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It was raining hard, and blowing too, and rain and wind kept up a constant siege of the inadequate canvas stretched over the breach in Ewen’s place of confinement, the drops pattering against it like small shot. Ewen himself, shaved and wearing a clean shirt, but the same disreputable kilt, was sitting on the seat which ran round the embrasure, to which, with some difficulty, he could now hoist himself. His object in so doing was to see out, but this morning there was little to see when he had got there.

Ten days had passed since his momentous interview with Major Windham, ten days of wearing, grinding suspense. Every hour, almost, he had expected to learn of Lochiel’s capture. But, as day followed day, and nothing of the sort occurred, nor, from what Sergeant Mullins told him, was any attempt being made against Achnacarry, the spar of hope which his visitor had flung to him began to have more sustaining qualities. It did look as if Windham’s information were correct, and that the clan was known to be in such force that it was not a mere question of hunting down the wounded Chief, of plucking him out of the refuge whose secret was a secret no longer. For the comfort of that thought he had to thank the generosity of an enemy whom he had accused to his face of an infamous action.

Major Windham had always been something of an enigma to Ewen, and the depth of the concern which he had shown the other day still surprised him. That he had personally attracted the English soldier would never have occurred to him. Apart from wishing to clear himself of the charge of treachery, Major Windham, he supposed, felt a somewhat exaggerated sense of obligation for having been allowed to go free in Edinburgh—though indeed some men might have resented that clemency, and there had been a time when Guthrie’s insinuations had driven Ewen to the belief that this was so. Yet now the remembrance of the night in the shieling hut was no longer a draught of poison, but what it had been at the time, that cup of cold water which holds a double blessing.

But it was strange how accurate had been his foster-father’s prophecy, that the man to whom the heron would bring him should alike do him a great service and cause him bitter grief. Both predictions had been fulfilled; and by the same act on Major Windham’s part.

Ewen himself seemed to have been forgotten by the authorities. The same military surgeon came from time to time and grumblingly dressed his wounds, but, though rough and quite devoid of consideration, he was tolerably skilful, and the patient’s own splendid physique was doing the rest, now that he had proper care and that his mind was a little more at ease. Old Mullins, mindful alike of a substantial douceur from Major Windham and of his own good treatment by the Highlanders, looked after him to the best of his ability, particularly when he discovered him to be Dr. Cameron’s cousin. He still boggled, however, at procuring the captive entirely new clothes (for how, he said, should he account to Captain Greening for having the money to pay for them), but he brought him better food than was provided, a couple of clean shirts and a second blanket, and shaved him every other day. But Captain Greening, whom Ewen loathed, he thought, even more than he had loathed the brute Guthrie, never came near him now. He had got what he wanted, presumably, and troubled no more about the prisoner whom at one time he had had so assiduously watched.

The outcome of those horrible days and nights remained deeply branded on Ewen’s soul: he was a traitor, if an unconscious and most unwilling one; but the actual memory of them, and of the twenty-four hours in Guthrie’s hands, he was now beginning, with the natural instinct of a healthy mind, to put behind him. And with the slight relaxation of tension due to Major Windham’s suggestion and the inactivity of the authorities—due also to the wild hope which sometimes visited him, that Lochiel was no longer near Achnacarry at all, and that they knew it—he was beginning to feel the pressure of captivity, and would spend hours peering hungrily through the narrow slits of windows. Even if, as to-day, he could see little for the rain and mist, he could always smell the blessed air, and he now screwed himself into a still more uncomfortable position in an endeavour to get as much of this as possible. Yes, the rain, as he thought, was stopping; the wind was blowing it away. Often, on such a morning, on the braes above Loch na h-Iolaire——

Several people seemed to be coming quickly up the stairs. The surgeon and others? Ewen turned his head. No; when the door was unlocked and flung open there came in three officers all unknown to him. The foremost was of high rank, and Ewen, after a second’s astonishment, realised that he could be none other than the Earl of Loudoun himself.

Sitting there, he instinctively stiffened. With the opening of the door the wind had swooped through the breach in the wall, and even the Earl’s dark, heavy tartans fluttered for a moment. There was a sheet of paper in his hand, and he wore a look of great annoyance.

