I have no doubt of God’s mercy and forgiveness, even as I forgive all my enemies, especially those who have brought about my death.”
“You have the sympathy of a great many persons, sir,” said Mr. Rayner in a low voice. And after a second or two’s pause he added, “There is nothing further that you wish to say—no last request to make?”
“Yes, there is one,” answered the dying Jacobite; and Ewen saw him glance, but with no trace of flinching, at the little scaffold. “It is that you would defer, as long as the law will admit, the execution of the latter part of the sentence. I think you know what I mean,” he added.
“I know so well,” replied the under-sheriff gravely, “that I give you my solemn word of honour that it shall be deferred for at least half an hour. That much I can do for you, and I will.”
And, with a bow, he went down from the cart. His last words had lifted a great and sickening apprehension from Ewen’s heart . . . and, who knows, from Archibald Cameron’s also.
“I think there’s nothing now to wait for,” said Archie, and he suddenly looked rather weary, though he showed no other sign of the strain upon nerves which, however, heroically commanded, were only human. “And oh, my dearest Ewen,”—he dropped his voice until it was almost inaudible—“take my last and best thanks for coming and facing this with me—and for me!”
“But I have done nothing,” said Ewen in a dead voice.
“Nothing? You have come to the threshold with me. What can any friend do more?—And now I must go through.”
“But . . . you wished me to read a prayer with you, did you not? I think I can do it, and it would perhaps . . . seem more fitting.” In his heart, still a thrall to that dark horror of nothingness, Ewen thought what a mockery the act would be. And yet . . . would it?
“If you can,” said Archie gently. “We’ll say it together. You have a Prayer Book?”
Ewen took Mr. Falconar’s out of his pocket. And while the quiet horse in the shafts shook his bridle once or twice as if impatient, and the flame on the scaffold, replenished, shot up higher, Ewen read with very fair steadiness, and Archie repeated after him, the commendatory prayer for a sick person on the point of departure. Around the cart many bared their heads and were silent, though in the distance the noise of innumerable voices still continued, as unceasing as the ocean’s.
“O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prison. We humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother, into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and merciful Saviour. . . .”
And, as Ewen went on, the poignancy, even the irony of that prayer, read as it was over a man in full health and in the prime of life, was softened by the perfect courage and readiness of him who joined in it. The black void was neither black nor void any longer; and for a moment this parting under Tyburn’s beams almost seemed like some mere transient farewell, some valediction on the brink of an earthly sea, some handclasp ere crossing one of their own Highland lochs when, as so often, the mist was hanging low on the farther shore. . . .
He finished. “Amen,” said Archibald Cameron in a low voice. He looked up for a moment into the June blue, where the swallows were wheeling. “ ‘Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’—Ewen, you had best go now. And do not fear for me—you heard what Mr. Rayner promised?”
Ewen was gazing at him with shining eyes. “I know now that there is a God, and that you are going to Him! May He give me grace to follow you some day.”
Then Archie held out his hands as far as he could, they kissed each other, and Ewen turned away.
Yet on the narrow steps leading from the cart he all but stumbled. And above him he heard the sound of his cousin’s voice for the last time. It still held the same extraordinary and unfeigned composure, even cheerfulness, in its tones.
“Take care how you go. I think you don’t know the way as well as I do!”
* * * * *
The press was now so enormous that though Ewen was able to reach the carriage again it was found impossible to drive it away. So he was there, on his knees, when Archibald Cameron died, though he saw nothing of it. Afterwards he was glad that he had been so near him at his passing, even glad that the long groan of the multitude round the scaffold told him the very moment. And before, at last, a way could be made for the coach, he knew by the length of time itself that Mr. Rayner had kept his word, and that the brave and gentle heart cast into the fire had been taken from no living breast.
EPILOGUE
“Keithie wants to swim too!”
“Keithie cannot, and let us have no greeting over it, now,” said the handsome elderly lady who, coming at the end of the long, fine day to take the air by the side of Loch na h-Iolaire before sunset, had just been annexed by her younger great-nephew. Little Keith, in Morag’s guardianship, had been enviously watching his brother’s progress through the clear, very still water, but Donald was back now, and dressed, in the boat wherein Angus MacMartin, his instructor, had rowed him out a little way from shore.
“When Donald putched Keithie into the loch,” proceeded the small speaker, looking up earnestly at Miss Cameron, “Keithie swimmed and swimmed till Father came. Donald couldn’t swim then. Didn’t Keithie swim when you putched him in, Donald?” he inquired, raising his voice to carry to the boat. Nine months older than on the disastrous day to which he so uncompromisingly referred, Keith no longer used the possessive case of the personal pronoun to designate himself.
Donald, preferring to ignore this query entirely, cupped his hands together and shouted with all the strength of his healthy young lungs, “Angus says that you can come into the boat now, Keithie, if Aunt Margaret will allow it, and sail your wee ship. Will you come too, Aunt Margaret?”
“No, thank you, Donald, I will not,” replied his great-aunt with much firmness and in her ordinary voice. “I prefer something stable under my feet—Keithie!” she clutched at his impatient little form, “bide still! Do you want to fall in again?”
“Keithie didn’t fall in,” corrected the child, raising his eyes of velvet. “Donald pu——”
“Now, don’t say again that your brother pushed you,” admonished Miss Cameron. “It may be true, but you’d do better to forget it. You know that Donald is very sorry for having done it; and you yourself were very naughty to throw in his claymore hilt.”
“Yes,” admitted small Keith, and his features took on an angelic expression of penitence. “Keithie was very naughty.” He sighed. “But good now,” he added with a more satisfied air, and, as if to prove this statement, stooped, his hand still in Miss Cameron’s, picked up something at his feet, and held it out towards his brother in the boat, which Angus was now rowing in to shore. “Donald, Donald, you can throw my wee ship into the loch because I throwed——”
The elder boy, standing in the bows, gave a sound like a snort. “You know well that your ship floats!” he retorted indignantly. “ ’Tis not the same thing at all!”
“But the ship goes . . . goes like
