The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

him from the scaffold, for he had been one of the ill-fated garrison of Carlisle.

      “Venison—ah, good to be back where one can have a shot at a deer again!” he presently observed with his mouth full. “I envy you, mon frère.”

      “You need not,” answered Ewen. “You forget that I cannot have a shot at one; I have no means of doing it—no firearms, no, not the smallest fowling-piece. We have to snare our deer or use dogs.”

      “C’est vrai; I had forgotten. But I cannot think how you submit to such a deprivation.”

      “Submit?” asked Ardroy rather bitterly. “There is no choice: every Highland gentleman of our party has to submit to it, unless he has ‘qualified’ to the English Government.”

      “And you still have not done that?”

      Ewen flushed. “My dear Hector, how should I take an oath of fidelity to the Elector of Hanover? Do you think I’m become a Whig?”

      “Faith, no—unless you’ve mightily changed since we marched into England together, seven years ago come Hallowmas. But, Eoghain, besides the arms which you have been forced to give up, there’ll surely be some which you have contrived to keep back, as has always been done in the past when these distasteful measures were imposed upon us?”

      Ewen’s face darkened. “The English were cleverer this time. After the Act of ’25 no one was made to call down a curse upon himself, his kin and all his undertakings, to invoke the death of a coward and burial without a prayer in a strange land if he broke his oath that he had not, and never would have in his possession, any sword or pistol or arm whatsoever, nor would use any part of the Highland garb.”

      Hector whistled. “Ma foi, you subscribed to that!”

      “I had to,” answered Ewen shortly.

      “I never realised that when I was here two years ago, but then my visit was so short. I did indeed know that the wearing of the tartan in any form was forbidden.”

      “That,” observed Ardroy, “bears harder in a way upon the poor folk than upon us gentry. I had other clothes, if not, I could buy some; but the crofters, what else had they but their homespun plaids and philabegs and gowns? Is it any wonder that they resorted at first to all sorts of shifts and evasions of the law, and do still, wearing a piece of plain cloth merely wrapped round the waist, sewing up the kilt in the hope that it may pass for breeches, and the like?”

      “But that is not the only side to it,” said the young Franco-Scot rather impatiently. “You are eloquent on the money hardship inflicted on the country folk, but surely you do not yourself relish being deprived by an enemy of the garb which has always marked us as a race?”

      He was young, impetuous, not remarkable for tact, and his brother-in-law had turned his head away without reply, so that Hector Grant could not see the gleam which had come into those very blue eyes of his, nor guess the passionate resentment which was always smouldering in Ardroy’s heart over a measure which, in common with the poorest Highlander, he loathed with every fibre of his being, and which he would long ago have disobeyed but for the suffering which the consequences to him would have brought upon his wife and children.

      “I should have thought——” young Grant was going on, when Ewen broke in, turning round and reaching for the claret, “Have some more wine, Hector. Now, am I really not to wake Alison to tell her that you are here?”

      Hector finished his glass. “No, let her sleep, the darling! I’ll have plenty of time to talk with her—that is, if you will keep me a few days, Ardroy?”

      “My dear brother, why ask? My house is yours,” said Ewen warmly.

      Hector made a little gesture of thanks. “I’ll engage not to wear the tartan,” he said smiling, “nor my uniform, in case the English redcoats should mislike it.”

      “That is kind of you. And, as I guess, you could not, having neither with you” (“A moi,” said Hector to this, like a fencer acknowledging a hit). “I’ll see about a bed for you now. There is one always ready for a guest, I believe.”

      Again the young officer stayed him. “ ’Tis not much past midnight yet. And I want a word with you, Ewen, a serious word. I’d liefer indeed say it before I sleep under your roof, I think . . . more especially since (for your family’s sake) you have become . . . prudent.”

      Ardroy’s face clouded a little. He hated the very name of ‘prudence’, and the thing too; but it was true that he had to exercise it. “Say on,” he responded rather briefly.

      “Eh bien,” began Hector, his eyes on the empty wine-glass which he was twirling in his fingers, “although it is quite true that I am come hither to see my sister and her children, there is someone else whom I am very anxious to have speech with.”

      “And who’s that?” asked Ewen a trifle uneasily. “You are not come, I hope, on any business connected with the Loch Arkaig treasure? ’Tis not Cluny Macpherson whom you wish to see?”

      Hector looked at him and smiled. “I hope to see Cluny later—though not about the treasure. Just now it’s a man much easier to come at, a man in Lochaber, that I’m seeking—yourself, in short.”

      Ewen raised his eyebrows. “You have not far to go, then.”

      “I am not so sure of that,” responded young Grant cryptically. He paused a moment. “Ewen, have you ever heard of Alexander Murray?”

      “The brother of Lord Murray of Elibank do you mean? Yes. What of him?”

      “And Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian—young Glenshian—did you ever meet him in Paris?”

      “No, I have never met him.”

      “N’importe. Now listen, and I will tell you a great secret.”

      He drew closer, and into Ardroy’s ears he poured the somewhat vague but (to Ewen) alarming details of a plot to surprise St. James’s Palace and kidnap the whole English Royal Family, by means, chiefly, of young officers like himself in the French service, aided by Highlanders, of whom five hundred, he alleged, could be raised in London. The German Elector, his remaining son and his grandsons once out of the way, England would acquiesce with joy in the fait accompli, and welcome her true Prince, who was to be ready on the coast. The Highlands, of course, must be prepared to rise, and quickly, for Hector believed that an early date in November had been fixed for the attempt. The Scots whom he had just mentioned were in the plot; the Earl Marischal knew of it. And Hector himself, having already resolved to spend his leave in visiting his sister, had also, it was evident, conceived the idea of offering Ardroy a share in the enterprise, apparently hoping to induce him to go to London and enrol himself among the putative five hundred Highlanders.

      “But, before we discuss that,” he finished, “tell me what you think of the whole notion of this coup de main? Is it not excellent, and just what we ought to have carried out long ago, had we been wise?” And he leant back with a satisfied air as if he had no fear of the reply.

      But there was no answering light on the clear, strong face opposite him. Cameron of Ardroy was looking very grave.

      “You want to know what I think?” he asked slowly. “Well, first I think that the scheme is mad, and could not succeed; and secondly, that it is unworthy, and does not deserve to.”

      Hector sat up in his chair. “Hé! qu’est-ce que tu me chantes là?” he cried with a frown. “Say that again!”

      Ewen did not comply; instead he went on very earnestly: “You surely do not hold with assassination, Hector! But no doubt you do not see the affair in that light . . . you spoke of kidnapping, I think. O, for Heaven’s sake, have nothing to do with a plot of that kind, which the Prince would never soil his hands with!”

      “You are become very squeamish on a sudden,” observed his visitor, surveying him with an air at once crestfallen and deeply resentful. “And somewhat behind the times, too, since you retired to these parts. The Prince