naked, for she had stripped herself to wrap all she could round the little bundle which she was still clasping tightly to her breast. But it was only a bundle now, with one tiny, rigid waxen hand emerging to show what it had been.
Keith removed his three-cornered hat, and signed to Mackay to leave the horses and come.
“The poor woman is dead,” he said in a hushed voice, “—has been dead for some time. Can she have met with an accident?”
“I think she will haf peen starfed,” said his orderly, looking at the pinched face. “I haf heard that there are many women wandering in the hills of Lochaber and Badenoch, and there iss no food and it hass been fery cold.”
“But why should she have gone wandering like this, with her child, too?”
The Mackay turned surprised eyes upon him. “Because you English from Fort William will haf burnt her house and perhaps killed her man,” he replied bluntly. “Then she wass going trying to find shelter for herself and the wean. . . . And now there iss no one to streak her and to lay the platter of salt on her preast. It iss a pity.”
He, too, with the innate reverence of his race for the dead, was standing bareheaded.
“I wish we could bury them,” said Keith. But it was out of the question; they had neither the implements nor the time; indeed, but for the food that they carried, and their horses, the same end might almost be awaiting them in these solitudes. So Mackay replaced the plaid, and they went silently back to the horses and continued their journey.
‘You English’—we English—have done this; we whose boast it has always been that we do not war with women and children; we English whose vengeance (Keith had realised it ere this) is edged by the remembrance of past panic, of the disgrace of Prestonpans and Falkirk and invasion. He went on his way with a sensation of being branded.
Yes, he had been too true a prophet. The comedy had turned to grim and bloody earnest. And, despite relief and natural exhilaration at victory—of which there was not much left in him now—despite the liberation of his native country from a menace which she affected to despise, but which in the end had terrified her, despite the vindication, at last, of the worth of trained troops, Keith Windham could say with all his heart, ‘Would God we were back in the days of farce!’ Yes, even in the days when last he was in Lochaber, for the very mortification of the rout at High Bridge last summer and of his subsequent captivity had been easier to bear than the feeling that he belonged now to a band of executioners—was indeed closely connected with the most brutal of them all. He had been gratified when Hawley, on his arrival at Edinburgh, had, on Preston’s recommendation, chosen him to fill a vacancy on his staff; but during the last two weeks he had come to loathe the position. Yet his ambitious regard for his own career forbade him to damage it by asking permission to resign his post; indeed, had he taken such a remarkable step, he would not now be on his way to Perth, having turned his back for a while on what had so sickened him.
Another half-hour passed, and the memories which had been sweeping like dark clouds over Keith’s mind began to give way to a real sensation of alarm, not so much for his personal safety as for the carrying out of his mission. Suppose they did not find their way before nightfall out of this accursed maze into which he had so blindly ventured? He consulted anew with Mackay, and they resolved to abandon the line which they had been taking, and try instead to find a way over a spur on their right, for the mountain which sent it forth was neither craggy nor strewn with scree, and the slope of the spur was such that it was even possible to make use of their horses. At the worst its summit would give them a view, and they might then be able to strike out a better route for themselves.
As Keith was putting his foot in the stirrup Dougal Mackay caught his arm and said excitedly, “I wass hearing a shout, sir!”
“I heard nothing,” responded Major Windham, listening. “Where did it come from?”
The orderly pointed ahead. “The men that shouted will pe round the other side of this beinn. Let us make haste, sir!”
Praying that the Highlander was not mistaken Keith scrambled into the saddle, and his horse began to strain up the slope. He himself could hear nothing but the melancholy notes of a disturbed plover, which was wheeling not far above their heads, and he cursed the bird for drowning more distant sounds. Then, sharp through the mournful cry, there did come a sound, the crack of a shot—of two shots—and the mountains re-echoed with it.
For a moment both Keith and his orderly instinctively checked their horses; then Keith struck spurs into his, and in a few minutes the panting beast had carried him to the top of the shoulder . . . and he had his view.
Directly before him rose another mountain-side, much greener than the rest, and this greenness extended downwards into the almost level depression between it and the slope whose summit he had now reached. Below him, in this narrow upland valley, stood a small group of rough huts for use when the cattle were driven up to the summer pasture, and in front of these was drawn up a body of redcoats, to whom a mounted officer was shouting orders. On the ground near the entrance of the largest shieling lay a motionless Highlander. The shots thus explained themselves; the soldiers were at their usual work, and Keith had ridden into the midst of it. He felt weariness and disgust, but he needed direction too badly not to be glad to meet with those who could give it. Presumably the detachment was from the post on Wade’s road, and the officer might even be Major Guthrie himself. Hoping that the worst was now over, he rode slowly down the hillside through the bloomless heather, unnoticed by the group below.
The fern-thatched roof of one of the shielings had already been fired, and to its first cracklings Keith realised with distaste that the butchery was not yet finished. Three or four scarlet-clad figures came out of the hut before which the dead man lay, half carrying, half dragging another Highlander, alive, but evidently wounded. The officer pointed, and they followed the usual summary method in such cases, and, after planting him against the dry-stone wall of the building itself, withdrew, leaving him face to face with the firing-party. But apparently their victim could not stand unsupported, for a moment or so after they had retired he slid to one knee and then to the ground.
“Detestable!” said Major Windham to himself. He had recognised the tartan now—the one of all others that he would never mistake, for he had worn it himself—the Cameron. But that did not surprise him. The doomed Highlander was now struggling to his feet again; he gained them unaided, and, steadying himself with one hand against the wall behind him, stood once more upright, so tall that his head was well above the edge of the low thatch. Now Keith was near enough to see the lower end of a dirty bandage round his left thigh, and the whole of another on his sword-arm, for all that he had upon him was a kilt and a ragged shirt. And——
“Good God!” exclaimed the Englishman aloud; and, calling out at the top of his voice, “Stop! stop!” he drove the spurs into his horse, came slithering down the last part of the slope, raced towards the shieling, leapt off, and, holding up his hand—but all faces were now turned towards him—ran in between the already levelled muskets and Ewen Cameron.
Ewen alone had not seen him. His face was the colour of the wall behind him; his eyes were half closed, his teeth set in his lower lip, and it was plain that only his force of will was keeping him upright there. A tiny trickle of blood was beginning to course down his bare leg. And even the blind instinct to face death standing could keep him there no longer; for the second time he swayed, and the wounded leg gave way under him again. But this time Keith’s arms caught him as he sank.
Oblivious of the stupefaction which had descended upon the soldiers, and of the more than stupefaction manifested by the officer behind them, Keith lowered that dead weight to the ground and knelt beside it. In Ardroy’s gaunt face a line of white showed under the closed lids,
