The Jacobite Trilogy. D. K. Broster

stable and secure in their eyes as the changeless mountains round them.

      Yet Alison knew her lover’s mind, or at least a part of it, so well that she presently said, “And yet I am not jesting, Ewen, when I say that I think you would be hard put to it to choose between me and Loch na h-Iolaire—Loch na h-Iolaire and the house of Ardroy.”

      His arm tightened round her. “Alison, how can you——”

      “But you’ll never have to choose, m’eudail. I love this place most dearly already. I have never had a home like it to love, living as we have for so long, now in France, now in Holland. But your heart is as strongly rooted here as . . . the red crag yonder.”

      Ewen gave a little sigh. “You see a long way into my heart, you that are the core of it. Indeed, when I am dying I think this is the last place I shall have sight of in my mind. I hope I may be seeing it with my eyes also.”

      Alison did not shudder or change the subject, or implore him not to speak of such things, for she was Highland too, with her race’s half-mystical preoccupation with the dead. But she thought, “I hope I’ll die the same day, the same hour. . . .”

      The shadows on the loch crept a little farther. Behind them Ben Tee changed colour for the hundredth time; his pointed peak seemed to soar. It grew cooler too, and Ewen wrapped the ends of the plaid about his lady.

      “On Wednesday we will spend the day at Loch Arkaig,” he announced. “We will take ponies, and you and Mr. Grant shall ride.”

      “And Miss Cameron?”

      “Aunt Marget detests such jaunts. Meals for the parlour, and the parlour for meals, that is her creed.—Alison, are you not cold?”

      “In this?” She fingered the plaid where it hung over her shoulders, and added after a moment: “How strange it will be, to wear another tartan than one’s own!”

      “You shall always wear the Grant if it pleases you better.”

      “No, it does not please me better,” answered Alison softly. “I feel . . . very warm in the Cameron.”

      He kissed her for that, smiling, and, raising his head from his kiss, became aware of a dark object beating towards them out of the sunset sky. It was the solitary heron of the island, winging his strong way home with a deceptive slowness. The sight reminded Ewen of his morning’s encounter with Lachlan, and he was about to tell Alison of it when Fate’s messenger, who for the last five minutes had been hurrying round the loch, came past the red crag of Ardroy, and Ewen’s quick ear caught the snap of a breaking stick under the deerskin brogues. He looked quickly round. A bearded Highlander was trotting towards them under the birches and pines.

      “It is Neil—what can he want? Forgive me!” He rose to his feet, and Neil MacMartin, who was Lachlan’s elder brother and Ewen’s piper, broke into a run.

      “Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh has just sent this by a man on horseback,” he said somewhat breathlessly, pulling a letter from his sporran.

      Ewen broke the seal. “Perhaps it is to say that Lochiel cannot come to-morrow,” he observed to his betrothed. But as he read his face showed stupefaction. “Great God!”

      Alison sprang to her feet. “Ewen! Not bad news?”

      “Bad? No, no!” He waved Neil out of hearing and turned to her with sparkling eyes. “The Prince has landed in Scotland!”

      She was at first as amazed as he. “The Prince! Landed! When . . . where?”

      Ewen consulted his letter again. “He landed at Borradale in Arisaig on the twenty-fifth. Lochiel desires me to go to Achnacarry at once.”

      “He has come—at last!” said Alison to herself, almost with awe. “And you will go with Lochiel to kiss his hand, to—Oh, Ewen, how I envy you!”

      The light which had come into her lover’s eyes died out a little. “I do not know that Lochiel is going to Arisaig, darling.” He glanced at the letter again. “He is troubled, I can see; there are no troops with the Prince, none of the hoped-for French help.”

      “But what of that?” cried the girl. “It is not to be thought of that Lochiel’s sword, of all others, should stay in the scabbard!”

      “Lochiel will do what is right and honourable; it is impossible for him ever to act otherwise,” answered Ewen, who was devoted to his Chief. “And he wants speech with me; I must set out at once. Yes, Clan Cameron will rise, not a doubt of it!”

      And, youth and the natural ardour of a fighting race reasserting themselves, he snatched up his bonnet and tossed it into the air. “Ah, now I know why Lachlan and I thought we saw blood on his dirk this morning!” Then he caught Alison to him. “My dearest on earth, give me your kiss!”

      It was the title of one of the ancient pibrochs that he was quoting, and the Highland girl put her arms round his neck and gave him what he asked.

      * * * * *

      Loch na h-Iolaire, bereft of the echoing voices, sank into a silence that was not broken until the heron rose again from the island and began to fly slowly towards the sunset. Then the stillness was rent by a sharp report; the great bird turned over twice, its wings beating wildly, and fell all huddled into the lake. A little boat shot out from the side of the creag ruadh, and in a moment or two Lachlan MacMartin, leaving his oars, was bending over the side with the end of a cord in his hand. There was a splash as he threw overboard the large stone to which the cord was fastened; and having thus removed the evidence of his blind effort to outwit destiny, he pulled quickly back to the shelter of the crag of Ardroy.

      Soon the same unbroken calm, the same soft lap and ripple, the same gently fading brightness were once more round Loch na h-Iolaire; yet for all those who to-day had looked on its waters the current of life was changed for ever.

      I

       THROUGH ENGLISH EYES

       Table of Contents

      “One of them asked . . . how he liked the Highlands. The question seemed to irritate him, for he answered, ‘How, sir, can you ask me what obliges me to speak unfavourably of a country where I have been hospitably entertained? Who can like the Highlands—I like the inhabitants very well.’ ”

      —Boswell. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      In all Lochaber—perhaps in all the Western Highlands—there was no more bored or disgusted man this sixteenth of August than Captain Keith Windham of the Royal Scots, as he rode down the Great Glen with a newly-raised company of recruits from Perth; and no more nervous or unhappy men than the recruits themselves. For the first time in their lives the latter found themselves far north of ‘the Highland line’, beyond which, to Lowland as well as to English minds, there stretched a horrid region peopled by wild hill tribes, where the King’s writ did not run, and where, until General Wade’s recent road-making activities, horsed vehicles could not run either. Yesterday only had they reached Fort Augustus, two companies of them, and this afternoon, tired and apprehensive, were about half-way through their thirty-mile march to Fort William. As for the English officer, he was cursing with all his soul the young Adventurer whose absurd landing on the coast of Moidart last month had caused all this pother.

      Had it not been for that event, Captain Windham might have been allowed to return to Flanders, now that his wound of Fontenoy was healed, to engage in real warfare against civilised troops, instead of marching through barbarous scenery to be shut up in a fort. He could not expect any regular fighting, since the savage hordes of these parts would probably never face