The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

urgent that Captain Jackson could reasonably refuse this request. “Yes, you may do that, madam,” he replied a trifle stiffly, “provided that you are not more than a quarter of an hour about the business; otherwise the party may be benighted before they can reach High Bridge.” And he went quite civilly to hold the door for her.

      As Alison passed her husband she looked at him hard with a question in her eyes; she wanted to be sure. Again he gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. She drew her brows together, and with a child on either side of her, the elder lagging and gazing half-frightened, half-admiringly, at his captive father, went out of the room. Captain Jackson did the same; but he left four men with muskets behind him.

      Of these Ewen took no notice, but began walking slowly up and down the room dear to him by so many memories. Now that the moment of being taken from his home was upon him he did not like it. But he would soon be back, he told himself. How heavily would he be fined by the Government for this escapade? However little, it would mean a still harder struggle to make both ends meet. But no price was too high to pay for Archie’s life—or for Keithie’s. Both of them were tangled up somehow in this payment. He wondered too, with some uneasiness, how and why the redcoats whom he had allowed to capture him had been right up by Loch na h-Iolaire when he came upon them. Dhé! that had been a chase, too—he was young enough to have enjoyed it.

      The door was opened again; there was Alison, with a little packet in her hand, and Captain Jackson behind her. “You can take leave of your wife, Mr. Cameron,” said he, motioning him to come to her at the door.

      But only, it was evident, under his eyes and in his hearing. So nothing could be said about Archie; even Gaelic was not safe, for it was quite possible that the Englishman had picked up a few words. Under the officer’s eyes, then, Ardroy took his wife in his arms and kissed her.

      “I shall not be away for long, my dear. God bless you. Kiss the boys for me.”

      To Alison Cameron it seemed incredible that he was really being taken from her with so little warning, when only a couple of hours ago he had been in her room asking about Keithie’s lost toys. And, for all either of them yet knew, he might be sacrificing himself in vain. But she looked up into his eyes and said with meaning, “I will try to do all you wish while you are away,” a wifely utterance to which Captain Jackson could hardly take exception.

      And three minutes later, with no more intimate leave-taking than that, she was at the window watching her husband being marched away under the beeches of the avenue with his little guard. Before he vanished from sight he turned and waved his hand, with the air of one who meant to be back ere any of their leaves had fluttered down.

      “I am sorry for this, madam,” said the voice of Captain Jackson behind her. “But, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Mr. Cameron has brought it upon himself. Now understand, if you please, that no one is to leave the house on any pretext; I have not finished here yet. But you are free to go about your ordinary occupations, and I’ll see that you are not molested—so long as my order is observed.”

      For that Alison thanked him, and went upstairs to solace her loneliness by putting little Keith to bed. She had already tried to send Morag—the easiest to come at of the servants—up the brae, and had not found it feasible. And surely, surely Doctor Cameron must have taken the alarm by now and be away? Still, there was always her promise to Ewen—a promise which it began to seem impossible to carry out.

      (2)

      Yet, in a sense, that promise was already in process of being kept, though in a manner of which Alison was fortunately ignorant. At the very moment when she had finally succeeded in satisfying her younger son’s critical inquiries about ‘the gentleman downstairs that was so angry’, her eldest born, whom she had last seen seated on the stairs gazing down through the rails with deep interest at the group of soldiers in the hall, was half-way between the house and Loch na h-Iolaire, his heart beating rapidly with excitement, triumph, and another less agreeable emotion.

      Both in courage and intelligence Donald was old for his years. He knew that his mother had tried in vain to send Morag out of the house while she was making up the packet for Father. The resplendent idea had then come to him of himself carrying out Father’s wish, and warning Doctor Cameron of the presence of the soldiers, of which he partially at least grasped the importance. On the whole, he thought he would not tell his mother until the deed was accomplished . . . for it was just possible that if he mentioned his purpose beforehand she would forbid him to carry it through. As for getting out of the house, perhaps the soldiers at the various doors would not pay much attention to him, whom they probably considered just a little boy—though it was scarcely so that he thought of himself. Perhaps also they would not be aware that never in his life before had he been out so late alone. He could say that he had lost a ball in the shrubbery, and that would be true, for so he had, about a month ago; and even if it had not been true, lies seemed to be strangely permissible to-day. He could creep out of the shrubbery on the other side and then run, run all the way round the end of the loch and up the track which climbed the shoulder of Meall Achadh.

      As it happened, Donald did not have to employ the plea about the lost ball, for in wandering round the back premises he came on a door which was not guarded at all. Its particular sentry was even then escorting his father towards Fort William, and by some oversight had not been replaced. So the small adventurer quite easily found himself among the outbuildings, deserted and silent, except for the voices of two invisible redcoats who were arguing about something round the corner of the stables. By them his light footfall went unheard, and a moment or two afterwards Donald was looking back in elation from the edge of the policies on the lighted windows of the house of Ardroy.

      That was a good ten minutes ago. Now . . . he was wishing that he had brought Luath with him. . . . It was such a strange darkness—not really dark, but an eerie kind of half-light. And the loch, which he was now approaching . . . what an odd ghostly shine the water had between the trees! He had never seen it look like that before. This was, past all doubt, the hour of that dread Thing, the water-horse.

      And Donald’s feet began to falter a little in the path as he came nearer and nearer to the Loch of the Eagle, so friendly in the day, so very different now. No child in the Highlands but had heard many a story of water-horse and kelpie and uruisg, however much his elders might discourage such narratives. It was true that Father had told him there were no such things as these fabled inhabitants of loch and stream and mountain-side, but the awful fact remained that Morag had a second cousin in Kintail who had been carried off by an each uisge. On Loch Duich it was; seeing a beautiful horse come into his little enclosure he could not resist climbing on to its back; that was just what the water-horse wanted, for it rushed down to the loch with its rider, and Morag’s second cousin was never seen again. Only, next day, his lungs floated ashore; all the rest of him had been eaten up. Not quite to know what one’s ‘lungs’ were made it still more horrible. . . .

      At Donald’s age one is not capable of formulating an axiom about the difficulty of proving a negative, but this evening’s adventure brought the boy some instinctive perception of its truth. Father had never seen a water-horse, it was true . . . but in the face of Morag’s story . . . Then there was another most disturbing thought to accompany him; what if something in the nature of an angel were suddenly to appear and throw him into the loch as a punishment for having pushed Keithie in and made him ill! There would be no Father on the island now to rescue him.

      Donald’s steps grew slower still. He was now almost skirting Loch na h-Iolaire on the little track through the heather and bracken, where the pine branches swayed and whispered and made the whole atmosphere, too, much darker and more alarming. If he had realised earlier the possibility of an avenger . . . Then he thought of those who had fought at the great battle before he was born, of cousin Ian Stewart and the broken claymore, of his father, of the dead Chief whose name he bore, and went onwards with a brave and beating heart. But there were such strange sounds all round him—noises and cracklings which he had never heard in the day, open-air little boy though he was; and once he jumped violently as something shadowy and slim ran across his very path. ‘Only a weasel,’ said the child to himself, ‘but a very large one!’