“Mr. Cameron,” he said, like a man too much pressed for time to indulge in any preamble, “when you gave us this information about Lochiel’s hiding-place a couple of weeks since,” he tapped the paper, “why did you name as the spot a mountain-side which does not exist anywhere near Loch Arkaig?”

Ewen’s heart gave a bound so sudden and violent that he thought it must suffocate him. What did Lord Loudoun mean? He stared at him breathlessly.

“Come, sir,” said the Earl impatiently, “do not play the innocent! On May 7 you gave Captain Greening a detailed account of a cave on a mountain-side which Lochiel would be apt to use in an emergency, how its whereabouts could be recognised, its concealed opening found, and the rest. The mountain, according to you, was called Ben Loy. But you made a slip—or something more intentional—for guides who know the district well declare that there is no mountain of that name in the neighbourhood, though it is true that there is a Glen Loy farther down the Lochy, but much too far to serve as a convenient refuge from Achnacarry. This makes nonsense of your information.” His voice was warm with a sense of injury. “The mistake has only been discovered in the nick of time . . . Why, what’s wrong with you, man?”

For Ewen, with an exclamation, had leant forward and buried his face in his hands. Was it possible that his rebel tongue had, all unknown to himself and to his inquisitor, undone so much of the harm it had wrought? And how had he not realised it himself?

Lord Loudoun much mistook the cause of his emotion. “The slip can easily be repaired, Mr. Cameron,” he said impatiently. “You cannot possibly have meant any of the heights of Glen Loy—none of which, moreover, appears to be called Ben Loy. It must be one of the other names I have on this paper.—Come, my time is precious! I am about to set out for Achnacarry to-day.” And as Ewen, really too much overcome by his ‘slip’ to pay much attention to these adjurations, still remained with his face hidden, a new note crept into the Earl’s voice. “You are not, I hope, indulging in scruples now, Mr. Cameron? ’Tis too late for that; nor is it any manner of use to withhold a part when you have told us so much. We shall know the place when we come upon it.”

Ewen raised his head at last and looked at him, but still dizzily. “Withhold!” he said. “Is it possible, Lord Loudoun, that you do not know how such information as you have was extracted from me?”

“Extracted from you!” repeated the Earl. “Why, you gave it of your own free will when you were asked for it; I have Captain Greening’s word for that.”

“My own free will! Did Captain Greening tell your Lordship that he had me watched and questioned day and night for nearly a week, hoping that I should tell it in my sleep, as at last I did, unknowingly? While I had life in my body he should never have got it otherwise!” And, seeing clearly from Loudoun’s face that this was indeed news to him, Ewen went on with more heat, “Whatever lies you were told by your English underlings, how dare you, my Lord, believe that a Cameron would ever willingly betray Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh?”

“Go and see if you cannot find Captain Greening this time, and bring him here,” said the Earl to one of the officers. He took a turn up and down, his hands behind his back, looking very much disturbed.

“I had no idea of this; ’tis a method which should never have been used,” he muttered after a moment. It was evident that he entirely believed the prisoner’s assertion. “But you must admit, Mr. Cameron,” he went on mildly, “that I am not to blame for it, seeing that I was not here at the time. And, as to believing that you made the disclosure willingly, I confess that I ought to have remembered—since I have the honour to be one myself—that a Highland gentleman does not willingly betray his Chief.”

Yet, having elicited this amende, Ewen said nothing, his racial distrust of a Campbell inclining him to wait for what was to come next.

“I cannot pretend, however,” began the Earl again, “that I am sorry to possess this information, since I am a soldier, and must obey orders. In accordance with these, I set out to-day with two thousand men for Loch Arkaig and Achnacarry.” He gave time for this news to sink in. “But, Mr. Cameron, though our clans have unfortunately been at enmity in the past, that shall not prevent me from treating Lochiel, when he is in my hands, with all the regard due to his position and merit.”

