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

      “You will certainly have a better chance of it. Then I may tell Lochiel, when I get back to Badenoch, that you consent to be reasonable?”

      “Yes, thanks to you, I will go—since he is going. But I must wait a chance of getting off.”

      “There’s a chance now,” said his cousin quickly; “but you must start for the coast to-morrow.”

      “To-morrow!” Ewen’s face fell. “So soon!” His glance swept round the room and lingered for a moment on the heathery distances visible through the window. “Very well,” he said with a little sigh. “Tell me what I must do—no,” he caught himself up, “first tell me a little about Donald. Those wounds of his, are they healed? Archie, I hope due care is being taken of him on Ben Alder?”

      “You look as if you think I ought not to have left him,” said Dr. Cameron, smiling. “But he has had Sir Stuart Threipland of Edinburgh with him, and the wounds are healing, though slowly. And I assure you that I have been too busy following Mercury of late to pay much attention to Æsculapius; I have been to and fro in Lochaber and Moidart a great deal more regularly than the post. More by token I am become a sort of banker. For I suppose you did not hear in your captivity, Ewen, that at the beginning of May two French ships landed six barrels of gold—forty thousand louis d’or—in Moidart for the Prince; and with some ado, owing to the reluctance of Clanranald’s people to lose sight of it, I got it conveyed to Loch Arkaig, and it has been buried there against future requirements.—I know what you are going to say, ‘If only we had had that money earlier, when we needed it so!’ ”

      Those were indeed the words which leapt to the young man’s lips. Yet since over the ruined fortunes of to-day there still danced, like-will-of-the-wisps, the hopes of to-morrow, he fell to discussing the possible uses of this money with the man to whose endeavours (as he soon discovered) it was due that the French had not carried it off again when they heard the news of the disaster at Culloden. Archibald Cameron had indeed played post and banker to some purpose! Ewen looked at him with admiration not free from concern.

      “Archie, are you duly careful of your own safety in these constant journeyings of yours, seeing that you are proscribed by name?”

      His cousin smiled. “You may be sure that I am careful. Am I not pre-eminently a man of peace?”

      Nevertheless not even Balmerino, the dauntless old soldier, was to make a more memorable end on the scaffold than Archibald Cameron. But his time was not yet—not by seven years; though, all unknowing, he had just been talking of what was to bring him there—the belated French treasure, fatal as the fabled gold of the river maidens to nearly every man who touched it.

      “Now, for your getting off to France,” he resumed. “There has lately been a French privateer off Loch Broom, and she may very well be hanging off the coast farther south, therefore you should start for Moidart without a day’s delay. Since the twenty-fifth of July the coast is not so closely watched for the Prince as it was; the cordon of sentries has been removed. Make for Arisaig or Morar; at either you will be able to find a fisherman to take you off at night to the French vessel if she is still there. You speak French, so the rest should be easy.”

      “And will Lochiel and the Prince try to leave by her?”

      “I doubt it, for I fear she will be gone by the time Donald could reach the coast, or His Royal Highness either. But do not delay your departure on that account, Ewen, for the larger the party getting off from shore the more hazardous is the attempt—at least if there are any soldiers left in those parts now. (There cannot, at any rate, be many.) Now I must be getting on my way.”

      “You will not pass the night with us?” suggested Ewen. “Aunt Margaret seems to have a high opinion of the garrets as a refuge.”

      Dr. Cameron shook his head. “I must push on; ’tis only five o’clock. God bless you, my dear Ewen, and bring us to meet again—even though it be not in Scotland!”

      “I wish I were coming with you to Ben Alder,” said Ewen rather wistfully, halting after his visitor down the stairs.

      “Trust me to do your business with Donald as well as you could do it yourself—nay, better, for I suspect that you would leave out certain episodes.—You’ll be rid of this fellow at last, Miss Margaret,” he said to the figure waiting at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve sorted him!”

      “ ’Tis you have the skill, Archibald Cameron,” replied the lady, beaming on him. “None of my prayers would move him. You’ll drink a health with us before you go?”

      And under the picture of King James the Third and Eighth the three of them drained their glasses to the Cause which had already taken its last, its mortal wound.

      * * * * *

      Next day Ewen kept his word, and set about his departure. A garron was found for him to ride, and two of his men who had followed him through the campaign were to accompany him to the coast. Yielding to pressure, he had agreed to take young Angus MacMartin with him to France as his personal servant. He could not refuse it to Neil’s memory and to old Angus’s prayers that a MacMartin should be about him still.

      He was to leave at dusk, since travelling by night would be less hazardous, and a little before sundown he went up to Slochd nan Eun to take leave of his foster-father, with whom he had had little converse since his return, for Angus had been ill and clouded in mind. But he had borne the loss of his two sons with an almost fierce resignation; it seemed as if he had asked no better fate for them, especially for Neil. He had recovered from his illness now, but he was rather frail and still at times a little confused. A daughter looked after him in the old cottage which had once rung with the laughter of many children, and with Ewen’s own; but the old man was alone, crouched over the fire, with a plaid across his knees when Ewen, helping himself on the ascent with a staff, arrived at the door.

      Half blind though he was, Angus’s hearing was as keen as ever, and, even with the unfamiliar halt in it, he knew his foster-son’s step.

      “Mac ’ic Ailein, is it you? Blessings on your head! You have come to say farewell to me, who shall never see you again.”

      Tremblingly and slowly he arose, and embraced the young man. “Neil and Lachlan shall go with you, son of my heart, that you take no harm before you embark on the great water.”

      “Neil is dead, foster-father, do you not remember?” asked Ewen gently. “He gave his life for me. And Lachlan—I fear Lachlan is dead also.”

      “It is true that I do not see them any more,” replied the old man, with a singular detachment, “for I grow blinder every day; yet I hear Neil’s pipes very well still, and when the fire burns up I know that Lachlan has put on a fresh peat for me. Good sons both, but I have between my hands a son who is dearer, though I did not beget him—O my tall and beautiful one, glad was the day when you came back after the slaughter, but gladder this day, for you carry your head out of reach of your foes!” He passed his hand lingeringly over the bright locks. “And yet . . . all is not well. I do not know why, but all is not well. There is grief on the white sand . . . grief and mourning, and a sound of tears in the wind that blows there.”

      “Indeed there is grief,” said Ewen sighing, “grief enough in my heart at going, at leaving Alba and my father’s house. I was almost for staying, Angus, did I take to the heather; but the brother of Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has been here, and he bids me go. The Chief himself is going. But we shall return——”

      “Some will return,” broke in Angus, sinking his head upon his breast. “Aye, some will return.” Sitting there, he stared with his almost sightless eyes into the fire.

      Ewen stood looking down at him. “Shall I return?” he asked after a moment.

      “I shall not see you, treasure of my heart . . . But these eyes will see my own son come back to me, and he too grieving.”

      “But I fear that Lachlan is dead, foster-father,” repeated Ewen, kneeling on one knee beside him. “Is it not his wraith that puts the peats on