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Not infrequently in the past had Miss Margaret Cameron animadverted on the obstinacy which lay hidden (as his temper was hidden) under her nephew’s usually gentle speech and ways. And now, at the greatest crisis in his life, when that life itself might hang upon his prudence, poor Miss Cameron was faced in her young relative with a display of this quality which really distracted her.

On that joyful and wonderful morning of his return she had allowed him (she put it so) to retire to his own bed in his own room ‘just for the once’; the garrets, the cellar or a bothy on the brae-side being designated as his future residences. Ewen did not argue—indeed he was not capable of it; he fell into his bed and slept for fourteen hours without waking.

Once he was there, and so obviously in need of rest and attention, Miss Cameron had not, of course, the heart to turn him out; but she kept a guard of young MacMartins and others round the house ready to give tongue in case of a surprise, and promised herself to banish the returned fugitive to more secluded regions directly he was able to leave his room. But when, after three days, Ewen did so, it was not to retire into this destined seclusion; on the contrary, he began at once to limp about, acquainting himself with what had happened to his tenants in his absence, trying to discover the fate of those who had never returned—among whom was Lachlan MacMartin—visiting the nearer crofts in person, and interviewing the inhabitants of the farther at the house. Presently, he said, he would ‘take to the heather,’ perhaps; but, as his aunt could see, he was yet too lame for it; and, as for the garrets or the cellar, he was just as safe in his own bedchamber as in those uncomfortable retreats.

Yielding on this point with what she hoped was the wisdom of the serpent, Miss Cameron then returned to a subject much nearer her heart: Ardroy’s departure for France or Holland, which he would attempt, she assumed, as soon as he could hear of a likely vessel and was fit to undertake the journey to the coast.

“France?” queried Ewen, as if he had heard this suggestion for the first time. It was the fifth evening after his return; Miss Cameron was sitting knitting in the long parlour, and he stretched in a chair opposite to her. The windows were closely curtained, and young Angus MacMartin and a still younger brother prowled delightedly in the avenue keeping watch. “France, Aunt Margaret? What put that into your head?”

Miss Cameron laid down her knitting. “Because you cannot stay here, Ewen. And France is in my head rather than Holland or Denmark because—well, surely you can guess—because your wife is there.”

Ewen got out of his chair and limped to one of the windows. “I am not leaving Scotland at present,” he said quietly, and drew aside the curtain. “We need not therefore discuss the claims of one country over another.”

“You cannot mean to stay here at Ardroy! Ewen, are you daft? And, in the name of the Good Being, don’t show yourself at a lighted window like that!”

“ ’Tis so light outside that the candles do not carry,” returned her nephew. Indeed but for Miss Cameron’s prudence they would not have been sitting thus curtained, but in daylight. “Moreover no one will come to look for me here; the house has been ‘burnt,’ ” he went on, using the argument he had already used half a dozen times. And he continued to look out; at least Margaret Cameron thought that he was looking out. In reality he had his eyes shut, that he might not see Alison’s face—a vain device, for he saw it all the clearer.

His aunt was silent for a moment, for he had implanted in her mind a most disturbing doubt.

“Well,” she said at last dryly, “I should think that if Major Windham, to whom you owe so much, knew of this freak of yours, he would regret the sacrifices which he had made in order to save you, when this is the use to which you put your liberty.”

“I think Major Windham would understand,” said Ewen rather shortly.

“Understand what?”

There was no answer. “Then I doubt if the ghost of poor Neil, who died for you, or of Lachlan, would understand!”

Ewen turned at that, but stayed where he was. “Poor Neil indeed; may his share of Paradise be his!” he said in a softened tone. “And Lachlan, too, if he be dead. Since you speak of my foster-brothers, Aunt Margaret, and reproachfully, then you must know that this is one reason why I do not wish to leave Ardroy, because it shames me to take ship for France myself and desert those others who cannot flee, for whose fate I am responsible. Moreover, I have started the rebuilding of the burnt crofts, and——”

“Trust a man to think that he is the only being who can oversee anything practical! I wonder,” observed Miss Cameron, “how much of rebuilding and repairs I have not ordered and supervised when you were nothing but a small wild boy, Ewen, falling into the loch and losing yourself on the braes above it!”

He hobbled over to her. “I know, I know. No laird ever had a better factor than you, Aunt Margaret!”

Miss Cameron’s knitting slid to the floor. “Had! Aye, I’m getting an old wife now, ’tis plain, that you dare not leave the reins to me for a year or so, while you take your head out of the lion’s mouth for a while.”

“No, no, you know that’s not my thought,” said Ewen, distressed. “I’d leave Ardroy to you as blithely as I did a year ago—I will so leave it . . . presently.”

“Aye, that you will do presently—but not by your own will. You’ll go off from this door as you left Fort Augustus a week ago, tied on a horse again, and your father’s house really in flames behind you—and all because you will not listen to advice!”

“You make me out more obstinate than I am,” said Ewen gently. “Your advice is excellent, Aunt Marget, but you do not know . . . all the circumstances.”

“That can easily be remedied,” said Miss Cameron with meaning. But to that suggestion Ewen made no reply.

Miss Cameron turned round in her chair, and then got up and faced him. “Ewen, my dear, what is wrong? What is it that is keeping you from getting out of the country? Surely it is not . . . that there is something amiss between you and Alison?”

Ewen did not meet her eyes. But he shook his head. “Alison and I——” he began, but never finished. How put into words what Alison was to him? Moreover, that which was keeping him back did stand between him and her—at least in his own soul. “Some day, perhaps, I will tell you, Aunt Marget,” he said quietly. “But I’d be glad if you would not discuss my departure just now.—You have dropped your knitting.”

He picked it up for her, and Margaret Cameron stood quite still, looking up uneasily at the height of him, at his brow all wrinkled with some pain of whose nature she was quite ignorant, at the sudden lines round his young mouth. She ended her survey with a sigh.

“And to think that—since we cannot get a letter to her—the lassie may be breaking her heart over there, believing that you are dead!”

Ewen took a step away, with a movement as though to ward off a blow. Then he translated the movement into a design to snuff the candles on the table behind him. After a moment his voice came, unsteady and hurt: “Aunt Margaret, you are very cruel.” And his hand must have been unsteady, too, for he snuffed the flame right out.

“ ’Tis for your own good,” replied Miss Cameron, winking hard at the engraving of King James the Third as a young man over the mantelshelf in front of her. Ewen relighted from another the candle he had slain, saying nothing, and with the air of one who does not quite know what he is doing. “At least, I’m sure ’tis not for mine,” went on Miss Cameron, and now, little given to tears as she was, she surreptitiously applied a corner of a handkerchief to one eye. “You cannot think that I want you to go away again . . . and leave the house the . . . the mere shell of emptiness it is when you are not here!”

Ewen looked round and saw the scrap of cambric. In an instant, despite the pain it cost him, he had knelt down by her side and was taking her hands into his, and saying how sorry he was to grieve her, and assuring her that there was nothing, nothing whatever wrong between him and Alison.

Yet even then he made no promises about departure.

* * * * *

Nor had he made any a week later, when, one hot afternoon, he lay, reflecting deeply, on the bed in his own room, with his hands behind his head. Although his wounded leg was already much stronger, it rebelled with effect against unremitting use all day, and to Ewen’s intense disgust he found it imperative to spend a portion of the afternoon thus. He regarded this necessity as not only burdensome but disgraceful.

The wind soughed faintly through the pines of the little avenue, and then passed on to ruffle the ivy outside his open window. A little brown, some of them, after their fiery ordeal, the topmost of those tough leaves were still there, and made just the same rustling noise as of old. And there Ewen lay, apparently at peace; back in his own room, among his modest possessions, his life and liberty snatched from the enemy, his home unharmed after all, and over the seas his young wife waiting for him in safety, the call of the sword no longer keeping him back from her, since the sword was shattered.

But he was by no means at peace; there was unceasing war in his breast. The way to Alison was barred by a spectre which he could not lay. It was in vain to tell himself that, by God’s mercy, his most unwilling lapse at Fort Augustus had done no harm, that no one of his own party knew of it, that it was not even a complete revelation. To his acutely sensitive Highland pride the mere fact of the betrayal of his Chief’s trust was agony. Alison could not heal that wound, which, now that Ewen was back again in his old surroundings, almost in his old life, seemed to have broken out bleeding afresh. There was only one man who could draw the poison from it, and Ewen knew neither where he was nor how he could come at him.

And meanwhile his dreams were full of Alison; and a night or two ago he had even seemed to hear her voice in one, asking in so pitiful and faint an accent why he delayed to come to her, now that honour no longer forbade it. She was so lonely . . .

Ewen sighed deeply, and withdrew his hands from beneath his head. The double scar on his right palm caught his eye for an instant. He wondered, not by any means for the first time, whether Windham had heard of his escape; if he had, he would know that he had indeed given him his life—yes, even by his refusal to witness against him, since that was the direct cause of the prisoner’s being taken over the Spean, where he had met and seized his great opportunity. To judge by the Englishman’s palpable distress at their farewell interview, Windham would be exceedingly glad of the news of his escape. Some day, perhaps, he might contrive to get a letter conveyed to his hands. He would like to tell him in person. But he was never to see him again, so it seemed, for the five meetings were over. Again he counted them: here, at Edinburgh, on Beinn Laoigh, at Fort Augustus. And suddenly his pulse quickened with pleasure—that made four, only four! . . . No, of course, there had been two at Fort Augustus. . . . Yet what (save his own recapture) stood now in the way of their meeting again some day?

But the ivy leaves went on rubbing their hands together, and through the window at the other side of the room came the clucking of Miss Cameron’s remaining hens, drowsy sounds both, and Ewen, pondering this question, began to fall asleep. Yet, just before he lost consciousness, there shot through his mind, apparently from nowhere, a last flicker of Angus’s prediction of a year ago . . . something about twisted threads . . . a thread of one colour and a thread of another. It had meant nothing at the time and he had totally forgotten it since. Now, between the two worlds of sleep and waking, it not only came back to him, but, with the curious pictorial clarity sometimes vouchsafed in that state, he seemed to see what it meant. Then picture and meaning faded, and he slept.

He slept quietly for a while, and then dreamt that a man had come into the room and was standing looking down at him. Yet somehow he knew that it was not a dream, that there was really someone there. He tried to rouse himself, but could not; and then the man laid a hand on his wrist. And at that, still half in a dream, he began to struggle and to speak.

“Let go my arm, you damned torturer! . . . No, not if you cut me in pieces! . . . Ah, my God, but there’s another way . . . another way!”

The hand had left his wrist quickly, and now it was laid on his shoulder, and a voice—Lochiel’s voice—said, “Ewen, wake up. No one is hurting you.”

He woke instantly, crying, “Donald! Donald!” half sure, all the time, that it was but a dream. Then he caught his breath and lay staring upwards. It was not indeed Lochiel, but it was his brother who stood there, looking down at him with a good deal of attention.

“Archie!” he gasped in the most complete astonishment. “You here! Why?”

“Don’t you think you would be the better of a doctor, my dear Ewen?” enquired his cousin cheerfully. “That is why I am here.”

“But there’s a price on your head,” protested Ewen. “You should not, should not have come here!”

Archibald Cameron smiled his gentle, quizzical smile and sat down on the bed. “I understand from Miss Margaret that you daily affirm the house of Ardroy to be perfectly safe. Moreover, one does not dictate to a physician, my dear boy, how and when he shall visit his patients. I heard how you escaped as you were being carried to Fort William, and I did not believe that it was your body which was found some days after in one of the pools of Spean. (You do not know, perhaps, that that is what has been given out at Fort Augustus.) But I guessed that that same body needed attention, so, being yesterday in Glendessary, I made my way hither. Now, let me look at those wounds of yours.”

And, though Ewen protested that these were quite healed and that he was only a trifle lame, Dr. Cameron insisted. The extent of the lameness, very patent when he made the young man walk about the room, evidently displeased him.

“When you get to France, Ewen, you must have the care of a good surgeon. I greatly fear that an important muscle in the thigh has been severed; but with proper treatment it may reunite again.”

“I suppose you have been talking to Aunt Margaret,” remarked his patient, sitting down upon the bed. “But, as I have told her, I am not going to France—yet. The muscle must reunite at home.”

Archie looked at him keenly. He had been talking to Aunt Margaret. “I am not advising France solely in the interests of your lameness, Ewen.”

“Well I know that! But I shall stay in Scotland for the present.”

“Until you are captured again, I suppose?” said Dr. Cameron, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back against the post at the bottom of the bed. “But I do not know on what grounds you assume that you will have so lucky an escape a second time.”

“Oh, I shall not be captured here,” said Ewen carelessly. “And when I can walk a little better, I shall very likely take to the heather for a while—like you!” And as Archibald Cameron raised his eyebrows he said with more warmth, “My God, Archie, I’d rather skulk in sight of Loch na h-Iolaire with nothing but my plaid and a handful of meal, even were there a redcoat behind every whin-bush, than lie in the French King’s bed at Versailles!”

“No doubt,” responded his cousin, unmoved. “And so would I. Yet I shall certainly make for France—if God will—when my tasks here are done. I hope indeed that it may not be for long; who knows but next year may see another and a more successful effort, with support from the French. The Prince——”

“Yes, indeed,” said Ewen eagerly, “what of the Prince? My last news of him was from a fellow-prisoner at Fort Augustus, MacDonald of Kingsburgh, who, though he is Sleat’s factor, brought him to his own house in Skye disguised as the maidservant of one Miss Flora MacDonald, and was arrested in consequence. I heard much from him, and laughable some of it was, too, for Kingsburgh’s wife and daughter seem to have been frightened at the queer figure that His Royal Highness made in his petticoats. But you will have later news of him, Archie?”

“The Prince was at the end of July in Glenmoriston,” said Dr. Cameron, “but he is now, I think, in Chisholm’s country, farther north. There is so plainly a Providence watching over him that I have no doubt he will be preserved from his enemies to the end; and it is therefore the duty of his friends to preserve themselves, too. Yes, I am going to read you a lecture, Eoghain mhóir, so you had better lie down again; I shall not begin until you do.” He waited until Ewen had grumblingly complied and then began, ticking off the points on his fingers.

“Imprimis, you stubborn young man, there is this house, almost miraculously preserved from destruction, and, if you keep clear of it, likely to continue immune. There is your good aunt, who can well continue to look after it, but who, if you are found under its roof, will certainly be driven out of it and very possibly imprisoned. You are not on the list of attainted persons, and you have the advantage at this moment of an official report declaring you drowned. Most of all, have you not someone already in France who is breaking her heart for a sight of you?”

Lying there, Ewen changed colour perceptibly, and it was only after a moment that he answered: “There are broken hearts in plenty, Archie, in Lochaber.”

“But I do not see, my dear lad, how they are to be mended by your offering up the fragments of Alison’s—and your own.”

Ewen uttered a sound like a groan, and, twisting over, buried his face in the pillow; and presently there emerged some muffled words to the effect that he longed to go to Alison, but that . . . and then something wholly unintelligible in which the word ‘honour’ was alone distinguishable.

Dr. Cameron looked down at the back of the uneasy auburn head with the affectionate tolerance which one might display to the caprices of a younger brother. “No, Ewen, to my mind honour points to your going—aye, and duty and common sense as well. You cannot help your tenants by remaining here; Miss Cameron can now do that much more effectively—so long as you do not compromise her by your presence. You cannot help the Cause or the Prince; you cannot help Lochiel;”—the head gave a sudden movement—“he is for France with me when the opportunity comes. Another day—that is a different tale; but ’tis likely there will never be another day for you if you persist in remaining here now. . . . And there is another point, which I hope you will pardon me for mentioning: is your wife going to bear you a child, Ewen?”