“As his kinsman,” replied Ewen to this, “I thank your Lordship for the intention, even though I trust that you may never have the chance of carrying it out.” Why had the Campbell become thus smooth-spoken, and was it true that he was going with so overwhelmingly large a force against Lochiel?

Before Lord Loudoun could offer any further remarks, Captain Greening came in, apologising that he should have been sought for twice, and evidently ignorant of what was in store for him. The Earl cut short his excuses.

“Why did you assure me, Captain Greening, that the information about Lochiel obtained from Mr. Cameron of Ardroy here was given of his own free will? Mr. Cameron tells me that, as the result of unceasing persecution on your part, it was dragged out of him in sleep, which is a very different matter!”

Somehow Captain Greening, while appearing to have his eyes fixed respectfully on his superior, contrived to shoot a glance of a very different nature at Ewen.

“If your Lordship believes that story,” he said with a scarcely concealed sneer, “it does credit to your Lordship’s nobility of disposition—as well as to Mr. Cameron’s powers of invention! Sleep! As if he could have given all that detail in his sleep! But the tale may serve to patch the hole in his reputation, though I’ll wager he was no more asleep than you or I!”

“You are a pretty consummate scoundrel, are you not!” observed Ewen softly.

“Yet, whether he was asleep or awake, my Lord,” went on Greening quickly, “I submit that what I said was perfectly correct—no force of any kind was used. I certainly had no intention of misleading your Lordship on that point, when you asked me that question in order to satisfy . . . a somewhat indiscreet enquirer after Mr. Cameron.”

But Lord Loudoun, frowning heavily, declined to be drawn into a side issue. “It was playing with words, sir, to call information thus given ‘voluntary’. I am very much displeased at the means employed. And even so, as might have been foreseen, the matter was bungled, for the information itself, on which you led me to rely, is not complete!”

“Not complete!” stammered Greening, flushing. “My Lord——”

“No, sir, it is not complete—and only now, within an hour or so of setting out for the neighbourhood, has its insufficiency been discovered! The guide, who knows that district well, swears that there is no mountain of the name of Ben Loy anywhere near. And Ben Loy is the name you have written here.”

Captain Greening almost snatched the paper from the Earl’s hand, and ran his eyes feverishly over it.

“My Lord, the guide is perhaps mis——”

“I tell you that he knows that part of the country like the palm of his hand,” interrupted Lord Loudoun angrily. “It might, he says, be any of the three mountains whose names are written below. But how can I hope to surprise Lochiel if I have to go searching every brae-side near Loch Arkaig for this cave? And I tell you further, Captain Greening, that this ridiculous wrong name, occurring thus, gives me very much to doubt whether the whole description be not the product of . . . of a dream, or of imagination—whether this cave near a waterfall is to be found on any mountain-side whatever, be the mountain called what it may!”

In the extremely mortified silence which ensued on Captain Greening’s part at this, Ewen saw his opportunity.

“I was wondering,” he observed mockingly, “how long your Lordship would be before you discovered the real value of Captain Greening’s dirty work!”

“Do not believe him, my Lord,” urged Greening, his light, womanish voice roughened by rage and disappointment. “If I cannot answer for the name of the mountain, I can, by God, for the rest! Had you seen the prisoner’s face when I read over to him next morning what he had told me, you would know that his description was accurate enough. It is only a question of finding out which mountain he had in mind, and if your Lordship will give me half an hour or so with him——”

Lord Loudoun turned on him. “You have mismanaged this business quite enough,” he snapped. “I do not desire you, Captain Greening, to meddle with it any further. Nor is Mr. Cameron asleep now.”

There was that in Captain Greening’s expression as he turned away, biting his lip, which suggested that he would not consider that state necessary for his purpose.

Ewen shut his eyes and leant his head against the wall. The Earl and his two officers were talking together in low voices, and he longed for them to go away and leave him to turn over, as if it were a grain of gold out of a muddy river, the thought of this wonderful and saving slip of the tongue. He could not understand how he came to have stumbled so mercifully; was it because in his illness he fancied himself at times back in the shieling on that mountain which was, he believed, called Beinn Laoigh, the calf’s mountain? That he had not himself noticed the mistake in the name when Captain Greening read over to him, next morning, what he was pleased to call his deposition, he could, after all, understand; the horror of the accuracy of the rest had too much swamped his soul. He tried now to calculate how much security was given back to the secret place by his happy blunder, but it was not easy.

