The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

Et vos satins brochés.”

      Cnoc Dearg tossed the words mockingly to the other warder of Loch Treig, and Ewen jumped off his horse. It was not perhaps, after all, a Frenchman born who was singing that song in so lamentable and ragged a fashion along this lonely track to nowhere.

      The lurching figure was already nearly up to him, and now the singer seemed to become aware of the man and the horse in his path, for he stopped in the middle of the refrain.

      “Laissez-moi passer, s’il vous plaît,” he muttered indistinctly, and tried to steady himself. He was hatless, and wore a green roquelaure.

      Ewen dropped his horse’s bridle and seized him by the arm.

      “Hector! What in the name of the Good Being are you doing here in this state?”

      Out of a very white face Hector Grant’s eyes stared at him totally without recognition. “Let me pass, if you pl—please,” he said again, but in English this time.

      “You are not fit to be abroad,” said Ewen in disgust. The revelation that Hector could ever be as drunk as this came as a shock; he had always thought him a temperate youth, if excitable . . . but it was true that he had seen nothing of him for the past two years. “Where have you been—what, in God’s name, have you been doing?”

      The young officer of the régiment d’Albanie did indeed cut a sorry figure. His waistcoat hung open, his powdered hair was disordered and streaked with wet, there was mud on his breeches as well as on his boots.

      “Answer me!” said Ewen sternly, giving him a little shake. “I am in haste.”

      “So am I,” replied Hector, still more thickly. “Let me pass, I say, whoever you are. Let me pass, or I’ll make you!”

      “Don’t you even know me?” demanded his brother-in-law indignantly.

      “No, and have no wish to . . . O God, my head!” And, Ardroy having removed his grasp, the reveller reeled backwards against the horse, putting both hands to his brow.

      “You had best sit down for a moment,” counselled Ewen drily, and with an arm round him guided him to the side of the path. Hector must be pretty far gone if he really did not know him, for it was still quite light enough for recognition. The best way to sober him would be to take him to the nearest burn tumbling down across the track and dip his fuddled head into it. But Ewen stood looking down at him in mingled disgust and perplexity, for now Hector had laid that head upon his knees and was groaning aloud.

      As he sat hunched there the back of that same head was presented to Ardroy’s unsympathetic gaze. Just above the black ribbon which tied Hector’s queue the powder appeared all smirched, and of a curious rusty colour. . . . Ewen uttered a sudden exclamation, stooped, touched the patch, and looked at his fingers. Next moment he was down by the supposed tippler’s side, his arm round him.

      “Hector, have you had a blow on the head? How came you by it?” His voice was sharp with anxiety. “My God, how much are you hurt—who did it?” But Hector did not answer; instead, as he sat there, his knees suddenly gave, and he lurched forward and sideways on to his mentor.

      Penitent, and to spare, for having misjudged him, Ewen straightened him out, laid him down in the heather and bog-myrtle which bordered the track, brought water from the burn in his hat, dashed it in the young man’s face, and turning his head on one side tried to examine the injury. He could not see much, only the hair matted with dried blood; it was even possibly the fact of its being gathered thus into a queue and tied with a stout ribbon which had saved him from more serious damage—perhaps, indeed, had saved his life. The wound, great or small, was certainly not bleeding now, so it must either have been inflicted some time ago, or have been slighter than its consequences seemed to indicate; and as Ewen bathed the recipient’s face he detected signs of reviving consciousness. After a moment, indeed, the young soldier gave a little sigh, and, still lying in Ardroy’s arms, began to murmur something incoherent about stopping someone at all costs; that he was losing time and must push on. He even made a feeble effort to rise, which Ewen easily frustrated.

      “You cannot push on anywhere after a blow like that,” he said gently. (Had he not had a presentiment of something like this last night!) “I’ll make you as comfortable as I can with my cloak, and when I come back from my errand to the head of the loch I’m in hopes I’ll have a doctor with me, and he can—Don’t you know me now, Hector?”

      For the prostrate man was saying thickly, “The doctor—do you mean Doctor Cameron? No, no, he must not be brought here—good God, he must not come this way now, any more than Lochdornie! Don’t you understand, that’s what I am trying to do—to stop Lochdornie . . . now that damned spy has taken my papers!”

      “What’s that?” asked Ewen sharply. “You were carrying papers, and they have been taken from you?”

      Hector wrested himself a little away. “Who are you?” he asked suspiciously, looking up at him with the strangest eyes. “Another Government agent? Papers . . . no, I have no papers! I have but come to Scotland to visit my sister, and she’s married to a gentleman of these parts. . . . Oh, you may be easy—he’ll have naught to do now with him they name the young Pretender, so how should I be carrying treasonable papers?”

      Ewen bit his lip hard. The half-stunned brain was remembering yesterday night at Ardroy. But how could he be angry with a speaker in this plight? Moreover, there was something extremely disquieting behind his utterances; he must be patient—but quick too, for precious time was slipping by, and he might somehow miss Doctor Kincaid in the oncoming darkness. If Hector would only recognise him, instead of staring at him in that hostile manner, with one hand plucking at the wet heather in which he lay!

      “Hector, don’t you really know me?” he asked again, almost pleadingly. “It’s Ewen—Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, Alison’s husband!”

      His sister’s name seemed, luckily, to act as a magnet to Hector’s scattered wits. They fastened on it. “Alison—Alison’s husband?” Suspicion turned to perplexity; he stared afresh. “You’re uncommonly like . . . why, it is Ardroy!” he exclaimed after a moment’s further scrutiny.

      “Yes,” said Ewen, greatly relieved, “it is Ardroy, and thankful to have come upon you. Now tell me what’s wrong, and why you talk of stopping MacPhair of Lochdornie?”

      Relief was on Hector’s strained face too. He passed his hand once or twice over his eyes and became almost miraculously coherent. “I was on my way to Ben Alder, to Cluny Macpherson . . . I fell in with a man as I went along the Spean . . . he must have been a Government spy. I could not shake him off. I had even to come out of my way with him—like this—lest he should guess where I was making for. . . . I stooped at last to drink of a burn, and I do not remember any more. . . . When I knew what had happened I found that he had taken everything . . . and if Lochdornie makes for Badenoch or Lochaber now he’ll be captured, for there was news of him in a letter I had on me—though it was mostly in cipher—and the redcoats will be on the alert. . . . He must be warned, for he is on his way hither—he must be warned at once, or all is lost!” Hector groaned, put a hand over his eyes again, and this time kept it there.

      Ewen sat silent a moment. What a terrible misfortune! “You mentioned Archibald Cameron’s name just now,” he said uneasily. “What of his movements?”

      “Doctor Cameron’s in Knoidart,” answered Hector. “He’ll not be coming this way yet, I understand. No, ’tis Lochdornie you must——” And there he stopped, removed his hand and said in a different tone, “But I am forgetting—you do not wish now to have aught to do with the Prince and his plans.”

      “I never said that!” protested Ardroy. “I said . . . but no matter! I’ve given proofs enough of my loyalty, Hector!”

      “Proofs? We have all given them!” returned the younger man impatiently. “Show me that I wronged you last night! You have a horse there—ride back without a moment’s delay to Glen Mallie and stop Lochdornie. I’ll give you directions.”

      He