“To deny were folly when the evidence is writ so plain,” I said.
“And who the devil are you?”
“Kenneth Montagu, at your service.”
Cumberland ordered the room cleared, then turned on Volney a very grim face. “I’ll remember this, Sir Robert. You knew him all the time. It has a bad look, I make plain to say.”
“’Twas none of my business. Your troopers can find enough victims for you without my pointing out any. I take the liberty of reminding your Highness that I’m not a hangman by profession,” returned Volney stiffly.
“You go too far, sir,” answered the Duke haughtily. “I know my duty too well to allow me to be deterred from performing it by you or by anybody else. Mr. Montagu, have you any reason to give why I should not hang you for a spy?”
“No reason that would have any weight with your Grace,” I answered.
He looked long at me, frowning blackly out of the grimmest face I had ever fronted; and yet that countenance, inexorable as fate, belonged to a young man not four years past his majority.
“Without dubiety you deserve death,” he said at the last, “but because of your youth I give you one chance. Disclose to me the hiding-place of the Pretender and you shall come alive out of the valley of the shadow.”
A foretaste of the end clutched icily at my heart, but the price of the proffered safety was too great. Since I must die, I resolved that it should be with a good grace.
“I do not know whom your Grace can mean by the Pretender.”
His heavy jaw set and his face grew cold and hard as steel.
“You fool, do you think to bandy words with me? You will speak or by heaven you will die the death of a traitor.”
“I need not fear to follow where so many of my brave comrades have shown the way,” I answered steadily.
“Bah! You deal in heroics. Believe me, this is no time for theatricals. Out with it. When did you last see Charles Stuart?”
“I can find no honourable answer to that question, sir.”
“Then your blood be on your own head, fool. You die to-morrow morning by the cord.”
“As God wills; perhaps to-morrow, perhaps not for fifty years.”
While I was being led out another prisoner passed in on his way to judgment. The man was Captain Roy Macdonald.
“I’m wae to see you here, lad, and me the cause of it by sending you,” he said, smiling sadly.
“How came they to take you?” I asked.
“I was surprised on the beach just after Murdoch left,” he told me in the Gaelic so that the English troopers might not understand. “All should be well with the yellow haired laddie now that the warning has been given. Are you for Carlisle, Kenneth?”
I shook my head. “No, my time is set for to-morrow. If they give you longer you’ll find a way to send word to Aileen how it went with me, Donald?”
He nodded, and we gripped hands in silence, our eyes meeting steadily. From his serene courage I gathered strength.
They took me to a bothy in the village which had been set apart as a prison for me, and here, a picket of soldiers with loaded muskets surrounding the hut, they left me to myself. I had asked for paper and ink, but my request had been refused.
In books I have read how men under such circumstance came quietly to philosophic and religious contemplation, looking at the issue with the far-seeing eyes of those who count death but an incident. But for me, I am neither philosopher nor saint. Connected thought I found impossible. My mind was alive with fleeting and chaotic fragmentary impulses. Memories connected with Cloe, Charles, Balmerino, and a hundred others occupied me. Trivial forgotten happenings flashed through my brain. All the different Aileens that I knew trooped past in procession. Gay and sad, wistful and merry, eager and reflective, in passion and in tender guise, I saw my love in all her moods; and melted always at the vision of her.
I descended to self-pity, conceiving myself a hero and a martyr, revelling in an agony of mawkish sentiment concerning the post-mortem grief of my friends. From this at length I snatched myself by calling to mind the many simple Highlanders who had preceded me in the past months without any morbid craving for applause. Back harked my mind to Aileen, imagination spanning the future as well as the past. Tender pity and love suffused me. Mingled with all my broken reflections was many a cry of the heart for mercy to a sinner about to render his last account and for healing balm to that dear friend who would be left to mourn the memory of me painted in radiant colours.
Paradoxical though it may seem, the leaden hours flew on feathered foot. Dusk fell, then shortly darkness. Night deepened, and the stars came out. From the window I watched the moon rise till it flooded the room with its pale light, my mind at last fallen into the sombre quiet of deep abstraction.
A mocking voice brought me to earth with a start.
“Romantic spectacle! A world bathed in moonlight. Do you compose verses to your love’s bright eyes, Mr. Montagu? Or perhaps an epitaph for some close friend?”
An elegant figure in dark cloak, riding boots, and three-cornered hat confronted me, when I slowly turned.
“Hope I don’t intrude,” he said jauntily.
I gave him a plain hint. “Sir Robert, like Lord Chesterfield, when he was so ill last year, if I do not press you to remain it is because I must rehearse my funeral obsequies.”
His laugh rang merrily. Coming forward a step or two, he flung a leg across the back of a chair.
“Egad, you’re not very hospitable, my friend. Or isn’t this your evening at home?” he fleered.
I watched him narrowly, answering nothing.
“Cozy quarters,” he said, looking round with polite interest. “May I ask whether you have taken them for long?”
“The object of your visit, sir,” I demanded coldly.
“There you gravel me,” he laughed. “I wish I knew the motives for my visit. They are perhaps a blend—some pique, some spite, some curiosity, and faith! a little admiration, Mr. Montagu.”
“All of which being presumably now satisfied——”
“But they’re not, man! Far from it. And so I accept the courteous invitation you were about to extend me to prolong my call and join you in a glass of wine.”
Seeing that he was determined to remain willy-nilly, I made the best of it.
“You have interpreted my sentiments exactly, Sir Robert,” I told him. “But I fear the wine will have to be postponed till another meeting. My cellar is not well stocked.”
He drew a flask from his pocket, found glasses on the table, and filled them.
“Then let me thus far play host, Mr. Montagu. Come, I give you a toast!” He held the glass to the light and viewed the wine critically. “’T is a devilish good vintage, though I say it myself. Montagu, may you always find a safe port in time of storm!” he said with jesting face, but with a certain undercurrent of meaning that began to set my blood pounding.
But though I took a glimmer of the man’s purpose I would not meet him half-way. If he had any proposal to make the advances must come from him. Nor would I allow myself to hope too much.
“I’ faith, ’tis a good port,” I said, and eyed the wine no less judicially than he.
Volney’s gaze loitered deliberately over the cottage furnishings. “Cozy enough, but after all not quite to my liking, if I may make so bold as to criticise your apartments. I wonder now you don’t make a change.”
“I’m thinking of moving to-morrow,” I told him