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

he stood here in the flesh, and swore the holy oath on his dirk to be avenged on the man who betrayed you to the saighdearan dearg. My own two eyes beheld him, my two ears heard him, and I prayed the Blessed One to give strength to his arm—for it was then that you were gone from us, darling of my heart, and fast in prison.”

      “But you surely do not mean, Angus,” said his foster-son, puzzled, “that Lachlan came back here after I was captured? You mean that you saw his taibhs. For in the flesh he has never returned to Slochd nan Eun.”

      “Yes, for one night he returned,” persisted the old man, “for one night in the darkness. None saw him but I, who opened to him; and he would not go near the house of Ardroy, nor let any see him but his father, because he was sick with grief and shame that he had left you on Beinn Laoigh to the will of your enemy. Ah, Mac ’ic Ailein, did I not feel that many things would come upon you because of the man to whom the heron led you! But that I never saw—that he would betray you to the saighdearan dearg! May Lachlan soon keep his oath, and the raven pick out the traitor’s eyes! May his bones never rest! May his ghost——”

      Ewen had sprung up, horrified. “Angus, stop! What are you saying! That man, the English officer, did not betray me: he saved me, at great risk to himself. But for him the redcoats would have shot me like a dog—but for him I should not have escaped from their hands on the way to Inverlochy. Take back that curse . . . and for Heaven’s sake tell me that you are mistaken, that Lachlan did not swear vengeance on him, but on the man who took me prisoner, a Lowland Scot named Guthrie. That is what you mean, Angus, is it not?”

      But Angus shook his grey head. “My son swore vengeance on the man who was your guest, the English officer who found you in the bothy on Beinn Laoigh, and delivered you up, and told the soldiers who you were. Lachlan found this out from the talk as he skulked round the Lowlander’s camp in the dark. Vengeance on the Lowlander he meant to have if he could, but he swore it for certain against the other, the English officer, because he had broken your bread. So he took oath on the iron to rest neither day nor night till that evil deed was repaid to him—he swore it here on the biodag on which you both saw blood that day by the lochan, and which you bade him not throw away. I think he meant to hasten back and lie in wait for the English officer as he returned over the pass of Corryarrick, and to shoot him with the musket which he had stolen from one of the redcoats. But whether he ever did it I do not know.”

      Bewildered, and with a creeping sense of chill, Ewen had listened mutely in order that he might, perhaps, contrive to disentangle the true from the false in this fruit of the old man’s clouded brain. But with these last words came a gleam of comfort. No, Lachlan had not succeeded in any such attempt, thank God. And since then—for it was in May that Windham had returned over the Corryarrick—his complete disappearance pointed to but one conclusion, that he was gone where he could never keep his dreadful and deluded vow. Ewen drew a long breath of relief; yet it was rather terrible to hope that his foster-brother was dead.

      Still, he would take what precaution he could.

      “If, when I am gone, Angus,” he said, “Lachlan should return here, charge him most straightly from me that he abandon this idea of vengeance; tell him that but for the English officer I should be lying to-day where poor Neil is lying.—I wonder if anyone gave Neil burial,” he added under his breath.

      But Angus heard. He raised himself. “Lachlan buried him when he came there after yourself, Eoghain, and found you gone, and was near driving the dirk into his own heart, as he told me. Yes, he stayed to bury his brother; and so when he came to the camp of the redcoats they had taken you to Kilcumein. But all night long he prowled round the tents, and heard the redcoats talk—he having the English very well, as you know—and tried to get into the tent of their commander to kill him while he slept, and could not. So he hastened to Achnacarry, and found Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, and besought him to go with the clan and besiege the fort of Kilcumein and take you out of it; but the Chief had not enough men. So Lachlan came here secretly, to tell me that he had not been able to stay the redcoats from taking you, and that Neil had been happier than he, for he had died outside the door before they entered to you; and all that was left for him was to slay the Englishman—and so he vowed. But now, it seems, the Englishman is not to be slain?”

      “A thousand times, no!” cried Ewen, who had listened very attentively to this recital, which certainly sounded as if it had come originally from Lachlan’s own lips, and some of which, as he knew from Archie, was true. “Remember that, if Lachlan should come here.—But I cannot understand,” he went on, frowning, “how, if Lachlan overheard so much of the soldiers’ talk, he did not overhear the truth, and learn how Major Windham ran in and saved me from being shot. Surely that is the matter which must most have engaged their tongues, and in that there was no question of delivering me up.”

      “I do not know what more my son heard,” said Angus slowly, “but, when a man hates another, does not his ear seek to hear the evil he may have done rather than the good?”

      “Yes, I suppose he did hate Major Windham,” said Ewen thoughtfully. “That was the reason then—he wanted a pretext. . . . Indeed I must thank God that he never got a chance of carrying out his vow. And, from his long absence, I fear—nay, I am sure—that he has joined poor Neil. Alas, both my brothers slain through me, and Neil’s children fatherless!”

      “But Angus Og goes with you, is it not, son of my heart, that he too may put his breast between you and your foes?”

      ‘That he shall never do’, thought Ewen. “Yes, he goes with me. Give me your blessing, foster-father; and when I come again, even if your eyes do not see me, shall your hands not touch me, as they do now?” And he guided the old hands to his shoulders as he knelt there.

      “No, I shall not touch you, treasure of my heart,” said Angus, while his fingers roved over him. “And I cannot see whether you will ever come back again, nor even whether you will sail over the great water away from your foes. All is dark . . . and the wind that comes off the sea is full of sorrow.” He put his hands on Ewen’s head. “But I bless you, my son, with all the blessings of Bridget and Michael; the charm Mary put round her Son, and Bridget put in her banners, and Michael put in his shield . . . edge will not cleave thee, sea will not drown thee. . . .” He had slid into reciting scraps of a sian or protective charm, but he did not go through to the end; his hands fell on to his knees again, and he leant back and closed his eyes.

      Ewen bent forward and threw some peats on to the fire. “Tell me one thing, foster-father,” he said, looking at him again. “Even if I never leave the shores of Moidart, but am slain there, or am drowned in the sea, which is perhaps the meaning of the wind that you hear moaning, tell me, in the days to come shall a stranger or a son of mine rule here at Ardroy?”

      Angus opened his eyes; but he was so long silent that Ewen’s hands began to clench themselves harder and harder. Yet at last the old man spoke.

      “I have seen a child running by the brink of Loch na h-Iolaire, and his name is your name.”

      Ewen drew a long breath and rose, and, his foster-father rising too with his assistance, he kissed him on both cheeks.

      “Whatever you have need of, Angus, ask of Miss Cameron as you would of me.”

      “You are taking away from me the only thing of which I have need,” said the old man sadly. “Nevertheless, it must be. Blessings, blessings go with you, and carry you safely away from the white sands to her who waits for you . . . and may my blessings draw you back again, even though I do not greet you at your returning.”

      * * * * *

      When Ewen came slowly down the path again he found himself thinking of how he had descended it last August behind Keith Windham, nearly a year ago. The story of Lachlan’s vow had perturbed him, but now he saw it in a far less menacing light. Either his foster-brother’s unquiet spirit was by this time at rest, or the whole thing was a dream of that troubled imagination of the old seer’s, where the distinction between the living and the dead was so tenuous.

      Soon he forgot Keith Windham, Angus and everyone. Loch na h-Iolaire lay before him under the sunset, a sunset so tranquil