the latter dropped his arm and once again looked across the room at him. “I should like to know why you turned back?” he repeated, without comment on the reply which he had drawn forth.

      Yes, that at all events he should hear! Keith left the door, where there was no sound of Sergeant Mullins’ approach.

      “Cannot you guess? I came because of you—because, a dozen miles beyond here, on my way back to Inverness, I learnt both of the abominable way in which you had been treated in Guthrie’s camp, and of the manner in which that scoundrel had twisted my words and my actions in order to misrepresent me to you. It was the night before last; it was late, but I resaddled and came back at once—neglecting my duty, Lord Loudoun said. I rode back in the greatest haste to see you, I was in such apprehension about you. When I got here I heard that you——” Ewen drew his breath sharply, and the sentence was not finished. “I insisted on seeing Lord Loudoun at once, and when I was told that you had . . . had made disclosures of your own free will, I demanded to see you. I said that I would never believe that unless you told me so yourself. Then there was a scene of some violence, and I had to give up my sword and my despatch—and I suppose that in a few days my commission will go the same road. Should I have acted so—so madly against my own interests if I had been what you think me? . . . But I am forgetting; you will say that this is false also, though every officer in Fort Augustus should tell you that it is true!”

      Ewen had put his head down on his updrawn right knee. A shaft of sunlight, striking through one of the narrow windows, fell across its auburn disorder. And, looking with something more painful than pity at the utter desolation of his aspect, Keith thought that life could scarcely hold anything more terrible for a gallant man than to feel himself at once a traitor and betrayed. But betrayed he had not been! If only he could be brought to see that!

      And perhaps Ewen was being brought to it, for from his huddled figure there came a long sigh, and, after another silence, words which sounded as though they were wrung from his very heart:

      “I wish to God that I could trust you again!”

      CHAPTER IV

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      Keith ventured nearer. “Why is it so difficult? You trusted me that night.” His own voice was not much less moved than the Highlander’s. “I am not changed: