The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

      “I hope Mrs. Stewart has not been molested,” said Archie’s voice after a while. “But I begin to believe that the soldiers have abandoned the search, or, at least, that they are not going to search this part of the wood.”

      Ewen nodded. “I begin to think that it is so. I wonder how soon we might with safety leave this place, or whether we had best spend the night here.”

      “I’ve no idea what time it may be,” said his cousin. He pulled out his watch and was peering at it when Ardroy gripped his other wrist. “Did you hear anything?” he asked in the lowest of whispers.

      His watch in his hand, Doctor Cameron sat as still as he. With its ticking there mingled a distant sound of snapping sticks, of something pushing through bushes just as they had done in their approach to the hut. The sounds came nearer, accompanied by voices. Ewen’s grip grew tighter, and the Doctor put back his watch.

      “Ay, it is a hut!” called out a man’s voice. “Come on, cully—damn these hollies! I warrant he’s in here! Come on, I tell you, or he may bolt for it!”

      “I’m coming as quick as I can,” shouted another voice. The cracklings and tramplings increased in volume. Ewen slipped his hand into his pocket, took out one of Lord Aveling’s elegant pistols, and closed his cousin’s fingers over it.

      CHAPTER XV

       ‘ ’TWAS THERE THAT WE PARTED——’

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      Archie shook his head with a little smile which said that resistance would be of no use; that their only hope lay in keeping perfectly quiet. But Ewen would not take the weapon back.

      The men outside could be heard fumbling over the door for the means of opening it, which, naturally, they could not find.

      “Curse it, there’s no way to open this door!” Kicks and blows were bestowed upon it. “Come out of it, rebel!”

      “If ye’re in there!” added the other voice with a snigger.

      “There ain’t no means of knowing that till we get the door open,” said the first voice.

      “If there was a lock we could blow it open, but there ain’t none.”

      “Do you stay and watch the place, then, and I’ll be off and fetch the captain; he ain’t far off now.”

      “And while you’re doing that the rebel will burst out and murder me and be off! Maybe, too, there’s more than this Doctor Cameron in there!”

      “You’re a good-plucked one, ain’t you!” observed the first voice scornfully. “You go for Captain Craven then; and I’ll warrant no one comes out of this hut without getting something from this that’ll stop his going far!” By the sound, he smacked the butt of his musket.

      “Good! I’ll not be long, then, I promise you.” The speaker could be heard to run off, and the man who remained, either to keep up his courage or to advertise his presence, began to whistle.

      Ewen and his cousin looked into each other’s eyes, fearing even to whisper, and each read the same answer to the same question. If they attempted to break out and run for it before the captain and the main body came up, it was beyond question that, since they could not suddenly throw open the door, but must first pull down their barricade, at the cost of time and noise, the man outside, forewarned by their movements, could shoot one or both as they dashed out. Moreover, wounded or unwounded, they would undoubtedly be in worse case in the open, the alarm once given by a shot, than if they remained perfectly silent, ‘as close as weasels’, in their hiding-place. There was always a chance that the officer, when he came, would pooh-pooh the idea of anyone’s being inside the deserted-looking little structure and would not have the door broken open . . . even, perhaps, a chance that he would not bring his men here at all.

      But it was a hard thing to do, to sit there and wait to be surrounded.

      It was too hard for Ewen. After four or five minutes he put his lips to Archie’s ear. “I am going to open the door and rush out on him,” he breathed. “I have another pistol. He will probably chase me, and then you can get away.” He had brought off that same manœuvre so successfully once—why not again?

      But Archie clutched his arm firmly. “No, you shall not do it! And in any case . . . I think it is too late!” For the musician outside had ceased in the middle of a bar, and next instant was to be heard shouting, “This way, sir—in the clearing here!”

      Then there was the tramp of a good many feet, coming at the double. Oh, what did it matter in that moment to Ewen if the Cause were once more sinking in a bog of false hopes! For the safety of the man beside him, whom he loved, he would have bartered any levies that ever were to sail from Prussia or Sweden. But the issue was not in his hands . . .

      “Why were we so crazy as to come in here!” he murmured under his breath. “O God, that I had never seen this hut!”

      Archibald Cameron had loosed his arm. He still held the pistol, but in a manner which suggested that he did not mean to use it. From the orders which they could hear being given the hut was now surrounded. The door was then pushed at hard from without, but as before, when it had been attempted, it would not budge an inch.

      “Did you hear any sound within while you kept watch, Hayter?” asked the officer’s voice.

      “No, sir, I can’t say that I did.”

      “Yet the door is evidently made fast from within. It is difficult to see how that can be unless someone is still inside. There is no window or other opening, is there, out of which a man could have got after fastening the door?”

      “No, sir,” was shouted, apparently from the back of the hut.

      “Forbye the hole there’ll be in the thatch for letting out the reek, sir,” suggested another voice, and a Scottish voice at that.

      “But a man would hardly get out that way,” answered the officer. “No, there’s nothing for it but to break in the door.”

      Two or three musket butts were vigorously applied with this intention, but in another moment the officer’s voice was heard ordering the men to stop, and in the silence which ensued could be heard saying, “Aye, an excellent notion! Then we shall know for certain, and save time and trouble. One of you give him a back.”

      The two motionless men on the bench inside looked dumbly at each other. What was going to happen now? A scrambling sound was heard against the log wall of the hut, and Archie pointed mutely upwards. They were sending a man to climb up and look in through the hole left for the smoke.

      Ewen ground his teeth. They had neither of them thought of that simple possibility. The game was up, then; they could do nothing against such a survey. His cousin, however, possibly from previous experience in ‘skulking’, advised in dumb show one precaution: pulling Ewen’s sleeve to attract his attention, he bowed his head until it rested on his folded arms, thrusting his hands at the same moment out of sight. For a moment Ewen thought that the object of this posture was to escape actual identification, not very probable anyhow in the semi-darkness; then he realised that its purpose was that the lighter hue of their faces and hands should not be discernible to the observer. For a second or two he dallied with an idea which promised him a grim satisfaction—that of firing upwards at the blur of a face which would shortly, he supposed, peer in at that fatal aperture in the thatch. But to do that would merely be to advertise their presence. So he followed Archibald Cameron’s example, and they sat there, rigid and huddled upon themselves, trusting that in the bad light they would, after all, be invisible. And if so, then, to judge from the officer’s words, the latter would be convinced of the emptiness of the hut and would draw off the party