"His Grace of Perth desires to go on," said Charles. "So does Glencoe. So do my faithful Irish friends. Your men, as you well know, expect to go on. To get them to go back, you must start in the dead of night and lie to them, telling them they are going on. Only you, their chiefs and fathers, want to go back."

"To hell with the Irish!" cried one from the background. "They're no' worth the dad of a bonnet."

"It's no matter to them," said another man by him. "They've neither haid nor maid to lose."

This fetched O'Sullivan to his feet in a tearing rage. "We've got lives to lose," he cried, "and, by G—, we're not afraid to lose 'em!"

At this the yelling must have been heard in the square, and the gesticulating and grimacing would have been amusing on a less serious occasion. At last, in a lull in the gale, the Colonel, addressing the Prince, curtly demanded, "Who is the chief military commander of your army, sir?"

"My Lord George Murray," answered Charles bitterly.

"Then it's time your commander commanded. This spells disaster whether we go on or go back."

"It's the plain truth you're telling, Colonel Waynflete," said Lord Ogilvie loudly. In an undertone I heard him say, "Oot wi' it, Geordie!"

When Murray arose, everybody knew the finishing touch was to be put to the business, and a strained silence fell on the assembly.

"I have advised ye to go back, sir," he said, "because, in the complete absence of the support we were led to expect, it is foolish to go on. Your Royal Highness wants to go on, and there's not a man here who does not honour you for your courage. Now, sir, I will go on, and so shall every man here I can command or influence, if those who hae tell't ye behind my back that they think we ought to go on will put their opinion down in writing and subscribe their names to it, here and now. One condition more, sir. That writing, so subscribed, shall be sent by a sure hand direct from this town to His Majesty in Rome, so that he may judge each man justly."

"I agree," said Charles eagerly. "Pen and paper, Mr. Secretary!"

It at once became clear, however, that Murray had taken the measure of the men he had to deal with.

"Why make flesh of one and fish of another?" asked O'Sullivan, and old Sir Thomas nodded approval of the question.

"The decision should be the decision of the Council," said the Duke of Perth.

"Will ye write your names to it, or will ye not?" demanded Murray.

No one spoke.

"That settles it, sir," said Murray. "But I desire you, Mr. Secretary, to make a note of my offer and its reception."

"Have your way!" said Charles, in sullen anger. "But it settles another thing for ye. I call no more councils."

He turned and strode out of the room. The Stuart cause was in its coffin, and it only remained for us to give it a fair burial.

When the door closed behind the Prince, the Colonel whispered in my ear, "Slip off and tell Freake!"

I did the journey at a run, and found Master Freake sitting, quietly meditative, but booted and spurred for his journey.

"Well, Oliver?"

"We go back to-night."

In five minutes I was standing in the Ironmarket at his grey mare's head.

"I'm not deserting you, lad," said he, gripping my hand heartily.

"Of course not, sir. Good-bye, and good luck!"

"My love to Margaret. Look out for the sergeant. Good-bye!"



CHAPTER XXII

A BROTHER OF THE LAMP

Two days afterwards, towards six o'clock on a bitter evening, I rode wearily into Leek. I was having a hard apprenticeship in soldiering under a master who had no idea of sparing either me or himself. For the Colonel had accepted the post of second, under Murray, in command of our rear-guard, and had made it a condition of acceptance that I should be with him. Some thirty Highlanders, mostly Macdonalds, picked dare-devils, had been mounted and turned into dragooners, and I, thanks to the Colonel, had been made Captain over them.

"The lad's no experience, but he's got sense," he said to my lord George Murray.

"I ken him weel aneugh," said his lordship. "He threatened to knock my head off. D'ye ca' that sense, Kit Waynflete?"

"Since your head's still on your shoulders," said the Colonel, fumbling for his snuff, "I do. He knocked Maclachlan's Donald into a log of timber, and, damme, I hardly saw his hand move."

"That's only a trick, sir," I protested.

"Weel, Captain Wheatman," said Murray, "keep your ugly English tricks to y'rsel. Mind ye, colonel or no colonel, I'll break ye first chance ye gie me."

Maclachan was, I must say, very obliging and complimentary over my promotion. He gave me Donald to be my sergeant and personal servant, finding him, how I knew not, a horse strong enough to carry him easily.

"It is ferra guid," said Donald to his chief. "Er shall pe lookit to as if her were ma mither's own son."

To me, Captain Wheatman, clinking about in the corridor waiting for the Colonel, comes William, suave and confidential as ever.

"Well, William," said I. "Any more coincidences?"

"Yes, sir," said he, and began his hand-washing.

"You'll die a rich man, William."

"No, sir. This particular coincidence made me the poorer by, I should say," suspending his washing to calculate, "some five shillings."

"The devil it did! How was that?"

"Your honour's clothes that you left behind, sir, when you were transmuted, as my lord would say, were stolen."

"And you value them at five shillings! I ought to crack your head for you."

"Yes, sir. Cast-offs sells very cheap, sir. But the coincidence, sir! I've not really come to that yet."

"Go on, William! You interest me deeply."

"I found them, sir, at the bottom of the garden, torn to rags, sir!"

"And sold 'em for fivepence! Eh, thrifty William?"

"Sixpence, to be exact, sir!"

The Colonel rushed me off, but I found time to give the rascal a crown, which put him sixpence in pocket. A servant ought to have his vails, and, besides, William's concern amused me a good crown's worth.

This was late on in the night after the final decision to go back, and since then I had been scouting miles behind the main body of our rear-guard, so as to make sure that the Duke's horse were not on our track. I had slept by driblets as opportunity offered. Now, my purpose accomplished, I was looking forward to supper and bed, having left a patrol of fresh men some six miles back to watch the southern road.

There was one thing in my mind, however, that must be attended to first. I must see Mistress Hardy of Hardiwick. My heart ached for her, for I knew how sorely she would feel the retreat of the Prince. Moreover, the clansmen were not likely to discriminate between her and other townsfolk, and I would save her from disturbance. So, jumping off the sorrel, and giving him in charge to one of my men, I started for the little cottage. I was turning the corner out of the square when some one, running lightly behind me, placed a hand on my arm and detained me. It was Margaret.

"You've no need to trouble, Oliver," she said. "I've kept a room for you at the 'Angel.'"

"Thank you," I replied. "You are very kind, madam."

"Poof! Come along! You're so tired that you can hardly keep your eyes open to look at me. Come along, sir!" She was merrily pulling at my arm as she spoke. "I don't want to be obliged to return you every service, you know, sir!"

"No, madam! Certainly not."

"No, indeed, sir! I'm not going to put you to bed, except as the very last resource."

"Fortunately, madam, I'm a long way from needing that. In a few minutes I shall gladly take advantage of your care for me. First, however, I must see to our old friend to whom the Prince gave the brooch."

"We'll go together!" said Margaret, putting her arm in mine.

The cottage was dark and silent, welcome proof that she was undisturbed. I knocked gently, and, after a short delay, the door opened, and her woman appeared, candle in hand.

"I knew you'd come, sir," she said simply. "And this is your lady! Come in!"

Candle in hand, she paced ahead of us to the door of the room, and then stood aside, erect and solemn, to let us pass in. I looked at her closely. The worried, anxious look on her comely face had gone, and she was subdued, calm, and happy.

"Thank God!" she whispered. "She's at peace!"

I stepped ahead of Margaret into the fine old room, with its pleasant memorials of ancientry. There they were, just as I had seen them —scutcheon, portrait, glove, and pounce-box. There was no change in them; they were the abiding elements on which a strong soul had kept itself strong. But change there was. At the prie-Dieu, kneeling in a rapture before the Virgin Mother, was a solemn, black-robed priest. A narrow white bed was in the room. Two large candles burned steadily at its head, two at the foot; and on the bed, the linen turned down to reveal the thin, frail hands crossed below the Prince's brooch, lay the still, white form of our lady of the square. God had taken her to Himself. Death had caught her with a welcoming smile on her face, and, in pity and ruth, had left it there.

The Hardys of Hardiwick had given their last gift to the cause.

Tears were streaming down Margaret's cheeks. With shaking hands she removed her hat and, kneeling down at the bedside, clasped her hands in prayer.

"She talked no end about you, sir," whispered the serving-woman, "and about the beautiful lady with you. That standing in the cold square to see the Prince was the death of her. She would have her bed put down here, sir. She wanted to die here, with the old shield in her eyes, for she was proud of her blood, as well she might be."

"Yes," I whispered back. "She was the last of a great race."

"Aye, sir. She was that. She was a bit moithered in her mind, dear heart, just afore she went. The last words she said were a prayer for his soul, —her sweetheart you know, sir, that she lost sixty years ago,—just as I'd heard her pray thousands of times. But, poor thing, she got his name wrong. She called him 'John.'"

Choking, I threw myself on my knees beside Margaret, and prayed and fought, and fought and prayed again. Here, before me, I saw Death in the only shape in which it can give no sorrow—sinless age that had gently glided into immortality; and, with equal vision, I saw the black passage ... and the still twisted thing lying there in a patch of gloom ... my friend, gone in the pride of his youth ... his life spilt out in anger and agony ... and by me. Then the innocent hand of her for whom, though all unwittingly, I had done this thing, crept on to my shoulder, and I turned to look at her.

"Thank God we came, Oliver!" she whispered.

Before we could rise, the black-robed priest lifted his tall, gaunt frame slowly from the prie-Dieu. Standing on the opposite side of the bed he raised his hands in blessing.

"Our sister is with God," he said, his deep voice vibrant with emotion. "My children, you are, as I think, those who were much in her prayers at the last. I know not who you are, but, in her memory and in God's name, I give you in this life His Peace, and in the life to come the assurance of His Everlasting Blessedness. Amen."

He ceased. Gravely, and in a solemn silence, he knelt again at the prie-Dieu. We rose. First Margaret, and then I, kissed the Prince's brooch and the folded hands, and then stole out of the room. We were too awe-stricken to speak, or even to look at each other, but, as we went, she placed her hand in mine.

Weary days, full of hard riding and scouting, passed before I saw Margaret again. I was always in the rear, generally far in the rear, while she and the other ladies were, very properly, kept well ahead. She now rode in the calash with Lady Ogilvie,—the two being inseparable,—and Maclachlan was with them. My work was hard and anxious but it kept me from thinking overmuch. I put all my soul into it so that it should.

"The lad does very well, as I told you he would," said the Colonel to Murray one night when I rode in to make my report.

"I see no signs of my chance of breaking him," said his lordship grimly, but he would have me sup with him that night, and was very unbending and helpful.

There is nothing I need say about this stage of the retreat. It was well managed, and is, I am told, a very creditable piece of soldiership. It does not belong to my story but to history, to which I leave it.

Things did happen, however, that do concern me. The first was laughable though vexatious. This was the manner of it.

While the Prince was making the stage from Macclesfield to Manchester, and Murray and the Colonel were in force a few miles in his rear, I had to keep the country behind them well observed. I had one patrol within sight of Macclesfield, and others stretching out along an edge of upland country running westward to the next main road. I spent the night in a little wayside ale-house, and was having my breakfast next morning when I was disturbed by a succession of yells from without.

I ran into the yard and there was Donald, the rough head of one of my dragoons in each hand, banging them together, varying his bangs with kicks at any accessible spot, and shrieking at them in Gaelic, while they shrieked back and wriggled to escape. He stopped when he saw me, but still held them by the pow.

"What's it all about, Donald?" I asked.

"The loons! It's Glencoe 'erself sail hang 'em," he said breathlessly.

"What for? Out with it, Donald!"

"Yes, you gomeril"—shoving one of the men sprawling into the stable —"oot wi' it! Bring your tarn rogues wark 'ere!"

The man came sheepishly out with my saddle, cut and ripped and gutted till it wasn't worth a sou.

Strict and stern inquiry threw little light on the matter. I had my own suspicions, namely, of two licorous raffatags in the so-called Manchester regiment, whom I had handsomely kicked out of a roadside cottage where they were for behaving after their kind. They had been seen prowling about the curtilage of the ale-house the night before.

I went back to my breakfast. For a few hours I had to make shift with the saddle of one of my dragoons, but, after a short halt later on, Donald brought out the sorrel with a fine, and nearly new, saddle.

"Tat's petter," said he. "'Er sail ride foine now."

"This cost you a twa-three bawbees, I'll be bound," I remarked.

Donald grinned intelligently and I made no closer inquiry. The good fellow made me uncomfortable, for he would have slit the throat of the greatest squire along the road to get me a shoe-lace.

Early next morning his lordship sent me ahead into Manchester with a dispatch for the Prince, who had spent the night there. It was a welcome task, for it would, I hoped, give me at least a sight of Margaret. Instead of this sweet meat, however, I got sour sauce.

When I got there our army was beginning its onward march, and there were thousands of people about to watch the clansmen fall in, and little disguise they made of their feelings. As it happened, when I rode into the square, Ogilvie's large regiment was lining up, and he left it in charge of his major to come and talk to me.

"I'm wishing you'd come half an hour ago," he began. "Ishbel would ha' given much to see you, and so wad some one else, I'm thinking."

"Have the ladies started already?" I asked, with painful carelessness.

"Losh, man, Maclachlan has 'em up and away the morn in fine style. He's getting a very attentive chiel is Maclachlan, and I wonder ma Ishbel disna like him better than she does. There's too damn few of us to be spitting and sparring among ourselves."

"This is so, my lord," I said.

"I'm just plain Davie to ma friends," he said simply. "I'm no exactly a man after God's ain heart, like my Bible namesake, but I hae no speeritual pride where a guid man's concernit, and it ill becomes men who are in the same boat, and that only a cockle-shell thing, to be swapping off court terms wi' ane anither. They're aff, an' we mun step it out. An' I'm no really a lord."

"I want the Prince's lodging, Davie," I explained, as we walked on the causeway level with the head of his column.

"We march past it, an' I'll drop ye there. The young man takes it verra ill. The heart's clean melted oot of him. An' sma' wonder! See the sour, mum bodies in this town! When we came down there were bonfires an' bell-ringings, an' cheerings, an' mostly every windie wi' a lit candle, maybe twa-three, in it. The leddies, an' they're nae bad-lookin' lassies either, had bunches o' plaid ribbons in their bosoms an'—this I hae from Maclachlan—plaid gairters to their stockings."

In such talk we spent the way to the Prince's lodging, where I charged him to carry my greetings to the ladies. He wrung my hand in parting and, his major having halted the regiment, stepped proudly to the head of his men. I stood on the edge of the causeway, drew my sword, and stood at the salute, according to the courtesy of the wars. He returned the honour in like soldierly fashion, rapped out a command, and so passed on into the hungry North. It was the last I was to see of Davie, commonly called the Lord Ogilvie.

To my astonishment the Prince was not yet risen, and it was some time before he came to me in his day-room, where I was awaiting him. I rose and bowed as he entered, and gave him the dispatch.

"Curse your foul English weather, Captain Wheatman. It's getting into my bones."

This was, I fancy, only his way of excusing to me the nip of brandy he was pouring out.

"That's better!" he said, putting down the empty glass. "I have something to thank France for after all." He laughed at his own poor joke, but there was no ring of merriment in his laughter, and added, "Now for what my runaway general has to say."

He read the letter impatiently and sneeringly. "I suppose Mr. Secretary must write something back," was his comment. "It doesn't matter much what, since we're running away as fast as our legs can carry us. Any fool, or rogue, or Murray can run away."

He paced up and down the room with long angry strides, muttering words I did not understand. Suddenly he stopped, and turned on me with the smiling, princely face of the greater Charles I knew and liked.

"Curse me for an ingrate! I am heartily obliged to you, Captain Wheatman, for your pains. My lord speaks of you in high terms of praise. And I must not keep you. Murray must have his answer. Come with me, and Mr. Secretary shall take it down while I have my breakfast."

I followed him out and along a passage with doors on either side, outside one of which stood a servant or sentry, who had eyed me furtively on my coming inward. When he saw the Prince, he opened the door and thrust in his head, to announce our visit. He was clumsy, too, and, keeping his head round the edge of the door too long, bumped into the Prince, who rapped out an oath and flung him aside. As I followed Charles in, I caught a glimpse of the back of a man in a heavy mulberry wrap-rascal, guarded with tarnished silver braid at the cuffs and pockets, who was hastily leaving the Secretary's room by an inner door.

"Ha!" said Charles sneeringly. "More plots and politics! If I could be schemed into a crown, you'd be the man to do it."

"I must be acquent wi' what gaes on in the toun, your Royal Highness, an' ma man yonder's a rare ferret, but I didna think him worthy to be in the presence, sae I just bundled him oot."

"All your plotting and contrivings will not do you as much good as a glass of brandy. The climate's getting at you."

Indeed Mr. Secretary was all of a shake, and looked in a scared manner from the Prince to me and back again.

"It's naething but a little queasiness, such as we elder, bookish men are apt to get by ower-much application. Your Royal Highness is gracious to note my little ailments," said he smoothly. He had recovered already.

"Try brandy!" said Charles. "It settles the stomach fine. Well, come and take down a reply to this while I have some breakfast!"

The queasiness seemed to return, for Mr. Secretary was slow, captious, and argumentative, though the matter of the dispatch was only as to where the army should halt for a day's rest. At last Preston was decided on, and the dispatch written accordingly. I bowed myself out, jumped on the sorrel, and started for the Stockport road.

Our rear was closer up than usual this morning. Manchester, being a considerable town, was not to be cleared of our main of troops until the first column of the rear was in the southern skirts of the town. Outside the Prince's lodging, his escort of life-guards was now drawn up. As I rode along the edge of the market-square the Camerons were massing, and the streets adjacent were seething with clansmen.

I put the sorrel to it and was soon out in the low open country. After cantering a mile or so, I caught sight of two horsemen, well ahead of me, riding south at a round gallop. One of them wore a big mulberry wrap-rascal. It is no uncommon garment to see along a turnpike on a biting December day, but, ten minutes later, after they dropped to a walk to ease their horses up a slope, I saw the silver guarding round the pockets.

If this were the man I had seen hurrying out of Mr. Secretary's room, a look at him would be worth while, so I spurred after them. The clatter I made had the desired effect. At the top of the slope, wrap-rascal turned round. It was Weir, the Government spy. He squealed to his companion, who looked back in turn. My heart leaped fiercely at the sight of his seamed leathery face and dab-of-putty nose. It was the sergeant of dragoons.

Down the slope they raced, with me after them full tilt, proud as a peacock to be driving two men headlong before me, and one of them an old campaigner. It was my undoing. The road was lined with straggling hedges, and a long pistol shot ahead, a cross-track cut it. The sergeant was giving orders to the spy as they rode, and at the crossway the sergeant, shouting, "Shoot low!" turned sharp to the left while the spy made for the right.

It was a pretty trick, for it put me between two fires. I was on the spy's pistol hand as he turned, and he let fly at me, not out of calculated bravery, as his face plainly showed, but in a flurry of despair. The motive behind a shot, however, does not matter. It's the bullet that counts, and his got me just above the left elbow. I was up in my stirrups, aiming at the sergeant, who was pulling his horse round to be at me. I saw splinters fly from a bough to his right.

I had not looked to the spy. Now a shot rang out down the lane on his side. It was followed by a piercing shriek, and this by another shot. In between the shots, the serjeant wheeled round, and raced off down the lane for dear life, spurring and flogging like a maniac. It was useless to follow. My rein hand had lost its grip, my arm felt aflame, and blood was already dripping fast from my helpless fingers.

Looking down the lane, I saw Weir lying in the road, and a strange horseman climbing down from his saddle. I rode up to him.

"How d'ye do?" he said affably. "Sorry I could not get the other chap for you, but I meant having Turnditch. The dirty rascal has sent his last lad to the gallows. Faugh! I could spit on his carrion."

A glance to the road showed that he was right. The spy's blank, yellow face was turned upwards; his eyes, with the horror of hell still in them, stared wide-open at the sky. Just above his right eyebrow there was a hole I could have put my finger in.

"Damn my silly eyes!" cried the stranger. "You're winged, sir, and badly. It must be seen to at once."

He helped me down, took off my coat and waistcoat, and turned up my shirt-sleeve, doing all this deftly and almost womanly.

"Hurrah! Missed the bone and gone clear through! Put you right in no time! Plug down your finger there, sir, while I cut a stick. That's excellent. You won't mind if I keep you while I reload my barkers? The safe side, you know!"

With his handkerchief and my own, and a length of hazel for a tourniquet, he bound up the wound, and with much skill, for he at once reduced the flow of blood to a mere trickle. While he was busy over me, I took stock of him.

He was a man of about my own age and height, but slimmer and wirier. His features were rather irregular, but an intelligent, humorous look atoned for this defect, and his bright grey eyes were the quickest I have ever seen. Though an utter stranger, there was a puzzling familiarity about him, and I tried hard to recall which of my acquaintance featured him. His horse, now cropping at the roadside, was a splendid brown blood mare, the best horse, barring Sultan, I had seen for many a day. The last thing I noted was that the man was singularly well dressed.

"That's patched you up till you can get to a regular doctor. There's a first-class man at Stockport, opposite the west door of the church, Bamford by name. You can't miss his place, and he'll pocket his fee like a wise man ind ask no questions."

"You've done very well, sir," said I. "The blood has almost ceased to flow. I'm greatly beholden to you."

"Say no more!" he cried earnestly. "It's a boon you've conferred on me, if you only knew it. Nemo repente turpissimus, as we say."

"Video proboque, as we also say," I countered, smiling.

"Oddones! A brother of the lamp!" he cried, laughing shortly, and suddenly sobering. "I must be on. Sorry to leave you, sir, but I think you're all right. Take care, however. I was touched myself t'other day, and the damned hole in my ribs still bleeds if I exert myself too much."

"You should surely be in bed, if there's a hole in your ribs."

"In bed!" he sniffed. "I took to bed, egad, and nearly got pinched. Now I've no need for exertion. In this gap between the Highlanders, I'm as snug as a flea in a blanket."

After helping me into my clothes and on to my horse, he strolled up to the dead man.

"Well, Turnditch," he said, "you know everything now, or nothing." Then, dropping lightly on his knee, he turned gaily to me, and said, "Always plunder the Egyptian, dead or alive."

He rifled the spy's pockets with the easy indifference of an expert, singing as he turned them out:

"The priest calls the lawyer a cheat; The lawyer beknaves the divine; And the statesman because he's so great, Thinks his trade is as honest as mine."

He stopped his singing and, tossing a well-stuffed leather bag up and down in his hand, said, "There's really no objection to virtue when the jade is not her own reward. Chunk! chunk! There's alchemy for you! Half an ounce of lead into half a pound of gold!"

He stowed the bag in his pocket, jumped on his mare, and together we walked our horses to the turnpike, where we halted side by side, our horses' heads to their respective destinations.

"Sir," said I, holding out my hand, "I am greatly in your debt. My name is Oliver Wheatman, of the Hanyards, Staffordshire. May I have the pleasure of learning yours?"

He took my hand, looked at me intently, with his grey eyes very thoughtful and steady, and then said quietly, "Samuel Nixon, Bachelor of Arts, sometime Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford."

"Commonly called 'Swift Nicks,'" I added, smiling.

"Right first time," he cried gleefully, and shot off like an arrow towards Manchester.

So Nance Lousely had not got her pinnerfull of guineas after all.



CHAPTER XXIII

DONALD

I got my wound in the early forenoon of December the 10th. About eight o'clock on the night of the 17th I sat down in a deserted shepherd's hut to the meal Donald had got ready for me. The week had been in one respect a blank, for I had not seen Margaret. In every other respect it had been laborious, strenuous, and exciting, and we had just seen the end of the toughest job so far. We, meaning my dragoons and myself, were on the top of Shap. Some ammunition wagons had broken down on the upward climb, bunging up the road at its stiffest bit and delaying us for hours. His lordship and the Colonel, with the infantry of the rear-guard, were in Shap village a mile or two ahead. The Prince was still farther on, probably in Penrith.

The delay was dangerous. Our army had rested one full day at Preston and another at Lancaster. Even at Preston the Colonel and I, with my dragoons, had barely ridden out of the town when a strong body of enemy horse rode in from the east, sent by Wade to reinforce the Duke. Our margin of safety was being cut down daily. We should have to fight before long, and I was posted here, on the top of Shap, to see that no surprise was sprung upon us.

The shieling, as Donald called it, was about a hundred yards past the highest point of the road, where a picket was on the watch. Across the road was a bit of a dip, and here my dragoons were making themselves comfortable round a roaring fire, fuel for which was provided by the smashed-up carcass of a derelict wagon. The country was as bare as a bird's tail, but by a slice of great good luck one of them had shot a stray sheep on the way up, and the air was thick with the smell of singed mutton.

Here I must say of my dragoons that they were men I loved to command. After twelve days' work of a sort to knock up an elephant they were as fresh as daisies. Donald they all feared, and as Donald, for my behoof, made no bones about telling them how the laddie's nief, sma' as it lookit, 'ad dinged 'im, Donald, oot o' his seven senses, they feared me. I think they even liked me. Anyhow, I never had an ugly look or a glum word from one of them. Some people express surprise at the splendid Highland regiments now, thanks to Mr. Pitt's politic genius, serving in our army. It is no surprise to me who have commanded a body of clansmen for a fortnight in the back-end of a retreat.

Donald was a very jewel of a man. He was servant, sergeant, nurse, and companion, and unbeatable in all capacities. My wound had given me more trouble than I expected, even though Mr. Bamford had told me that one of the larger arteries was injured. Once or twice since, as occasion served, a doctor had dressed it, but it was Donald's incessant care that did most for it. I still wore my left arm in a sling.

He had made me a fire of wood and turfs; given me roast mutton, a slice of cheese sprinkled with oatmeal, and good bread to eat, and a pint of milk laced with whisky to drink. Refinements which he would have scouted for himself in any place, he had taken thought to provide for me in these wilds—a pewter plate and a silver beaker, both stolen. The only furnishing in the hut was a squat log, almost the size of a butcher's block, which served as a table. For seat, Donald rigged up half the tail-board of the wagon across two heaps of turfs. He completed his work by producing a tallow candle stuck in a dab of clay by way of candlestick.

Donald had left me to my food and gone over to the camp to get his own. I made a nourishable meal and then sat down before the fire to smoke and think.

I had not seen Margaret since Leek, and had not been alone with her since, her hand in mine, we had crept out of the gracious presence of the dead. And I had got into a mood in which I felt that it was well I did not see her. Some day I should have to do without her altogether, and this was a chance of learning how to do it.

Though I had not seen her, I had heard of her. While our army stayed the day in Lancaster I had been watching the road within sight of the spires of Preston, wondering why the Duke's horse, after their accession of strength, did not come after us. The Marquess of Tiverton has since told me that the Duke had been kept a day at Preston by rumours of a French landing on the south coast. Being far behind, I had ridden through Lancaster without drawing rein, but in the main street a stranger—one of us, however, as his white cockade showed—had stepped up to my saddle and handed me a letter. It was plainly of a woman's writing, and I burned to think that it was Margaret's hand that had penned the direction to "Oliver Wheatman, Esquire, Captain of Dragoons in the army of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent." I tore it open, and found it was from the Lady Ogilvie. She would understand and forgive if she could ever know how disappointed I was.

It had been written that morning before leaving the town, and bore traces of hasty composition. It ran as follows:—

"SIR,—This is to let ye know, dear Oliver, that I'm sure M. has got a bee in his bonnet. I'm thinking that some one we know has tell't him she will hae no trokings with him in the way he wants. I dinna ken for certain, mark ye, but they were taegither last night, and this morning he's not hanging round to pit us in ye carriage, as he ordinarily does, and she is pale and quiet, and says she wishes her father was at hand, and I like it not, dear Oliver. I call you dear Oliver because y'are such a guid laddie, just as I'm a guid girl. Davie tell't me how you stood up and saluted him, and I was glad I'd kissed ye ance upon a time, though it was only to plague ye. Remember what I tell't ye about these Highland boddys. M. is like all the rest of 'em, and moreover the Prince made ye his aide-de-camp, and it was to have been him, tho' he didna mind at the first because it left him free to be courting his leddy, but noo he'll hae it rankling in his heart like poison. And keep your eye on that chiel, Donald. He's foster-brother to M., and wad stick his dirk in the Prince himself if M. tell't him to. They're not bad boddys, but that's how they are. She says naething about ye, and that's a guid sign, I'm thinking. I wish ye knew the French instead of that silly Lattin, for then I cud write ye a propper letter wi' nice words in it, but she says yell hae to learn Italian first to suit her, but that's only her daffery. Excuse this ill-writ note, for the paper is bad and I'm no sure o' my English when it's guid.—Your obedient servant and loving guid friend,

"ISHBEL OGILVIE"

I pulled the dab of mud close to my elbow and read it again. In part it was plain enough. That Maclachlan was madly in love with Margaret had become almost a matter of common gossip. My Lord George Murray had hinted at it more than once, as he had at my displacing the young Chief in the Prince's favour. Maclachlan was son and heir to a chief of considerable power and reputation. That he should fall in love with Margaret was natural, and had she fallen in love with him I should not have been surprised. Even after the event, I still say that he was a fine, upstanding man, delightful to look on, and, so far as I knew, worthy of any woman, even of such a one as Margaret. But the heart is master not servant, and cannot be commanded. She loved him not and there was an end of it.

Next, Lady Ogilvie hinted at danger to me from him. Well, if he wanted a fight, a fight he should have. There's no Englishman living thinks more of Scotsmen than I do, but I have never thought enough of the best Scot breathing to run away from him. As for Donald, unless I was an idiot and he a better actor than Mr. Garrick, he would far sooner have driven his dirk into himself than into me. That matter could rest. There would be no fighting that night, and I never put on my breeches till it's time to get up.

Where her ladyship was wrong was in supposing, as clearly she did, that Margaret's love affairs interested me otherwise than as being Margaret's. I loved her, loved her dearly, all the more dearly because hopelessly. I had no qualifications which would enable me to speak my love. At my best nothing but a poor yeoman, I was now not even that, I was a declared rebel in a rebellion that had failed. And if I had had every qualification that rank and wealth could give me, it would still have been the same. Between her and me was the dead body of my friend and the widowed heart of my sister.

I was meditatively refilling my pipe when I heard Donald's voice without, raised in earnest explanation.

"An' if I didna think it wass auld Nick comin' for me afore ma reetfu' time, may I never drink anither drap whisky as lang as I live."

Some one laughed at the explanation, and Donald, still explaining, pushed open the door and made way for Margaret, who, before I could rise, was glowering over me, in the delightful way she had, girlish pretence just dashed with womanly earnest.

"I shall never forgive you, nor father, nor Donald, nor anybody else. And you're not to move, sir!"

"I'm sorry, madam," said I.

"You always are. It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well as my duty."

There was no contenting her till she had seen and dressed my wound. She had brought lint and linen with her, some kind of balsam which nearly made me glad she had not had the daily dressing of my arm, and even a basin and a huge bottle of clear spring water, which were brought in from the calash by Bimbo, Lady Ogilvie's little black coachman. The hut looked like a surgery, and Donald and Bimbo got mixed up in the most laughable way in dodging about to wait on her.

"Com' oot of it!" said Donald desperately, unwinding the little black out of his plaid for the second time.

"You one big elephant in pekkaloats!" he retorted, grinning bare his big white teeth. "You tread on Bimbo, Bimbo go squash."

"How does it feel now?" asked Margaret, when her task was over.

"I shall be able to clout Donald with it in the morning," I answered.

"Tat's petter," said he, grinning with delight. "I'm thinkin' I'd suner be dinged wi' 'er again than see 'er hinging there daein' naethin'."

He took Bimbo off to the camp-fire and left us alone. We wrangled about the seating accommodation of the hut, for the cart-tail was but short, and I wanted her to have it to herself. She flouted the idea, and in the end we shared it, and I minded its shortness no longer. She would fill my pipe for me, and held a burning splinter to the bowl while I got it going. Over her doctoring she had been very pale and quiet. Now she got her colour back in the light and warmth of the fire, but she quietened down again as soon as I was smoking in comfort.

She told me briefly that she had stayed in Shap to see her father. Lady Ogilvie had insisted on her keeping the calash, so that she could come on in comfort in the morning. From her father she had learned of my wound, and had come on at once to see for herself how I was. She would start back for Shap shortly, where she was to stay the night with her father.

She told me this and then leaned forward, cupping her chin in her hands, and went quiet again.

I was glad of her silence, glad that she was hiding her face from me, for I needed to pull myself together. That something had happened was clear, and, whatever it was, it had struck home. In some way of deep concernment there was a new Margaret by my side, but in another way it was the old familiar Margaret as well, for she was wearing mother's long grey domino. She had unclasped it so that it now hung loosely on her, and flung back the hood so that the firelight made lambent flickerings in her hair.

"I have not seen you for twelve days," she said at last.

"No, madam."

"Have you been neglecting me, sir?" Just a touch of vigour was in her voice, but she still gazed at the fire.

"You are a soldier's daughter, not an alderman's," I said quietly, and the retort brought her head round with a jerk.

"And how does that excuse your neglect?"

"By giving you the chance of ascertaining from your father whether my military duties have left me any opportunity of neglecting you," I answered steadily. As usual with me, since I could not woo, I would be master where I could. It was a source of mean delight to me.

"More logic," she said briefly, and turned to the fire again.

Apparently she tested the logic in her mind and came to the conclusion that it was sound. She got up, threw some wood on the fire, thrusting me back playfully when I tried to forestall her, and then said merrily, "What do you think dad said to-night?"

"It would take hours to guess, I expect, so tell me at once, since I see it hipped you."

"It did," she said, with playful emphasis. "I fear I've not trained him up as fathers should be trained, for he coolly told me that if I had not had the misfortune to be a girl, I might perhaps have turned out as good a lad as you."

"Misfortune!" I echoed almost angrily.

"The exact word," she replied.

"Misfortune! To be the most beautiful woman in England, with the world at your feet—he calls that a misfortune?"

I spoke energetically as the occasion demanded, being, moreover, glad of an outlet. Before I had finished, however, she was back in her old position, with her face hidden from me by her hands. She puzzled me more than ever, for, after a long silence, she burst out, "Not my world, Oliver!"

