The Jacobite Trilogy. D. K. Broster

then?’ Angus replied, ‘That I cannot see. He will do you a great service, yet he will cause you bitter grief. It is dark.’ You know how vexatious it is when one with the two sights cannot see any more. It is like beginning to read a book of which the last pages are lost.”

      “I do not think that I should wish to read any more,” said the girl, shivering a little, and she too got up from the window seat. “I have never before met anyone who had the gift so strongly as Angus, and indeed it is not canny. You are used to it, Ewen, since you have known him all your life, and I think you do not believe in it very much, either.”

      “No, I do not,” admitted her lover. “But it would not be kind to tell my foster-father so.”

      Alison looked out of the window for a moment, biting her lip hard. “Ewen, when a taibhsear ‘sees’ any person it is nearly always a warning of that person’s imminent death!”

      Ewen put his arm round her. “No, you are wrong, my dear. A taibhsear has been known to see a man’s future wife—sometimes, indeed his own. I wonder Angus never ‘saw’ you, sitting by the hearth here in the days when you were in Paris . . . long days those were for me, mo chridhe! Moreover, in this matter of the heron he ‘saw’ two people, and neither Captain Windham nor I can be going to die very soon, can we, if we must meet each other four times more?”

      She looked up and met his expression, tender but half quizzical. “No, that is true.”

      “Angus said nothing about death,” went on Ewen reassuringly. “And he seemed completely puzzled by his vision—or visions. If it were not for that heron by Loch Oich, I vow I should think that he had dreamed the whole business.”

      “Have you told Captain Windham any of this?” asked Alison.

      “Not I. He would only laugh at it, and I am sure, too, that he has no desire to meet me again, so that I should not be telling him anything to pleasure him.”

      “Do you think,” suggested Alison slowly, “that Angus did not hinder his sons and the others from attacking Captain Windham because he thought that he would be better out of the way—on your account?”

      Her lover looked down at her with a rather startled expression. “I never thought of that. . . . But no, I do not believe that was the reason—it could not have been, unless he was lying over the reason he gave me.”

      “And what was that?”

      “It was outrageous enough. He said that there was no cause for interference, because he knew that the saighdear dearg and I had yet several times to meet, so he would take no harm! What do you think of that? Had he not been an old man, and nearly blind, and my foster-father to boot, I declare that I could have shaken him when I went back to Slochd nan Eun and upbraided him and was given that for justification. It might very well have been Captain Windham’s wraith that I was to tryst with!” He glanced at the clock. “I must go, darling.”

      “What will become of Captain Windham to-morrow?” asked Alison with a tiny frown.

      “I do not know; it is a question I have to ask Lochiel.”

      “One thing more, Ewen; did not Angus, after he had seen Captain Windham in the flesh yesterday, as I suppose he did—did he not tell you any more about him and . . . and the future?”

      “Not a word. No, as I say, the last pages of the book are torn out . . . but then it is so with every book in which our lives are written.”

      He had both his arms round her now, and Alison hid her eyes against his breast, for he was so tall that even the top of her head was scarcely level with his chin. “Why do you say that, Ewen? Oh, Ewen, why do you say that?”

      “What ails you, heart’s darling?” he asked, looking down at that dark head tenderly. “It is true. You’re not thinking, surely, that at the end of the book I can care for you any less, little white love? That’s impossible . . . and I think it’s impossible that I should care for you more, either,” he added, and put a kiss on the soft hair.

      Alison clung to him, saying nothing, mindful of her proud promise to Aunt Margaret, but shaken with the knowledge of the red close of many a life across whose pages the name of Stuart had been written. Devotion to that name and cause was the religion in which she had been reared; but the claims of religion can sometimes make the heart quail . . . and Ewen was so splendid, so real and so dear! She forced a smile and raised her head; her eyes were quite dry. “I must not keep you from Lochiel; but when you return, Ewen, will you not tell your foster-brothers that you have remitted their punishment?”

      “For your sake, Alison?”

      “No, for his who is waiting for them! Is he not needing every sword that we can bring him?”

      Ewen smiled down at her appreciatively. “You find clever arguments, miss! I never said that they should not join me later.”

      “As ghosts? You may find yourselves trysting with wraiths, as you spoke of doing a while ago! Are they not capable of drowning themselves in the loch, particularly Lachlan, if you put that shame upon them, Ewen?”

      “Yes,” said Ewen after a moment’s silence, “I’ll not deny that Lachlan, at least, might throw himself into Loch na h-Iolaire. I suppose that I must allow them to come with me, and if you see them before my return, you can tell them so, rose of my heart.”

      * * * * *

      The room was empty once more, almost as empty as it would be to-morrow. And, since there was no one to see, Alison put her head down upon her arms on the window-sill.

      When she raised it again after some moments a small object rolled off the sill and fell tinkling to the floor—one of Captain Windham’s unfortunate buttons, which Ewen had forgotten after all to take with him. As Alison stooped to recover it the thought of its owner came sharply and forbiddingly into her mind, accompanied by all that she had just heard about him. Ewen’s destiny bound up with his . . . and he, yesterday, disgracefully handled by Ewen’s followers! Surely, however he had passed it off, he must retain a grudge about that, and it might be that in the future he would seize an opportunity of repaying the outrage. Alison wished for a moment that she were not Highland, and that belief in second sight did not run so in her blood. She could not shake from her mind the conviction that for old Angus to have seen the doubles of Ewen and the English officer meant the death of one or both of them within the year. It was true that the prediction had not seemed to trouble Ewen much, but he was a man, and had his head full of Glenfinnan at present. Yet there was Captain Windham, with nothing to do but to brood over the injury. Already, as Ewen had felt, he might well have a dislike to his captor. And did it not seem as though he had a horrid gift for dissimulation if, so soon afterwards, he could pretend to find amusement in the mortifying thing which had happened to him? What sort of a man was he really, this stranger who was to cause her Ewen bitter grief?

      Alison jumped to her feet and stood with clasped hands. “I’ll go along the loch side, as though I were taking a walk, and if he is still there I’ll engage him in talk, and perhaps I can find out a little about him.” For in the house she could not so easily get speech with him alone, and to-morrow he would surely be gone altogether. Yes, she would do that; Captain Windham would never guess that she had come on purpose. She slipped the buttons into her pocket and left the room.

      CHAPTER V

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      It was not difficult to find Captain Windham by the loch, for the delicate veils of birch foliage made no effective screen for his strong scarlet. Alison saw him, therefore, before he was aware of her presence. He was sitting a yard or two from the edge of Loch na h-Iolaire, on the stump of a felled pine, with his arms folded on his breast, staring at the water. Was he thinking of yesterday—meditating some revenge? She would never know, because she dared not refer, even indirectly, to that unlucky contretemps. The buttons were in her pocket only for safe keeping.

      Alison