The Jacobite Trilogy. D. K. Broster

a pause he said, “Partly, perhaps.”

      “Then . . . I cannot leave you, even for my father,” said Alison, and sprang up. “I must stay in Scotland, beside you. I am your wife. Take me back to the quay, Ewen—tell Mrs. Wishart . . .”

      But Ewen, on his feet too, caught her in his arms. “No, darling, no! Think of your father, whom you may never see again. And, love of my heart”—he tried to make his voice light—“you cannot come besieging Fort William with me! When we have beaten Cumberland, as we beat Cope and Hawley, I will come to France and fetch you home to Ardroy.”

      “When we have beaten Cumberland.” Alison looked up into her husband’s eyes with a most insistent question in her own. But he did not answer the question, though he knew very well what it was, for he said gently, “How can one see into the future, darling? One can only . . . do one’s duty.”

      Even as he uttered that rigorous word there came a knock at the cabin door, and a gruff French voice announced that they would be casting off in another minute or two, and that if Monsieur wished to land he must be quick.

      So the sword slid down between them. Ewen’s grasp tightened.

      “Alison, white love, rose of my heart, we are one for ever now! You will know, I think, what befalls me.”

      Her face was hidden on his breast, so close that he could not even kiss it. “Darling, darling, let me go . . .” he whispered. But it was rather a question, he felt, whether he could ever unloose his own clasp and cast his heart from him. And men were running about shouting overhead; the hawser was coming inboard . . .

      Suddenly Alison lifted her face, and it was almost transfigured. “Yes, I shall know . . . for I think you will come back to me, God keeping you.” She took her arms from his shoulders; he bent to her lips for the kiss that first turned his heart to water and then ran through it like wine, loosed his hold of her, and walked straight out of the cabin without another word or look. With the same unchecked movement he crossed the gang-plank from the deck, as if he could not trust himself to remain the moment or so longer that it would take the sailors to cast off the second hawser.

      But on the quay he turned, wishing they would be quick, and make it impossible for him to leap on board again, though the plank was now withdrawn, and be carried off with Alison. And at last, after an eternity which was all too short, the end of the rope splashed into the water. More sails went up; the distance began to widen. Alison was going from him.

      He stood there motionless long after the brig had left the shore, watching her move to the waters of the firth. The sparse snowflakes whirled relentlessly against him, but they melted as soon as they came to rest, as brief in their stay as his two days’ happiness.

      * * * * *

      From the quay Ewen went straight to Lochiel’s head-quarters and reported himself for duty. Two hours later his body was marching out of Inverness in the van of the Cameron reinforcements. Where his soul was he hardly knew.

      CHAPTER II

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      To rid the Great Glen of both its obnoxious English forts was an enterprise which highly commended itself to those clans whom they chiefly incommoded, the Camerons and the Glengarry and Keppoch MacDonalds. There had been jubilation among these when, on March 5, Fort Augustus had surrendered after two days’ siege, and what artillery the besiegers possessed was free to be turned against Fort William.

      But Fort William, between Inverlochy Castle and the little town of Maryburgh, was not so accommodating as its fellow. For one thing, it was in a better position to defend itself, since sloops of war could come up Loch Linnhe to revictual it, even though the Highlanders held the narrows at Corran. It had a garrison of five hundred men, both regulars and Argyll militia, plenty of guns, and, after the middle of March, that zealous officer Captain Carolina Scott to assist Major-General Campbell in the defence. Already, by the time that Ewen arrived with Lochiel and the reinforcements, there had been some severe skirmishes, and the Highlanders had fought an engagement with the soldiers from the fort and the sailors from the Baltimore and Serpent sloops, in which the latter succeeded in landing and destroying the ferryhouse and several small villages on the Ardgour side. On this the Camerons ensconced themselves at Corpach, where Loch Linnhe bends to its junction with Loch Eil, and there beat off an armed flotilla of boats with such success that the Baltimore was ordered thither to open fire and cover a landing. But the Highlanders’ position was so good that the bombardment made no impression, and Captain How had to withdraw baffled.

      Ewen was with these adventurers at Corpach, enjoying himself and finding in conflict an anodyne for his thoughts; it made the blood run pleasantly and enabled him to forget Alison for an hour or so. But the ordinary business of the siege was less stimulating, since he had nothing to do with the artillery under Stapleton and Grant and their Franco-Irish gunners, and the only chance of hand-to-hand fighting lay in repelling the constant raids of the garrison and trying to protect the unfortunate dwellers in the countryside who suffered by them. He seemed to himself to live in a series of disconnected scenes, sometimes here in Lochaber, where Ben Nevis, thickly capped with snow, looked down impartially on assailants and defenders alike, sometimes back in Inverness, going through every moment of those short two days with Alison. But no one who did not observe him constantly and closely could have guessed this. Lochiel, who knew him well and did observe him closely, gave him as much to do as possible.

      But it was certainly not Lochiel who enjoined on him the feat which brought his share in the siege to an abrupt end.

      * * * * *

      It was a fine morning in the latter half of March, blown through with a gusty wind. Brigadier Stapleton, having got some mortars into position on one of the little eminences about half a mile from the fort, had started to shell it from that point, and the fort was replying. Since its fire was directed towards destroying the hostile batteries, there was no great danger from it to those not serving the guns, and the Highlanders had no doubt grown a little careless, which might account for the fact that near the crest of another hillock, about a quarter of a mile away from Stapleton’s mortars and the same distance as they from Fort William, Lochiel and Keppoch were standing unconcernedly in the midst of a little group of Camerons and MacDonalds. Below them, on the slope looking towards the fort, a half-ruined stone wall hinted at a bygone attempt at cultivation or enclosure. The two chiefs were interested in some rather suspicious activities on board the Baltimore sloop, visible at anchor in the loch beyond the counterscarp and bastions of the fort.

      “I vow it seems like another raid preparing,” said Alexander MacDonald. “Do you look, Lochiel.”

      He passed the Cameron his spyglass. Ewen, who was sitting comfortably in the heather at a few yards’ distance, nearer the battery, rested his elbows on his knees and shaded his eyes the better to see also, his brain at these words busy with a vision of a possibly gratified desire for what he considered real fighting.

      Suddenly, as it were with half an eye, he became aware of something unusual in the fort, where, a mere eight hundred yards away, movements were perfectly visible. Surely the defenders had altered the position of one of their six-pounders . . . could they be intending . . . Lochiel standing there with the glass to his eye looking at the sloop was fully exposed to their view . . .

      In a second Ewen was on his feet, shouting a warning, but as he sprang came the flash and the roar. “God!” he cried in agony, and with another bound was up on the crest of the hillock, his arms wide. Could one man’s body suffice?

      There was a crash as the shot pitched into the ruined wall on the slope below, breaking and scattering the big rough stones in all directions. Ewen never saw what struck him, but at the moment of impact, which seemed to drive his soul from his body, he had just time to think, “It is for him! Alison, forgive me . . .” Then he went into darkness.

      When he came out of it again he found himself lying on the farther slope in the midst of a group of people, with his head on someone’s arm,