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

in one of his slow white rages. “The man who was associated with you when you risked your life for that accursed money in ’49 was viper enough to traduce you over it! It was he, then, who poisoned his cousin Lochdornie’s mind against you! God’s curse on him till the Judgment Day! And I warrant his dirty lie did not stop short with Lochdornie—did it now, Archie?”

      Doctor Cameron, distressed, did not answer that. “Oh, my dear Ewen, if I could persuade you to leave this question alone. What does it matter now?”

      “Your good name matters to me as much as my own,” said Ewen, towering and relentless.

      “But ’tis all past history now, Ewen, and the slander will die with my death. . . . Ewen, Ewen, promise me that you’ll not go stirring up old scores with that young man! I cannot say I love him, but he is powerless to harm me any more now, and, as I say, I hope to forgive him without reservation. My dear lad, you will only cause me more distress than the lie itself, if I am to spend the short time which remains to me thinking of you quarrelling on my behalf with young Glenshian!”

      Ewen had begun to stride up and down the little room, fighting with his resentment. “Very good then,” he said after a moment, coming and sitting down again, “I will not give you that distress; it is a promise. Moreover—perhaps this will reassure you a little,” he added with a wrathful snatch of a laugh, “the man is not in London now, I believe.”

      “Then let’s cease to waste time over him,” said Doctor Cameron with evident relief. “And you have not told me yet, as you promised, how you procured this order to see me.”

      Trying to put away the thought of Glenshian, Ewen told him. “Had I not good fortune—though indeed, at first, when I found myself in Stowe House, I thought it was the worst kind of ill-luck which had befallen me. The Earl and his son were both at the King’s Bench that day, too, which prejudiced them, it is clear, in your favour.—By the way,” he added with some hesitation, “was it a surprise to you that you had no trial?”

      “No,” replied his cousin. “I always suspected that the Government would make use of the old sentence of attainder if ever they caught me.”

      “Yes, perhaps it was inevitable,” murmured Ewen, but he was thinking—though he did not mean to speak—of the unknown informer protected by the Government, whose identity, according to Jacobite belief, a trial would have revealed.

      “Yes, I was not long before their lordships in the King’s Bench,” went on Archie. “The Privy Council examination at Whitehall a month before was a more lengthy affair, but, I fear, very unsatisfactory to those honourable gentlemen. My memory was grown so extraordinarily bad,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye.

      “All the world knows that you told them nothing of the slightest importance,” said Ewen admiringly. “Was that how you contrived to outwit them?”

      “If you can call it outwitting. I think no man on earth could possibly have forgotten so many things as I made out to have done. And I admit that in the end their lordships lost patience with me, and told me squarely that, as I seemed resolved not to give any direct answers, which they assigned to a desire to screen others, they did not think it proper to ask me any further questions.” The remembrance seemed to entertain him. “But before that came to pass my Lord Newcastle (saving his presence) had become like a very bubblyjock for fury and disappointment because he thought that I was about to tell them that I had met the Prince quite recently in Paris. (I had met him recently, but ’twas not in Paris.) They made great preparations for noting the date, and when I told them that it was in 1748 the Duke positively bawled at me that it was ‘the height of insolence, insolence not to be borne with’, till I had hard work to keep my countenance. It is sad—and no doubt blameworthy—to rouse such emotions in the great!” And Archibald Cameron laughed a little laugh of genuine amusement.

      “You know, Archie,” said Ewen earnestly, “—or more probably you do not know—that popular feeling is very strongly stirred about you, and that remonstrances are preparing on all sides. And when Mrs. Cameron comes, if she has any intention of petitioning——”

      “I expect she will desire to—poor Jean! Can I commend her to you a little, ’ille?”

      “You do not need to. I was about to ask you where she is likely to lodge? Near the Tower, no doubt?”

      “I will tell her to leave her direction at the Tower gates, that you can learn it if necessary; and give me yours, that I may tell her of it. She may be lonely, poor soul; I doubt she will be allowed to stay here with me all day. And afterwards . . .”

      It was Ewen who looked out at Tower Green this time, but more fixedly than Archie had done. “Afterwards,” he said in a moment, “if there is to be the ‘afterwards’ you mean, I will take Mrs. Cameron——” He stopped, wrenched his fingers together for a second, and said with great difficulty, “I cannot speak of that ‘afterwards’, Archie—I don’t know how you can. . . . Oh, if one could but push time back, and be again as we used to be eight years ago! The sunshine out there makes me think of that fine spring in Lochaber, before Lochiel and you had staked everything on the sword that was drawn in summer at Glenfinnan. But even Donald—even Alexander—did not pay as you are going to pay—though indeed there’s hope still,” he added quickly.

      Doctor Cameron laid his hand on his. “But I am not unhappy, Eoghain,” he said gently. “Eight years ago I had done nothing for my Prince. I do not know that I would change.”

      * * * * *

      Hector Grant was having his supper when Ewen walked in upon him that evening.

      “At last,” said Ardroy, throwing his hat upon a chair. “This is the second time that I have tried to find you to-day.”

      “And I have been seeking you,” retorted Hector. “Where were you?”

      “I have been in the Tower,” answered Ewen, and went and stood with his back turned and an elbow on the mantelpiece, and for a while said no more. After a moment Hector rose and put a hand on his shoulder, also without a word.

      “I see no hope of rescue, even by guile. I see no way in which any man’s life can be given for his,” said Ewen after a long pause. “Nothing but a reprieve can save him. But I do not think that he is hoping for one.”

      “I am,” said the sanguine Hector, who had recovered from his emotion of the morning of the sentence. “The Government must soon be aware how widespread is the feeling in favour of it.”

      There was another silence.

      “Go on with your supper,” said Ewen. “I have a piece of news for you meanwhile. From something which I learnt from Archie I think it may well have been young Glenshian who put about that slander on you concerning his capture.”

      Hector showed no disposition to continue his forsaken meal. “Dieu du ciel, what makes you think that?”

      “Because he was the man who vilified Archie himself over the matter of the Loch Arkaig treasure—but I don’t suppose you know of that dirty and cowardly action. Archie did not tell me that it was he; I surprised it out of him. Yet, by the same token, Finlay MacPhair is quite capable of having traduced you.”

      Hector frowned. “Yes; and now that I come to think of it, he repeated that story about Doctor Cameron to me last January.”

      “To you!” exclaimed Ewen in amazement. “Why have you never told me?”

      “It has only once come into my mind since we have been in London, and then I thought it would needlessly distress you.”

      “Archie has made me promise that I’ll not make it an occasion of quarrel with Glenshian,” said Ewen, looking not at all like a man who had given so pacific an undertaking. “Otherwise I would challenge him directly he returns to town, and make him withdraw his slander publicly.”

      “But I have not promised to abstain from making my injury a cause of quarrel,” quoth Hector in tones of anticipation. “When Mr. MacPhair of Glenshian is returned,