Then he heard a movement to the door. Thank God, they had done with him! No, feet were approaching him again. He opened his eyes and saw Lord Loudoun standing looking out through one of the narrow windows only a few feet away. Save for him, the room was empty, though the door remained ajar. Evidently the Earl desired a measure of privacy.

“I am very sorry about your treatment, Mr. Cameron,” he began, his eyes still fixed on the narrow slit. “It has been an unfortunate business.”

“Which, my Lord,” asked Ewen coolly, “my treatment or the information which proves to be worthless?”

“I referred, naturally, to your treatment,” said Lord Loudoun with dignity (but Ewen did not feel so sure). “However, you must admit that I may fairly consider the other affair a . . . disappointment. As a soldier, with my duty to carry out, I must avail myself of any weapon to my hand.”

“Evidently,” commented his prisoner. “Even of one which is not very clean!”

Lord Loudoun sighed. “Alas, one cannot always choose. You yourself, Mr. Cameron, had no choice in the matter of your disclosure, and are therefore in no sense to blame. . . . I should wish everyone to know that,” he added graciously, turning round and looking down at him.

“Then our wishes coincide, my Lord, which is gratifying,” observed Ardroy. “And is it to discuss with me some means of compassing this end that your Lordship is good enough to spare time for this interview now?”

Although Lord Loudoun could not possibly have been insensitive to the irony of this query, it apparently suited him to ignore it. In fact he sat down upon the stone bench, on the opposite side of the embrasure.

“Chance made your revelation incomplete, Mr. Cameron,” he said, giving him a rather curious look. “Yet, if the missing link in the chain had been there, the same . . . blamelessness would have covered it.”

Ewen, his eyes fixed upon him, said something under his breath and gripped the edge of the seat. But the Earl went on meaningly, “There is still time for the true name of that mountain to have been . . . spoken by you in your sleep!”

And still his captive merely looked at him; yet Lord Loudoun evidently enjoyed his gaze so little that his own seemed to be caught by the breach in the wall, and stayed there.

“This room appears a very insecure place of confinement,” he murmured. “Has that thought never occurred to you?”

Ewen was still looking at him. “I cannot walk, much less climb, my Lord.”

“But with a little help from outside, a little connivance,” suggested the Earl, gazing at the breach. “Sentries, I am afraid, are sometimes both venal and careless . . . especially when the commander is away. But I dare say the negligence would be overlooked at head-quarters, in view of the—the exceptional circumstances.” There was a little silence as he turned his head and at last looked the Highlander in the face again. “Is it useless to hope that you will see reason, Mr. Cameron?”

“Reason!” exclaimed Ewen. Contempt had warmed to rage by this time. “Treason is what you mean, you false Campbell!” With difficulty he shuffled himself along the seat to a greater distance. “I wish I had the use of both my legs! I like ill at any time to sit upon the same seat with a son of Diarmaid, and to sit near one who after all that fine talk tries to bribe me to betray my Chief, who offers me my liberty as the price of his——” And he somehow dragged himself to his feet, and stood clutching at the corner of the wall, breathless with anger and effort.

Lord Loudoun, his smile completely vanished, was on his feet, too, as flushed as his prisoner was pale. “You have betrayed him, Cameron—what use to take that tone? You might as well complete the disclosure . . . and if your pride will not stomach the gift, I’ll not offer you your liberty in exchange. I had already made you an offer which would mend your self-esteem, not hurt it. Here’s another: tell me what is the real name of that mountain and I’ll engage that Lochiel shall never know who told us of the cave upon it!”

“And I’m to rely on nothing but a Campbell’s word for that!” cried Ewen, still at white heat, but sinking down again on the seat despite himself. “No, thank you, my Lord; the security’s not good enough! Nor am I going to tell you the name on any security, so you were best not waste your time.”

“Then,” said the Earl, and there was a new and dangerous note in his voice, “I warn you that Cameron of Lochiel will have the mortification of knowing that it was a Cameron who betrayed him. But I repeat that if you will give it to me——”

“There is one place the name of which I feel at liberty to give you,” interrupted Ewen, half closing his eyes, in which the light of battle was gleaming. “I think I should be doing my Chief no harm if I told you the way——” He paused as if uncertain, after all, whether to go on, and Greening and the two other officers, who, hearing voices raised, had reappeared in the doorway, pressed quickly forward.

Lord Loudoun fell into the trap. “The way to where?” he asked eagerly.

“The way to Moy,” answered Ewen, and the glint in his eyes was plain to see now. “To Moy in Lochaber—there is a place of that name there. Though whether you will encounter a second Donald Fraser too I don’t know.”

Lord Loudoun gave a stifled exclamation and grew very red. Consternation overcame his officers. The too-famous ‘rout of Moy’, as Ewen had well guessed, was not mentioned in the Earl’s hearing. But the Earl was the first to recover himself.

“You are not only insolent but foolish, Mr. Cameron. When Lochiel falls into my hands I shall not now be inclined to keep silence on the subject of his refuge, whether he is found in it or no, and it will depend upon me whether he is told that you made your disclosure about it involuntarily, as you declare that you did, or of your own free will.”

And thus did the Earl of Loudoun, a not ill-natured nor inhumane man, who in calmer moments would have been ashamed of such an impulse, threaten to use a calumny which he knew to be such in order to bring a captive foe to heel. The merest sign of pleading on the Cameron’s part and he would have relented. But nothing was farther from Ardroy’s mind than pleading. All he craved, in his wrath, was a fresh weapon with which to draw blood. He found it.

“But you may not capture Lochiel at all,” he said with an appearance of carelessness. “He may have followed your Lordship’s example when, after your amusing performances on the Dornoch Firth, you ran away from your captured troops and sought safety in Skye. Only,” he added venomously, “in my Chief’s case, it will be after the battle, not, as in yours, John Campbell, before it!”

The effect on Lord Loudoun, who was no coward, of this really undeserved interpretation of his misfortunes was all that Ewen could have wished. His hand clenched on his sword-hilt. “By God, sir, if we were . . . elsewhere . . . I’d make you pay for that!”

And alike from him, fourth earl of his line, representative peer of Scotland and royal aide-de-camp, and from the defiant, ragged young man on the seat before him, with his French training and his natural courtesy (which an Englishman had not long ago thought almost excessive), there slipped for a moment the whole cloak of eighteenth-century civilisation, and they were merely two Highlanders, heirs of an age-long feud, waiting to spring at each other, dirk in hand, amongst the heather. The metamorphosis lasted but a second or two, and they were themselves again, but John Campbell had had his answer; he knew better now the temper with which he had to deal than to expect an appeal for mercy, much less the revelation he coveted.

“I am only sorry that your future is not likely to allow of your giving me satisfaction for that insult, Mr. Cameron,” he said grimly, and turned his back upon him. “Captain Greening, you will have the prisoner removed from this room to some securer place of confinement. But bear in mind, if you please, that he is not to be ill-treated.” And, without another look behind him, he left the room. Nor was his going devoid of dignity.

As the hated Diarmaid tartan vanished Ewen’s whole body relaxed against the wall. But he soon became aware that Captain Greening had stayed behind, and was standing there in Loudoun’s place addressing him, his delicate features contorted with rage.

“If I had only guessed, you dirty cattle-thief, that you had fooled me after all! It would not have taken a fortnight to get the real name out of you somehow!” His teeth ground together. “Perhaps in the dungeons you’ll learn at least to keep a civil tongue in your head, as long as it is on your shoulders.” He flung away towards the door, then turned again. “Yes, smile while you can! ‘Not to be ill-treated’, eh? We’ll see about that when the Earl is gone, my fine Highlander!”

As the door slammed behind his guardian the contemptuous smile died off Ewen’s face, and, lowering himself with some difficulty from the stone bench, he lay down on the pallet below and pulled his plaid over his head. Now that the clash of the interview was over he felt shaken and sick. A great consolation had indeed emerged from it, but even that consolation could do little for him against the immediate anguish of knowing that the hounds were on the trail at last, and the quarry perhaps unsuspecting. How could Lochiel escape so large a force? He and his few hundreds would be surrounded as in a net; he would be killed or captured even if he did not take to the cave on Beinn Bhreac. And, if he did, chance might always lead the pursuers straight to it. Could Ewen in that hour have sent a message to Lochiel he would willingly have bought the privilege not merely by his own death—that went without saying—but by a death in any manner protracted and horrible. Yet no suffering could buy that chance; there was nothing to do but lie there helpless, at the lowest ebb of dejection, and hear from the camp the drums and bugles of departure.

At last came evening, and Mullins with food and water.

“Is there any news, Sergeant?” asked Ewen, raising himself.

“Yes, sir, His Royal Highness the Duke’s expected here to-morrow with nine regiments of foot and some horse. And Captain Greening ain’t in charge of prisoners no longer; his Lordship saw to that before he left—seems he was annoyed with the Captain about something or other. I can’t say as I’m sorry. But I’m afraid, Mr. Cameron, you’re going to be moved from here to-morrow, and put in one of them nasty places they call the dungeons, though they ain’t scarcely that, so to speak, and——”

Ewen cut short this bulletin. “You can put me in my grave for all I care at present! It’s the expedition to Loch Arkaig I want news of. Is there none?”

“No, sir, how could there be, so soon?—Bless me, how wild you look! Have you kin in those parts?”

“More than kin,” said Ewen brokenly. “My heart and my honour . . . O God, send a mist, a storm—send someone to warn him!”

* * * * *

Next day Cumberland and his ten regiments marched in from Inverness. But of this great stir Ewen heard nothing. He was down in a damp little cell under the fort, with fever once more in his blood, fighting a desire to knock his head against the wall. The old sergeant, who still had charge of him, could tell him nothing of what he wanted to know, save that there was report of great burnings going on down the Glen, and of quantities of cattle driven off.

So Ewen had to endure the suspense as best he might until the following evening, when a light suddenly streamed through the open door, and a kilted figure was roughly pushed down the steps by a couple of redcoats. But in the short-lived radiance Ewen had recognised the tartan of his own clan.

“Who is it—are you from Loch Arkaig?” he asked hoarsely, raising himself on his heap of straw.

“Aye; Alexander Cameron from Murlaggan,” answered the new-comer. “My sorrow, but it is dark in here! Who are you—a Cameron also?”

Ewen dragged himself to one knee. “Lochiel . . . Lochiel—is he safe? Tell me quickly, for God’s sake!”

The Cameron groped his way to the corner. “Yes, God be praised! There were but a handful of us captured; the rest scattered while the redcoats were fording the river of Lochy.—There, honest man, sure that’s good news, not bad!”

For—the first time in his grown life—Ewen was shaken by uncontrollable sobs, by a thankfulness which tore at his heart like a grief. Alexander Cameron sat down by him in the straw, seeming very well to understand his emotion, and told him more fully the story of what had happened: how the Argyll militia with Lord Loudoun had at first been mistaken for a body of MacDonald reinforcements which were expected, but distinguished in time by the red crosses on their bonnets; how the Camerons had thought of disputing the passage over Lochy, but, realising the overwhelming force of the enemy, had withdrawn swiftly along the northern shore of Loch Arkaig, so that by the time the latter got to the neighbourhood of Achnacarry the Chief must have been well on his way to the wild country at the head of the loch, where they would never pursue him. But the burnings and pillagings had begun already, and one could guess only too well the heavy measure of vengeance which was going to be meted out in Lochaber.

The two men lay close together that night under one plaid for warmth, and Ewen at last knew a dreamless sleep. Not only had Lochiel escaped, but he was not likely ever to hear now that the secret of the cave by the waterfall had been partly betrayed; nor, if he had left the district altogether, would he be tempted to make use of it in the future. The horror was lifted.