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

am very sorry indeed, Doctor,” said Ewen, and could not but feel that the reproach was merited. “The fact is that——” He was just on the point of exonerating himself by saying that Mr. Sinclair had not yet arrived on Tuesday, nor did they know of his impending visit, but, thinking that plea possibly imprudent, said instead, “I had no knowledge that Mr. Sinclair was so skilled. We . . . have not met recently.”

      “Humph,” remarked Doctor Kincaid, now astride his horse. “A peety that he doesna practise; but maybe he does—in Caithness. At ony rate, he’ll be able tae exercise his skill on your brither-in-law—if ye mean tae do ony mair for that young man. For ye’ll pardon me if I say that ye havena done much as yet!”

      Ewen’s colour rose. To have left Hector in that state on a lonely road at nightfall—even despite the measures he had taken for his removal—did indeed show him in a strange and unpleasant light. But it was impossible to explain what had obliged him to do it, and the more than willingness of Hector to be so left. “Can I have him brought hither from Inverlair without risk to himself?” he asked.

      “Ay,” said Kincaid, “that I think ye micht do if ye send some sort of conveyance—the morn, say, then ye’ll hae him here Saturday. He’ll no’ walk this distance, naturally—nor ride it. And indeed if ye send for him he’ll be better off here under the care of yer friend Sinclair, than lying in a farm sae mony miles fra Maryburgh; I havena been able to get to him syne. Forbye, Ardroy,” added the doctor, looking at him in a rather disturbing manner, “the callant talked a wheen gibberish yon nicht—and not Erse gibberish, neither!”

      French, of course; Ewen had already witnessed that propensity! And he groaned inwardly, for what had Hector been saying in that tongue when lightheaded? It was to be hoped, if he had forsaken ‘Malbrouck’ for more dangerous themes, that Doctor Kincaid was no French scholar; from the epithet which he had just applied to the language it sounded as though he were not. However, the physician then took a curt farewell, and he and his steed jogged away down the avenue, Ewen standing looking after him in perplexity. He did not like to leave Hector at Inverlair; yet if he fetched him here he might be drawing down pursuit upon Archie—supposing that suspicion were to fall upon Hector himself by reason of his abstracted papers.

      However, by the time he came in again Ewen had arrived at a compromise. Archie should leave the house at once, which might be more prudent in any case. (For though Doctor Kincaid would hardly go and lay information against him at Fort William . . . what indeed had he to lay information about? . . . he might easily get talking if he happened to be summoned there professionally.) So, as it wanted yet five days to Archie’s rendezvous with Lochdornie, and he must dispose himself somewhere, he should transfer himself to the cottage of Angus MacMartin, Ewen’s young piper, up at Slochd nan Eun, on the farther side of the loch, whence, if necessary, it would be an easy matter to disappear into the mountains.

      Doctor Cameron raised no objections to this plan, his small patient being now out of danger; he thought the change would be wise, too, on Ewen’s own account. He stipulated only that he should not go until next morning, in case Keithie should take a turn for the worse. But the little boy passed an excellent night, so next morning early Ewen took his guest up the brae, and gave him over to the care of the little colony of MacMartins in the crofts at Slochd nan Eun, where he himself had once been a foster-child.

      (2)

      The day after, which was Saturday, Ewen’s plan of exchanging one compromising visitor for another should have completed itself, but in the early afternoon, to his dismay, the cart which he had sent the previous day to Inverlair to fetch his damaged brother-in-law returned without him. Mr. Grant was no longer at the farm; not, reported Angus MacMartin, who had been sent in charge of it, that he had wandered away lightheaded, as Ewen immediately feared; no, the farmer had said that the gentleman was fully in his right mind, and had left a message that his friends were not to be concerned on his behalf, and that they would see him again before long.

      A good deal perturbed, however, on Alison’s account as well, Ewen went up to Slochd nan Eun to tell Doctor Cameron the news. He found his kinsman sitting over the peat fire with a book in his hand, though indeed the illumination of the low little dwelling had not been designed in the interests of study. Doctor Cameron thought it quite likely, though surprising, that Hector really had fully recovered, and added some medical details about certain blows on the head and how the disturbance which they caused was often merely temporary.

      “Nevertheless,” he concluded, “one would like to know what notion the boy’s got now into that same hot pate of his. You young men——”

      “Don’t talk like a grandfather, Archie! You are only twelve years older than I!”

      “I feel more your senior than that, lad!—How’s the bairn?”

      “He is leaving his bed this afternoon—since both you and your colleague from Maryburgh allowed it.”

      Doctor Cameron laughed. Then he bit his lip, stooped forward to throw a peat on the fire, and, under cover of the movement, pressed his other hand surreptitiously to his side. But Ewen saw him do it.

      “What’s wrong with you, Archie—are you not well to-day?”

      “Quite well,” answered his cousin, leaning his elbows on his knees. “But my old companion is troublesome this afternoon—the ball I got at Falkirk, you’ll remember.”

      “You’ll not tell me that you are still carrying that in your body!” cried Ewen in tones of reprobation.

      Archie was pale, even in the peat glow. “How about the gash you took at Culloden Moor?” he retorted. “You were limping from it that morning in Glen Mallie; I saw it, but I don’t make it a matter for reproach, Eoghain! ’Tis impossible to have the bullet extracted, it’s too awkwardly lodged, and I shall carry it to my grave with me . . . and little regard it if it did not pester me at times. However, here I am comfortably by your good Angus’s fire, not skulking in the heather, and cared for as if I were yourself.”

      But Ewen went down from Slochd nan Eun with an impression of a man in more discomfort than he would acknowledge, and a fresh trouble to worry over. Yet how could he worry in the presence of Keithie, to whom he then paid a visit in the nursery—Keithie, who, now out of bed, sat upon his knee, and in an earnest voice told him a sorrowful tale of how the fairies, having mistaken his ‘deers’ for cows, had carried them off, as all Highland children knew was their reprehensible habit with cattle. And so he could not find them, for they were doubtless hidden in the fairy dun, and when they were restored they would not be real ‘deers’ any more, they would only look like them, as happened with cows stolen and restored by the sidhe. His father, holding the little pliant body close, and kissing him under the chin, said that more probably his deers were somewhere in the house, and that he would find them for him.

      Which was the reason why, somewhat later, he went in search of Donald, and discovered him in his mother’s room, watching her brush out her dark, rippling hair, which she had evidently been washing, for the room smelt faintly and deliciously of birch.

      “Do you want me, my dear?” asked Alison, tossing back her locks.

      “Do I not always want you, heart of mine?—As a matter of fact, I am here on an errand for Keithie. Do either you or Donald know anything of the present whereabouts of his ‘deers’? He tells me that the daoine sidhe have taken them.”

      But they both denied any knowledge of the animals.

      “Angus is going to make Keithie a much larger deer,” announced Donald, his hand in his father’s. “I asked him to. A stag—with horns. Father, have you ever heard the queer crackling sound that Mother’s hair makes when she brushes it. Does yours?”

      “I doubt it,” replied Ewen, and he looked first at Alison’s slim, pretty figure as with arms upraised she began to braid her hair about her head, and then at her amused face in the glass. And in the mirror she caught his gaze and smiled back, with something of the bride about her still.

      But