they were scattered.” Mr. Maclean did not know whence these words came to torment him; he thought from some English medal struck to commemorate the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Yes, the winds always fought for England; had they not wrecked the hopes of the Jacobite attempt of 1719 by scattering the Spanish fleet which was to bring such solid assistance to the Cause? He turned away from his contemplation of the streaming, howling dusk outside with something between a curse and a sigh, and, forgetting to close the inward opening casement, moved away, a tall, lean, muscular Highlander of eight-and-twenty or so, not ill-looking, rather grave of aspect, dark of complexion, grey-eyed and wearing his own dark hair. But after a moment, realising that the rain was coming in, he turned back to shut the window, and was just pushing it to when there came to his ears from without a sort of clattering and a cry. Pulling the casement wide again, he thrust out his head. The vacillating light at the end of the little street showed him a cloaked and falling figure. Ranald Maclean swung a leg over the low sill and vaulted out into the rain.
* * * * *
“Are you much hurt, sir?” asked a voice in Marie-Cyprien de Lancize’s ear, a voice which that young officer, a quarter stunned though he was, realised to be other than French, though it was using that language. Its owner was assisting him to rise.
“Parbleu, I hardly know!” Once upon his feet, the Vicomte carried a hand to his hatless head. His elegant white wig was askew and soiled in one place with the mud of the unsavoury channel in which lay his galooned and cockaded tricorne, upside down. His helper picked it up.
“May I offer you, sir,” he said, “the hospitality of my little room along there to put yourself to rights, and to repose yourself awhile if you wish?”
With thanks the Frenchman accepted the hat and the offer, too. “But I should like to know,” he added, looking up at the unbetraying, blank wall, “what enemy I can have in this little street, of whose name I am not even sure!”
“It is called the Rue des Minimes.”
“Eh bien, never have I serenaded any fair bourgeoise in the Rue des Minimes—yet to receive an iron cauldron full of water . . . by the way, I hope it was only water?”
The Highlander pointed to a twisted length of metal sprawling across the gutter.
“There lies the instrument which smote you, monsieur—a piece of guttering from the house, I think—and as to the hand which wielded it, you must accuse the tempest which has so much to answer for. Will you take my arm?”
Mr. Ranald Maclean’s little apartment, entered in a more conventional manner than he had left it, was almost illumined by the presence of the handsome and uniformed new-comer, wet and a trifle dishevelled though he was. He threw his dripping cloak with a word of apology on to a chair, and going straight to the mirror over the hearth investigated closely a smear on his right check. Ranald, clapping to the casement, hurried out and returned with water and a towel.
“Nothing!” pronounced the young soldier in a tone of relief after a moment’s dabbing. “Nothing but a scratch, fortunately!”
“But your head, monsieur?”
The Frenchman carefully straightened his wig and then shrugged his shoulders. Mr. Maclean had a strong conviction that it was only the possibility of damage to his looks which had caused him concern. “That devil of a gutter fell principally on to my shoulder. I am none the worse—but no less grateful to you, monsieur, for coming to my assistance,” he added politely, “than if you had saved me from an earthquake. Especially,” and here he had the grace to redden a little, “especially as I was sufficiently ill-bred to perpetrate a foolish pleasantry when I passed your window just before. I hope you will accept my sincere apologies for that.”
The eyes which looked at him were a trifle cold, and the tone, too. “What I caught of your remark, sir, was entirely beside the point. But, naturally, I accept your apology.” The voice became less stiff. “You will take a glass of wine with me, I hope?”
“Most willingly. Allow me first to present myself—the Vicomte de Lancize of Dauphin-Dragons. You, I think, monsieur, are an Englishman?” (“And not only from your accent!” he thought, with interior amusement.)
Ranald had bowed slightly. “I am not English; I am a Scot. My name is Maclean.” Going to a cupboard he produced a bottle of Bordeaux and a couple of glasses. “I regret that I have no eau-de-vie to offer you after your accident; it would perhaps be better.” He filled and held out a glass of claret.
“A thousand thanks,” said M. de Lancize, accepting it. “You are a Scot, Monsieur Maclean? Then I drink to the success of the cause to which I am probably not indiscreet in guessing you pledged!”
But the Highlander did not drink, did not even fill his glass. “Of what avail is that toast now?” he asked bitterly, flinging out a long arm towards the little window against which the storm-driven rain was at that moment hissing hard. “It is true that I follow that most unfortunate of causes, against which even the elements are leagued. You, too, sir, from your uniform, are of those who were lending it assistance. But how can you help us now? Many of your ships are badly crippled, if what I hear on all sides is true?”
His dark grey eyes searched the face of M. de Saxe’s aide-de-camp as if hoping against hope for some reassurance. The Vicomte de Lancize set down his emptied glass upon the table without replying. It was embarrassing to know as much as he knew and to be uncertain how much of this unauthorised knowledge should be allowed to appear. These poor devils of Jacobites. . . . On the whole, he shared his commander’s opinion of them in the mass—inept conspirators, unready allies. But this tall, lean young man looked neither inept nor unready, and his words, his very refusal to toss off the easy glass, showed that he was better prepared to face facts than most of his infatuated fellow-partisans.
“You were about to say, Monsieur de Lancize . . .”
What was Monsieur de Lancize about to say? To proffer him the naked truth, unpalatable though it were—the truth which perhaps he owed him in return for his assistance and the Bordeaux—or to bring out some soothing evasion? As the young officer hesitated there was distinctly audible, in a lull of the torment outside, the sound of rumbling wheels and of horses’ hoofs clattering on the cobbles. Both ceased, and not because the tempest had outvied them, for next moment a knocking of some urgency was assaulting the outer door of the house.
The Vicomte de Lancize reached out his hand for his wet cloak. “You have a visitor, I think, Monsieur Maclean” (and some recollection of his ribald comment of a while ago went again through his mind). “Allow me to depart.”
“No, no,” said the Highlander, listening with a puzzled air. “The knocking cannot be for me. I have but one acquaintance in all Dunkirk. Pray sit down again, monsieur, and give me some light upon the chances of the expedition.”
But M. de Lancize had hardly complied when the door of the sitting-room opened and the voice of Mr. Maclean’s landlord was heard announcing that there were two gentlemen to wait upon him. The young Frenchman sprang up again, Ranald stared in surprise, and one of the gentlemen in question came forward, a cloak round the lower part of his face. His eyes could be seen to go quickly from Ranald to his visitor.
“I understood that you were alone, Mr. Maclean,” he said in a somewhat aggrieved tone, and in English.
“Sir,” put in the Vicomte de Lancize pleasantly, in the same tongue, “in one moment Monsieur Maclean is alone. I take my leave.”
But the new-comer made a gesture as though to stay him. “On the contrary,