The phrase shot up like a spout of lava from some deep centre of molten thought. I pitied and loved her, but I was helpless. To make a diversion I looked at my watch and luckily it was the time when the picket at the top should be changed, so I went to the door and opened it. A splendid blare of piping came in from the camp-fire as I did so, and Margaret tripped to the door to listen.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Donald," said I. "He's one of the great masters of the pipes. I believe in the tale of Amphion and the walls of Thebes now, for this afternoon I saw Donald pipe some broken-down wagons out of the road."

I went across to see to the change of picket, and when I got back into the hut I saw that the tension was over. I relit my pipe, sat down again at her side, and started a rapid series of questions as to what she had seen and heard during the retreat. Try how I would, nay, try as we would, we did not get back to our old footing. We were afraid of silences, and skipped from topic to topic at breakneck speed. We two who had sauntered together in the sunlight, now stumbled along in a mist.

At last she said she must be going, and I went out and shouted to Donald to get Bimbo and the calash ready, and four men as an escort. When I got back to her, she arose, somewhat wearily, and I put the domino on fully and fitted the hood round her head.

"You see I've gone back to the domino, Oliver," she said.

"It's the very thing for a cold night and a dirty road," I replied cheerfully, stepping in front of her, a couple of paces off, to take my last look at her in the light.

"I have never met a man who understands so much about women as you do," she said.

"Thank you, madam," I cried boisterously, and bowed so as to avoid her eyes. But when I was upright again, they caught mine once more, and something in them made me tremble.

"Or so little," she whispered, and she was pitifully white and miserable.

If it had not been for what I saw between us—there, on the floor of crazed and trampled mud, I should have flung my arms around her. But I could not step over that.

"Ta carrish iss ready," cried Donald from the door-sill.

I packed her snugly in the calash and started two dragoons ahead. Bimbo clucked to his horse and was off. I walked a hundred yards by the side of the carriage till it was time to whistle for the other dragoons to start. Then I made Bimbo pull up.

The young moon was battling with great stacks of clouds, but just at that moment won a brief victory, and gave me a clear view of Margaret. She put out her hand, which she had not yet gloved, and I took it in mine, bowed my head over it, and kissed it.

"Good night, Oliver," she whispered.

"Good night, Margaret," I replied, and whistled shrilly to hide my emotions. Something sent her away with her eyes ashine and her face glorious with a smile.

The dragoons clattered by, and I stood for a few minutes staring downhill. And so little. Not my world. And so little. Not my world. The words rang in my ears like a peal of bells. Then, by one of the odd tricks the mind plays us, I remembered that I had left the Hanyards for the work's sake, and that my love for Margaret could only be justified to myself—the only one who could ever know it—by my work. Over the black top there, down in the blacker valley, was the enemy, her enemy, nibbling up the space between us as a rabbit nibbles up a lettuce leaf. I closed my mind to the maddening chime, and started forthright to visit my picket.

The road was flush with the bare windswept summit. The crumpled ground was matted with coarse grass, almost too poor for sheep-feed. The camp-fire still blazed; near it a bagpipe crooned; now and again a horse shook in its harness. The moon whipped out for a moment, and then it was pitch dark again.

As I stepped it out there was a rush at me from the grass, behind and to my left. Down I dropped full length, and a man shot over me and sprawled in the road, but he was quick and lithe as a cat, and was up before me, for my slung arm disadvantaged me. I could just see his sword poised for a cut as he fairly pounced on me. I dived outward as he jumped, and he missed me, but before I could get behind him he was round and at me again like a fury. I was weaponless and crippled, but if I could once get past his sword, it would be all over with him. The pace was so hot, and my mind was so bent on the work, that I did not call for aid. At last I tricked him, for in jumping aside I flung my hat hard in his face, and in a flash had my right hand at his throat. He jabbed at me with his left, and I twisted round to his right side, pressing his sword-arm against his body, and digging my fingers into his windpipe. I heard his sword drop, and felt him feeling for a pistol. He was as hard as a nail, and I began to dream that he would get me before I had choked him.

Donald ended the matter. He, doglike in his fidelity, came striding down the road after me. The moon outpaced the clouds again. He saw us at our death-grips, and came on with a rush and a yell. He drove his dirk into the nape of the man's neck and twisted the blade in its ghastly socket. A sharp, sickening click—and the man dropped out of my fingers like a stone. The moon went in again, and hid the evil thing from us.

"Pe she hurtit?" asked Donald anxiously.

"Not a scratch!" I replied.

"Tat's goot! Carry 'er up to the fire," he added to three or four men who had run up on hearing his yell. "She's English and, maybe, she sall hae fine pickins on 'er."

He stooped down, careless of a dead man as of a dead buck, and stropped his dirk clean and dry on the man's breeches. Then the men, equally indifferent, picked up the body and started off.

"D'ye ken wha the chiel is?" asked Donald, as we walked after them.

"A certain sergeant of dragoons, or one of his men," I answered.

"He winna fash ye ony more," said he. "Tat's a fine way of mine, when I can get behint a mon. I've killt mony a stot like it, shoost t' keep in the way of it." And he stabbed the air, twisted his wrist, and clicked delightedly.

The men dumped the body near the fire. One of them stooped down and was for putting his hand in the man's pocket, but drew it back as if he had thrust it by mischance into the flames.

Then I knew.

I have heard a mare squeal in a burning stable, but I have never heard agony in sound as I heard it there, on the top of Shap, when Donald flung himself across the dead body of his chief and foster-brother.

There is one tender memory of this distressing scene. Neither by look, word, nor tone did Donald attach blame or responsibility to me. He recovered himself in a few minutes, and then stood up, and gave a brief command in Gaelic. Four awe-struck men spread a plaid on the ground, placed the dead body on it, and carried it into the hut. Donald, gravely silent, took the pipes from the man who had been playing, and followed them. I bared my head and went after him miserably.

Maclachlan's body lay on the floor of the hut. The eyes were wide open, but on his fine composed face there was no trace of the agony and passion in which he had gone before his God. It was as if, in that last terrible second, some vision of beauty had swept his soul clean. I knelt down and reverently closed the staring eyes.

"Donald," said I, when I arose, "I would to God that you had killed me instead."

"It's weird," said he solemnly, "and weird mun hae way."

I looked at him closely. That he was struck to the heart was plain to see, but, the first uprush of grief over, he had become sober, steadfast, almost business-like, as if he had something great in hand to do, and would be doing it.

He took the candle, now only the length of my ring-finger, and stuck it on the narrow window-ledge. Again he spoke to the men in Gaelic, and they moved out of the hut. Turning to me, he said, "Com in when ta licht gaes oot!"

He had the right to be alone with his dead. I wrung his hand and left him. When I looked back from the doorway, he was filling his bag with wind, but stopped to say, "Weird mun hae way." And as he said it he smiled.

I crossed the road to the edge of the dip. More wood had been piled on the fire, which now blazed cheerfully. Most of the men lay asleep in their plaids, but a few stood guard over the horses, and the men who had carried the body into the hut were squatting on the grass by the roadside. I took my stand near them, and looked and listened.

The terrible similarity of Donald's case to mine appalled me. Each of us, in saving another, had struck down in the darkness a man near and dear to him. Two good men and true had gone when the lust of life is sweetest and the will to live strongest. I, who three weeks ago had never seen human life taken, had taken it, and seen it taken, as if men were of no more account than cattle. Between the house-place of the Hanyards and the top of Shap, Death had become my familiar.

For Maclachlan I had nothing but pity. He had thought that I stood between him and Margaret. Clearly he had learned of her coming back to me, and the thought had maddened him. He had disguised himself as an Englishman and come after me, and this was the end of it.

These were my thoughts as I watched the flickering flame dropping nearer and nearer to the window-ledge, and listened to the pipes. Donald was inspired. He and the pipes were one. In his hands they became a living thing. What he felt, they felt. They wept as he wept, they gloried as he gloried, they triumphed as he triumphed.

He began with a murmur of grief that grew into a wail, became a passionate tempest, and died into a prolonged sob. Then he changed his note as memory wandered backward. The music became tenderly reminiscent, subduedly cheerful. They were again boys together at their play, youthful hunters swinging over the mountains after the red deer; young men with the maidens; warriors on their first foray. The threads of life ran in and out through the pattern of sounds he was weaving, and the older days of fighting and victories followed as I listened. There was hurrying, marching, charging; the groan of defeat; the mad slogan of final victory.

"He's fechtin' the Macleans noo," cried out one of the men, who had some English, and the others chattered vigorously for a minute in their own Gaelic.

The candle was now guttering on the window-ledge. These glories over, Donald came hard up against the end of them all—the Chief dead at his feet, slain by his own hand. For a time he faltered, playing only in little, melancholy snatches. Then he got surer, and the music began to come in blasts. He was seeing his way, learning what it all meant to him and the Maclachlans. Weird mun hae way. Destiny must work itself out. We children of a day are helpless before it.

