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

my duty, as well as I can, to my Prince; I am to have my Jean’s company for more than a week; none of the Privy Council nor any of the Government is a whit the wiser for aught I have told them. And for the resolution which God has given me to die without enlightening them—and, I hope, with becoming firmness—I thank Him every day upon my knees. You cannot think how well content I am, Ewen, now that there is no hope left to torment me.”

      Ewen could not look at him then. Yet it was obviously true; one had only to hear the ring of quiet sincerity in Archibald Cameron’s voice to know that this attitude was no pose. That was the wonder, almost the terror of it.

      “But there is hope, there is hope!” said Ewen, more to himself than to Archie. “Meanwhile, is there not anything you want?”

      “Yes, one thing I do stand in need of, and have displayed a good deal of impatience, I fear, because it is denied me, and that is paper and pen. You have not such a thing as a bit of old pencil about you, ’ille?”

      “I haven’t a thing about me save my pocket-handkerchief,” answered Ewen regretfully. “They took good care of that outbye. And why have they denied you writing materials? Oh, if I had but known, I might have smuggled in the pencil I had when I came, and some paper, perhaps, in my hat.”

      “As to that, I must be patient,” said Archie with a little smile. “And, indeed, I am no hand at composition; yet there are some matters that I desire to set down. Perhaps I’ll contrive it still. Come, let me show you my other apartment, for I’d have you know that I am honoured with a suite of them, and the other is indeed the more comfortable for a sederunt, though I please myself with the glimpse of the river from this room. ’Tis low tide, I think.”

      Ewen, following his gaze, saw without seeing the glitter of water, the tops of masts, a gay pennon or two and a gull balancing on the wind. Then Archie put his hand on his arm and drew him into a smaller room, not ill-furnished, looking in the opposite direction, and they sat down on the window-seat.

      “Yes,” said the Doctor, “I fare very differently here from poor Alexander. I have been thinking much of late of him and his sufferings—God rest him!”

      It was long since Ewen had heard any reference to that third of the Lochiel brothers who, by turning Roman Catholic and Jesuit, had cut himself off from his family, but who had been the first to die for the White Rose, a martyr to the horrible conditions on board the ship which brought him as a prisoner to London. “Yes,” went on Archie, “this is a Paradise compared to the place where Alexander was confined.”

      Indeed, looking through the window by which they sat, one saw that May can come even to a prison. The pear-trees on the wall below, which General Rainsford’s predecessor had planted not so many years before, had lost their fair blossom by now, but below them was a little border of wallflowers, and Tower Green, at a short distance, deserved its name. On the spot, too, where the child queen had laid down her paper diadem after her nine days’ reign a little boy and girl were playing with a kitten.

      “And your head, Ewen?” asked his cousin after a moment’s silence, “How long was it before you recovered from the effects of that blow? I was greatly afraid at the time that your skull was fractured.”

      “It was you, then, who bound up my head? I thought it must have been. Oh, Archie, and by that the soldiers must have known for certain who you were! You should not have done it!”

      “Tut—the redcoats knew that already! And I could not accomplish much in the way of surgery, my dear Ewen; I had not the necessaries. As you may guess, I have not had a patient since—you’ll be my last. So take off that wig, in which you seem to me so unfamiliar, and let me see the spot where the musket butt caught you.”

      “There’s naught to see, I am sure, and not much to feel,” said Ewen, complying. “My head is uncommon hard, as I proved once before. I was laid by for some weeks, that was all,” he went on, as the cool, skilful fingers felt about among his close-cropped hair. “Just when I naturally was a-fire to get to London after you. But now, when I am here, there seems nothing that one can do. And, Archie, ’tis I have brought you to this place!”

      Doctor Cameron had ended his examination and now faced him with, “My dear Ewen, I can, indeed, feel small trace of the blow. Yet it is clear that it must have severely shaken your wits, if you can utter such a piece of nonsense as that!”

      “ ’Tis not nonsense,” protested Ewen sadly. “Was it not I who discovered that thrice-unlucky hut and persuaded you to go into it?”

      “And I suppose it was you that surrounded the wood with soldiers from Inversnaid . . . you might have brought them from somewhere nearer, for ’twas a most pestilent long tramp back there that night! Nay, you’ll be telling me next that ’twas you sent the information to Edinburgh——”

      “God! when I can find the man who did——” began Ewen, in a blaze at once.

      “Ah, my dear Ewen,” said his kinsman soothingly, “leave him alone! To find him will not undo his work, whoever he is, and I have wasted many hours over the problem and am none the wiser. I had better have spent the time thinking of my own shortcomings. ‘Fret not thyself at the ungodly’—’tis sound advice, believe me. I can forgive him; he may have thought he was doing a service. It will cost me more of a struggle to forgive the man who slandered me over the Loch Arkaig gold . . . but I think I shall succeed even in that before the seventh of June.”

      “Who was that man?” demanded Ewen instantly, and all the more fiercely because he winced to hear that date on Archie’s lips.

      The Doctor shook his head with a smile. “Is it like I should tell you when you ask in that manner. ’Tis a man whom you have never met, I think, so let it pass.”

      “Is he known to me by name, however?”

      “How can I tell,” replied Doctor Cameron shrewdly, “unless I pronounce his name and see? But come, let’s talk of other folk better worth attention; there are so many I should be glad to have tidings of. How is Mrs. Alison, and the boys, especially my wee patient? And have you any news, since we parted, of your fellow-prisoner in Fort William?”

      “Poor Hector’s over here in London, and in great distress,” began Ewen without reflecting, “for there’s an ill rumour abroad, in Lille at least, accusing him——” And there he stopped, biting his lip. He ought not to have brought up that subject in Archie’s hearing, blundering fool that he was!

      “Accusing him of what, lad?”

      So Ewen had to tell him. He hurried over the tale as much as he could, and, seeing how shocked and grieved Archie appeared, laid stress on the fact that, if ever Hector were really brought to book, he himself was in a position to disprove his connection with the capture of the Jacobite.

      “But I would give much to know who set the story about,” he ended, “for there are only two persons whom he told of the loss of that letter, myself and the man who helped him to return to his regiment in January, young Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian, and it is almost incredible that he should have spread such a report.”

      But the end of that sentence left Ardroy’s lips very slowly, in fact the last words were scarcely uttered at all. He was staring at his companion. Over Archie’s face, at the mention of Finlay MacPhair, there had flitted something too indefinable to merit a name. But in another moment Ewen had reached out and caught him by the wrist.

      “Archie, look at me—no, look at me!” For Doctor Cameron had turned his head away almost simultaneously and was now gazing out of the window, and asking whether Ewen had seen the two bairns out there playing with the little cat?

      Ewen uttered an impatient sound and gripped the wrist harder. “Deny it if you dare!” he said threateningly. “I have named your slanderer too!”

      “Dear lad——”

      “Yes or no?” demanded Ewen, as he might have demanded it of his worst enemy.

      The Doctor was plainly rather chagrined as he faced him. “I am sorry