“How do I know?” answered Ewen in a stifled voice from the pillow. “Our happiness was so short . . . and I have had no letter.”

“Then, before you throw your life uselessly away,” said Archibald Cameron gravely, “it is your duty to make sure that there will be a son to follow you here, Mac ’ic Ailein. Do you wish your ghost to see strangers at Ardroy?”

No Highlander could ever affect to disregard that argument, and Ewen remained silent.

“And Alison—do you suppose that she found her wedded happiness any longer or more satisfying than you did? God knows, my dear Ewen, I hold that neither wife, children, nor home should stand in a man’s way when duty and loyalty call him—for, as you know, I have turned my back on all mine—but when duty and loyalty are silent, then he does very wrong if he neglects those ties of nature.”

And on that Archibald Cameron, conceiving that he had preached long enough, got up from the bed. Ewen was still lying with his face hidden: was there something on his mind, as Miss Cameron affirmed? The doctor went and looked out of the far window, and saw the lady in question scattering meal to her hens.

“Archie,” came from the bed after a moment or two, “if I go, it is only on one condition, which you can grant.”

“I?” said Dr. Cameron, turning round, rather surprised. Ewen had raised himself on to an elbow. He looked oddly pale and strained. “What is the condition, ’ille?”

“That I see Lochiel first.” And over his fair skin there swept a wave of red.

It occurred to Dr. Archibald then how strange it was that Ewen, for all his intense devotion, had not yet asked news of his kinsman and Chief. But he looked doubtful. “I am afraid that would be difficult, because you are both disabled; you cannot travel to him, nor he to you.”

“Yes, I had thought of that,” said Ewen, now quite pale again. “But I must contrive it somehow.” And as Archie was silent, reflecting, he added, with a sharp note in his soft voice, “Is there any other reason why I should not?”

“Of course not—save that you will meet in France, please God.”

“That will not serve. I must see him before I leave Scotland. I know that he is no longer in Lochaber.” The short phrases were jerked out; even more so the last one: “Archie, where is he?”

“He——” Archie was beginning, when unfortunately he heard Miss Cameron calling to him from below, possibly uttering a warning of some kind. He turned sharply to the window and never finished. But on Ewen the effect was of a man who has second thoughts about answering a question, and is not only mute, but turns his back upon the questioner.

In his present state of mind, it was quite enough, and next moment, to his visitor’s amazement, he had thrown himself off the bed with such violence that he staggered. “I knew it!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You will not tell me where he is because you have heard what I did at Fort Augustus—because Lochiel has heard it. I am not to be trusted! That is why you came. I believe—why you want me gone at any price from Scotland!” And as Archibald Cameron, already swung round again from the window, stared at him in consternation, Ewen added, clenching his hands, “I’ll not go! I’ll not be got rid of like that! I’ll get myself killed here in Lochaber . . . the only thing I can do in expiation.” And with that he sank down on the side of the bed and hid his face in his hands.

Dr. Cameron hastily left the window, but before his amazement allowed him words, Ewen was adding, in a strangled voice, “You are quite right, from your point of view, neither to let me see him nor to tell me where he is. But, Archie, I swear to you by my father’s memory that I did not do it willingly! How can he believe that of me!”

His cousin stooped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Ewen,” he said with great gentleness, “I have not the least notion what you are talking about. What did you do at Fort Augustus? Nothing, I’d stake my soul, that your father’s son need ever be ashamed of. You would have let yourself be ‘cut in pieces’ first, eh? I was just on the point of telling you where Lochiel was; he is in Badenoch, hiding in a hut on Ben Alder with Macpherson of Cluny. Now,” he sat down and slipped his arm completely along the bowed shoulders, “will you tell me what is on your mind, and why you must see him?”