The flame fell to a golden bead as the music grew in strength and purpose. There was a burst of light, a peal of triumph, and the music and the flame went out together.

Across the road I raced, threw open the door, and rushed in. Everything was dark and still.

"Donald!" I called passionately.

There was no reply. I crept on tip-toe to the fire and kicked the embers into a flame.

Donald was lying dead across the dead body of his Chief, his dirk buried to the hilt in his own heart.

* * * * *

At daybreak we buried them side by side in one grave on the top of Shap, their feet pointing northward to their own mountains. When the last clod had been replaced, and a great boulder reverently carried up to mark the spot, I turned, covered my head, and prepared to go, but the men stood on. I looked back. They were loath to go. Something that should be done, had been left undone.

I divined what they had in mind, turned back, bared my head as they uncovered, and repeated the Lord's Prayer aloud.

I am thankful to this day to those men whom fools and bigots call savages. They taught me to pray again.

"Man Captain," said the one who had English, as we walked away in a body, "ye wad mak' a gran' meenister."

I could not withhold a smile, but before I could reply there was a scattered rattle of shots from the dip. Looking around, I saw a body of enemy horse on the lower hill across the valley to my left.

We were overtaken. We should have to fight.



CHAPTER XXIV

MY LORD BROCTON PILES UP HIS ACCOUNT

On the tenth day of my captivity, hope glimmered for the first time. When a man has been penned up in a dull room for ten days, with half-a-hundred-weight of rusty iron shackling his wrists and ankles, with poor food, and little of it at that, to eat, he can extract comfort out of a trifle.

In my case the trifle was a smile, her first smile in ten days. So far she had been as sulky as she was shapeless, bringing me my poor meals either without saying a word or, at best, snapping me up and saying that I got far better treatment than a rebel deserved.

She never told me her name, and I never learned it from any other source, so 'she' she must remain for me and my tale. She was perhaps thirty, perhaps five feet high, the shape of a black pudding, with stony, rather than ugly, features, and cruel, cat-like eyes. I hated her handsomely till she smiled at me.

She was, I suppose, my jailer's daughter, or servant, or something of the sort. I never knew, and my ignorance does not matter. She brought me my food, spake or spake not, according to the degree of vileness in her prevailing humour, and went off, leaving me to my thoughts and my painful shamblings round my prison-chamber.

My ignorance was limitless. I was a prisoner, and my prison was a room in a sizable farm-house with thick stone walls. Where the house was I had no idea other than that it could not be far from the place where I was taken, which, again, could not be far from the town of Penrith. There was one window in my cell, the sill of which was as high from the ground as my chin when standing upright. But I never stood upright, being jammed into a cross made of good, solid iron, foul with rust, and having bracelets at the tips for my ankles and wrists. It kept me a foot short of my full stretch. I could get my eye to the edge of the window and no farther, and then I saw much sky and a little desolate moorland running up into a gauntly-wooded hill country.

I spent my waking hours thinking of Margaret and the others dreaming of her. Now was my chance to learn to do without her altogether. It would not be for long. I was in the Duke's clutches, and he would not let me go till my head rolled off my shoulders. Had I been free and with her, we should have been farther apart than before—by the width of Donald's grave. But here, parted for ever, with the block or the gallows just ahead of me, there was no bar to my lonely love. Time and time again she was so near to me, so vividly present to my imagination, that I stretched out my arms to grasp her. The shackles clanked, and I cursed myself for a fool, but I never cured myself of the habit.

Because this is the dreariest time of my life, I have plumped right into the middle of it to get it over. And, indeed, there is little worth the telling between the top of Shap and her smile. I was in jail because I was no soldier. That, apparently, should go without saying, and if I had come to grief over some piece of important soldier-craft, no one would have been surprised and I should not have been to blame. It galls me, however, to have to confess that I was very properly caught, jailed, and ironed for not knowing what a dragoon was. A man ought to know that after being captain of a troop of the best for a fortnight, but I didn't. Being all for logic, the least useful thing in life, I had arrived at the conclusion that a soldier on horseback is a horse-soldier. So he is, except when he's a dragoon, as I found to my cost. If the bold Turnus or Mr. Pink-of-Propriety Aeneas had hit upon the dragoon idea, I should have known all about it, because it would have been in Virgil. Even the Master has his deficiencies.

My Lord George Murray elected to fight at Clifton, a defendable place between Shap and Penrith. Just south of the bridge the road ran off the moor into the outskirts of the village, with a stone wall on one side and a high edge on the other. The enclosures on either side were packed with clansmen, and our wings stretched beyond on to the moor, here dissected into poor fields by straggling hedges.

The Colonel, the happiest man in England that day, had posted me across the road, right out on the moor, ready to gallop back at once with news of the enemy's approach. It was now quite dark, except when the moon rode free of the dense blotches of clouds that filled the sky. In one such glimpse of light, I caught sight of several bodies of horse on the moor to the east of the road. The regiment nearest to me wheeled to the left, and trotted obliquely across the road. Its direction made its purpose clear. It was feeling its way across our front to our flank on the west of the village. I rode back at once to report.

"Good lad!" said the Colonel, offering me his snuff-box. "It's just what we want 'em to do. Go where there's a bellyful for you! Fine soldiering that! The fool duke ought to pound us out into the open with his guns. Hope you'll enjoy your first fight, Oliver! It's a glorious game. Pity of it is the counters are so costly. Good luck, my dear lad!"

I went back to my men whom I had left in the covered way between the wall and the hedge. It being clear that the exact whereabouts of the regiment I had particularly observed was of great consequence, I rode out again with a couple of men, at the request of one of the chiefs, to see if I could make out what was happening. There was no trace of it. It should by now have been visible on my right, the moon being out again, but there was not a single trace of it. I could see the line of one hedge and beyond that another. The other regiments had not advanced and this one had disappeared.

Perplexed, I halted my men, pulled the sorrel's head round and cantered slowly towards the nearer hedge. Then I learned that dragoons are horse-soldiers who fight on foot, behind hedges for choice. Half a dozen carbines rang out, the sorrel rolled over, and though I escaped the bullets and jumped clear of my horse, I was pounced on by a body of men and pulled ignobly through the hedge. I did everything doable, but they swarmed over me like ants, bore me down by weight of numbers, and sat on me.

"It's him right enough," I heard one of them say. "Fetch the sergeant! There's a bit of fat in this, lads!"

A minute later, I was hauled on to my feet. A seared face, with a dab-of-putty nose on it, leered delightedly into mine.

"Got you, by G—!" he said.

I had been captured by Brocton's dragoons. Now we should come to points.

Without another word to me, and after a savage injunction to the men to see I did not escape on peril of their lives, he went off and fetched his lordship. They came running back together as if the greatest event imaginable had happened.

"Ha! Master Wheatman," cried my lord very happily, "this is indeed a sight for sore eyes."

"To be sure," said I, "your lordship's were pretty bad the last time I saw them."

He made no retort, being indeed too excited to notice pin-pricks, but ordered the sergeant to take me to the rear under a strong guard. "Make sure of him!" he cried, and added in a lower tone, as I moved off under the combined pull and push of my captors, "Make sure of it." He then went off to his own place in the line.

The sergeant did not come with us, and I had been tugged nearly to the second hedge before he overtook us. To my astonishment he was carrying my saddle on his head, where, in the dim light, it looked like a gigantic bonnet. He swore at the men for loitering, and on we went to the second hedge. We struck it at a point where there was neither gate nor gap, but the dragoons bashed it down with their carbines and trampled it down with their boots, and so made a way.

Two of the men were through, and I was being hauled through, when there was a spattering of shots from behind. Over the noise a stentorian voice called out "Claymores!" It was the Highland warcry, and, with reverberating yells, the clansmen poured out of the nearer enclosure to attack the dragoons lining the hedge.

The sergeant drew his sword, and, as we raced on again, struck viciously with the flat of it at his men to make them run faster. A queer figure he cut in the moonlight as he raced along, swearing and slashing, with the skirts of the saddle flapping against his lean ribs. At last we got out on a poor road lined with trees and turned south along it. There was urgent need for him to haste now, for Brocton's dragoons had been cut out of their cover and were being pushed back to the hedge we had just left. The sergeant halted a moment to take stock of the situation, and then we hurried on again. Every time he struck a man for lazy running, the man in his turn paid me with punch or kick. After a mile or so, the avenue made an abrupt turn to the east and brought us out on the main road in the rear of the Duke's army.

The moon showed us a little cottage, standing off from the road in a poor plot of ground. The sergeant led the way up to it, turned the cottager and his family out of it into a shed, and set two men without as sentries. He then made the others strip me to the skin and examined every shred of clothing, ripping out the linings and even cutting my boots to pieces. Finding nothing, he flung me the rags to put on again, and then cut the saddle to pieces and searched that. I knew now why William had so nearly lost his vail and Donald had been obliged to steal me another saddle. The sergeant wanted, the letter and papers I had taken from him at the "Ring of Bells." He was so keen that he omitted to pouch any of my belongings, and I retained my money, Donald's watch, and the priceless strip of bloodstained linen. My tuck and pistols were naturally taken from me on my capture.

"Any luck?" I asked quizzingly, when he at last gave over the search.

Too furious or too cautious to reply, he brutally kicked a dragoon whom he caught smiling.

After a miserable drag of some two hours, a fresh dragoon came with a message, whereon the sergeant conducted me to the presence of the Duke, who was quartered in a large house in the village. The Lord Brocton, the Lord Mark Kerr, and other officers were with him, and also several ladies who would have been more at home in Vauxhall. For a minute or two I was unheeded, and the sergeant could hardly keep himself sufficiently stiff and awkward. His Grace was in the sourest of humours for, as the talk showed, he had been beaten. The claymores had taken the conceit out of him finely. He finished the subject with a string of oaths and then made an unprintable inquiry of Brocton concerning me. The ladies tittered profusely, and the most powdery one vowed that His Grace was a great wag. In further proof of this he snatched a feather near a yard long out of her pompom, and fanned himself with it while he examined me.

This ducal waggishness gave me time to observe that the sergeant's uneasiness was icy coldness in comparison with his lordship's. He was uncertain of speech; his face was the colour of pea-soup; he looked anxiously, almost affrightedly, at me. He grew plainly more comfortable as the Duke failed to get any information out of me beyond the fact that the weather was cold. Finally, when the sergeant was ordered to keep me at his peril till such time as I could be lodged in Carlisle jail, Brocton greedily tossed off a bumper of wine and laughed aloud at some vulgar sally from a lady in a green paduasoy. On leaving I bowed to the Duke. He was a vigorous, able man with the manners and morals of a bull.

Brocton followed the sergeant out. There was a consultation between them of which I heard nothing, but the result was that the sergeant picked up a man as guide who was waiting at the front door, obviously for the purpose, and took me through and beyond the village to a house on the roadside. The place was of fair size, built of rough slabs of stone, and evidently a farm-house. The owner was a lumpish, ungainly fellow, astonishingly bow-legged. He had a little yapping dog, which jumped backwards and forwards between his knees like a trick-dog through a hoop.

Preparations had been made for my coming, "by his lordship," as the farmer blabbed out. I was taken upstairs to a back room, ironed, in the way I have described, by the parish constable, who had been prayed in aid for the job, and locked in in the dark. I heard a sentry posted without the door and another beneath the window. It was some consolation, and I needed all I could get, to know I was so prized. There was a rough bed in the room. I tumbled on it, wondered for a few minutes what Margaret would be thinking of it all, and then went to sleep.

Next morning I made her acquaintance to this extent that she brought me a jug of thin ale, a lump of horse-bread and a slab of cheese. Her looks froze my affability, but she does not become important till she smiled, and I need say no more about her at present.

I saw no other person till nightfall of the third day, when the door opened and the little dog hopped through his accustomed gap into the room, and was followed by his master carrying a lighted tallow candle in a rusty iron candlestick. This imported something unusual, as I was not allowed a light, and it turned out to be a visit from my Lord Brocton. He ordered the sentry to follow the farmer downstairs, and examined the door carefully to see if it was closed thoroughly. I sat on the edge of the bed and hummed a brisk air with a fine pretence of indifference.

He sat down on the one chair there was, placed his hat on the table, and said, "I am sorry to see you in this place and condition, Mr. Wheatman."

"Thank you," said I.

"Of course you know there's only one end of it."

"Yes," I replied, and hummed a stave of "Lillibullero."

He leaned forward and said impressively, "The gibbet, Mr. Wheatman!"

"Draughty places!" said I, smiling, as I thought of Nance Lousely. "I can feel the wind whistling through my bones."

"You are pleased to be facetious, sir. It does credit, I must say, to your nerves."

"You are pleased to be sympathetic, my lord," I riposted, "whereby you do no credit to my common sense."

He took short breaths and then reflected a minute or two, during which I clinked a soft tattoo with my iron wristlets, and eyed him joyously. He was there—a free lordling, I was here—a chained rebel, but I had him set.

"I have a proposal to make to you, Mr. Wheatman," he said at length.

"I am indeed honoured, but be careful, my lord! It's not in the least likely, I fear, to be a proposal which you would like the sentry beneath the window to overhear."

"You are plain and blunt," he said, leaning forward and speaking in a low tone, "and I will be the same. Return me all the papers you took from my sergeant at the 'Ring of Bells,' and I will see that you escape and get clear of the country."

"The different personal ends for which you are anxious to turn traitor seem innumerable, my lord!"

He met the taunt as if it had been a flip with a straw, and only said, "Is it a bargain?"

"It is not," I replied emphatically.

If his life rather than his lands had depended on the recovery of the letter he could not have been more eager. For a long time he pleaded and wrestled with me; arguing, bullying, imploring, threatening, turn and turn about, but to no result. I would not go back on my casual word to Master Freake. The letter was important to him, and he would save Margaret and the Colonel, and me too, when the inevitable hour of need should come at last. Money was power, and lands were more than money. Acres meant votes, and with votes at your command you had ministers at your beck. I was sure of Master Freake. Why bother about my lord Brocton?

At last he played his last card. "You shall have the Upper Hanyards back again, Master Wheatman," he quavered.

The rascal earl, his father, had juggled more than a thousand acres of the Hanyards away from my father by some musty process of law and a venal bench. The reference angered me, and I cried loudly, "You shall not have it back at any price!"

He looked at the window, and paled as he thought of the sentinel ears without. Then he went off, vomiting curses.

That day week, she brought me a shepherd's pie for dinner, very well made too, and a mug of ale not wholly unworthy of the name. She put them down, looked at me in a measure womanly, and smiled. It was a root of promise and fruit would follow. Any change would be welcome. I was ragged, dirty, galled, cramped, and bearded with a red stubble. She called me 'Carrots' in derision.

I was right. At evening she brought me up a dish of tea, and when I lifted it off the table to take a drink of it, there was beneath it a paper folded letter-fashion.

I steadied myself, drank my tea with only moderate haste, and then cautiously palmed my treasure and walked to the window. Standing with my back to the door, so that the sentry, who was given to popping his head in to have a look at me, could not catch me unawares, I opened the paper. It was a letter. It was written by a woman. The woman was Margaret.

"You will be taken to-morrow to Carlisle. On the way friends will rescue you and bring you to me. Fear nothing, say nothing, and all will be well. Till to-morrow, dear Oliver. Destroy this. MARG. W."

It went hard against the grain to destroy this precious missive. I hid in the corner, and kissed it ravenously a hundred times. How straight and true the pen had ploughed its way across the paper! It was just such writing as I had expected of her, the resolute escription of her sweet, resolute self. Nor was the problem of destroying it easy to solve, since I had no fire, and there was no sure hiding-place accessible to my manacled hands. I mastered the difficulty heroically by eating the letter with my bread and butter.

It was even harder to pretend to be dull and sluggish with such a whirl of happy thoughts in my mind. I was her "dear Oliver," dear enough to make her risk her own life in saving mine. That she would plan wisely and execute swiftly, there was no shadow of doubt. This time tomorrow we should be together again.

The night dragged through at last, and the first glimmer of dawn found me alert and hopeful. She brought my usual breakfast at the usual time, and smiled again, but put her finger on her lips to warn me to be silent and careful.

She went downstairs, and left to myself again, I grew furious to think that Margaret would see me so, a regular wild man of the woods—quantum mutatus ab illo Hectare. But my ravings ceased at the sound of preparations without. My room was at the back of the house, but I heard the noise of wheels, and hoof-beats, and the harsh swearing of the sergeant. By and by he came noisily upstairs, burst into my room, and curtly ordered me downstairs.

Blithely I followed him. Try how I would I could not hide my joy, and, seeing that he noted it, I said in explanation, "Anything for a change, sergeant!"

"You'll wish yourself back here soon enough, blast ye!" he growled. "We'll stretch your neck for you till your eyes drop out, you swine!"

"You dear, good, Christian soul!" I simpered.

For answer, he kicked me savagely, and then bundled me downstairs, out of the house, and into the road. Here a two-horsed coach was in waiting, with two dragoons and a corporal in front and two more behind. One of the rear men was holding a horse, and to my annoyance the sergeant got into the coach after me, bawled out a command, and off our party started.

I stumbled into a corner and sat huddled up, straining my eyes ahead to catch what was to come. Margaret's information was clearly correct. We took the road north, passed through Penrith without a halt, and out again, still on the turnpike, proof that Carlisle was to be our destination. The city was obviously now in the Duke's power.

Mile after mile we covered apace, and at every curve and cross-road I peered ahead and around with my heart in my mouth. One point in my favour was the desolate nature of the country, exactly fitted for such a stratagem as was in hand. On the right the gloomy sky was blotted out by jagged masses of gloomier hills. On the left the country varied between flat and upland, but was hardly less uninviting.

"Where d'ye think y're going?" asked the sergeant, joggling me with his spurred heel to make me look at him.

"No idea," said I.

"Blast ye. I wish y'had," he growled viciously, and I turned away to smile.

We passed through a village littered with the Duke's baggage wagons and pretty full of soldiery. This chilled my spirit somewhat, for it looked as if we were about to run into the rear of the Royal army. Outside the village, however, we again had the road to ourselves, and a mile farther on dropped to a walk to climb a long slant of road.

Whenever the road curved my way I had seen the corporal and his two men riding from fifty to a hundred yards ahead of us. Not very far up the slope we came on a farmstead lying flush on the roadside. In the yard were some thirty head of shaggy black cattle, of the northern kind seldom seen in our parts and therefore attractive to a farmer's eye. A farm-hand leaning over the gate had some noisy gossip with the dragoons as they passed, and bawled his news to a group of men sitting at meat under a hovel. It was a poor enough place to support so many men, for the farm-wife, who came to her kitchen door to see what the clatter was about, was of no better seeming than a yokel's wife with us. My eyes were on her curiously when the man on the gate skipped off and flung it open right across the muzzles of our horses.

In the tick of a clock the whole scene changed. The men under the hovel rushed out, fell on the cattle, thrashed them mercilessly with great battoons, yelled at them like maniacs, and drove them in a shoving, bellowing, maddened mass into the road, which here had a stone wall on the side opposite the farm. When the torrent was fairly going, two of the supposed yokels snatched up carbines, climbed on to the hovel, and opened fire on the dragoons in our rear.

The master hand of the Colonel was in this beyond a doubt. With a loud curse, the sergeant, who was on the side away from the farm, opened the door and was for leaping out. He bethought himself and half turned, one hand on the door and one foot on the step, to look an evil inquiry at me. That half-turn was his undoing. Part of the living, struggling torrent of cattle was shoved round our way and came sweeping by. One beast brushed the door open even as he glared at me and tumbled him outwards. As he twisted in his fall another drove her sharp horns clean into him, and shook and twirled him off again like a terrier playing with a rat. The rearguard turned tail and fled. The vanguard had simply been swept off the scene, and I saw them spurring up the slope with the cattle surging after them. The plan had been thought out to a nicety and had worked to perfection. I was free, free for Margaret. I sat down again dizzied and happy.

My rescuers took no notice of me but ran down the road in a body and stood round the sergeant. After some excited talk they carried him back, called on me to aid, and rammed him into the coach, where he lay huddled on the seat in front of me. Without so much as a word to me, the commander pulled our driver off the box, ordered a man up in his place, climbed after him, and said briefly, "Go like the devil!"

The carriage turned up a rough lane which ran eastward out of the high road opposite the farm, leaving most of my rescuers standing uncertain in a group. The driver cut his horses savagely with his whip, and we went at a hard gallop. The jolting tumbled me about in the coach, and I had hard work, shackled as I was, to keep the sergeant on the seat. He was still alive, though so hideously injured that death could only be a question of minutes. Where we were going and why they were carrying him along with us, were questions it was useless to bother about. Margaret would explain everything when we met. I could make little of the men who had rescued me. They were clearly not farm-hands, for they were well armed, the guns I had seen looked to me to be military carbines, and they had carried through their business briskly and intelligently.

I heard the men on the box talking, but their speech was only about the road and the speed. The country got rougher and wilder; the distant hills were losing their clear-cut, rolling outlines, and becoming neighbours and obstacles. The horses were thrashed unmercifully, but at times even the well-plied whip could get no more than a crawl out of them.

The sergeant's end was at hand. He rallied, as men commonly do before they put foot in the black river, and looked at me unrecognizingly. He closed his eyes again, and began to writhe and mutter strange words. Suddenly he cried plainly, "Curse the swine! Another wedge, ye damned chicken-heart!" He looked at me again, and this time made out who I was, and cursed loathsomely in his disappointment.

"D'ye know where y're going?" he ended, leering wickedly.

"No," said I.

"Blast ye! I wish ye did!" He gurgled this almost jocosely, as if it were a pet bit of humour.

"Do you know where you are going?" I asked solemnly.

"To hell," he cried, and, after a spout of blood that spattered me as I leaned over him, went.

The carriage stopped and, before I could rise to see why, the door was opened and some one without said politely, "This is indeed a pleasure, Master Wheatman!"

It was my lord Brocton.

* * * * *

It would be foolish to pretend that I was not bitten to the bone, and I can only hope that I did not give outward expression to a tithe of the chagrin and dismay that possessed me. Being commanded to do so, I got out of the coach without a word and looked around.

The rough road along which we had been travelling ran on through a slit in the hills. Where we stood a bridle-path parted from it at a sharp angle and made its way over the lower skirts of the hill country. It was a desolate, dreary spot where, as I suspected, the king's writ ran not and where, therefore, a man might be done to death with all conveniency. Master Freake would be useless to me now, and my chiefest enemy had me at his will.

There was no delay. A long cloak was put over me, so disposed as to hide my fetters, and I was lifted on a spare horse led by one of the new-comers. The skill with which the affair had been planned was shown by the fact that this horse, to accommodate my shackled legs, had been saddled as for a lady.

"You know exactly what to do?" asked his lordship of the men on the coach.

"Yes, my lord," said one of them, "but what about—" He finished the sentence by a jerk of his thumb towards the dead sergeant.

"Leave him there! Egad, Master Wheatman, is not that a touch of the real artist?"

"The key of these things is in his breeches' pocket," said I, speaking for the first time, and waggling my fetters as I did so.

"Get it out, Tomlins!"

The man who had asked the question climbed down and obeyed the order with the callousness of a dog nosing a dead rabbit. Then our parties separated. The coach continued along the main road, if so it may be called, and we took to the track. I looked curiously after the coach, wondering where it was bound, and with what object.

"More art," said his lordship. "A coach is a seeable, trackable thing, and it will throw everybody off the scent. I'm glad the ruffian's dead. He was overmuch wise in my affairs."

As we rode on into the interminable wastes, he rallied me gleefully, but soon tired of my moroseness.

"His arrival will make an affecting picture," he said mockingly to his men. He was feverishly excited, and must boast to some one. "No pliant damsel to rush into his longing arms! He is to be embraced though, my masters, if need be."

What this obscure threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed in with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion. He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hang for it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Grace of Cumberland. What on earth was the letter about? Master Freake had definitely said lands, and therefore lands it must be, though nothing less than the whole Ridgeley estates could be in question. The thousand and more acres of the Upper Hanyards, sweet meadows stretching a mile along the river and a snatch of the chase at its wildest and loveliest, the prize that had fallen to the rascal earl in the great lawsuit, had been promised me as readily as a pinch of snuff. I gloated over the revenge I was winning for my race, a race rooted in those darling Hanyards a century before the Ridgeleys were heard of, for the first earl, the grandfather of the old rogue, started as an obscure pimp to Charles the Second, and was enriched and ennobled for his assiduity.

But no familiary pride could cheer me for long. The dead landscape around chilled me. The chiefest misery was to remember the hope with which I had started that morning. Margaret was the fancied end of my journey, and the real end was this! I had to bite my lips till I felt the trickle of blood in the stubble on my chin to keep back unmanly revilings.

At last we came out on what was by comparison a made road, and now his lordship grew plainly anxious and haggard. We rode madly along it, so that, riding shackled and woman-fashion, I had hard work to keep my seat. Brocton's head was incessantly on the turn to see if we were observed, but his luck was absolute. We saw no one on the road, and, after a hard stretch, we turned up a gully to our left and were once more buried among the hills.

After much turning and twisting we came in sight of a small house of grey stone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be some gentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope of which it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond it. We worked round to the rear of the house, and, in a favouring clump of trees, his lordship called a halt. The horses were tethered, and I was lifted down, and the rings round my ankles were unlocked. The men took one each, and carried their carbines in their free hands. Brocton drew his rapier, and said, "Forward! Make a sound, show the slightest sign of resistance, and I run you through."

There was no sense in disobeying, and I accommodated myself to his design, which was clearly to get into the house unobserved from without. In this he was successful, or at any rate I saw no one during our crawl from one point of vantage to another up to the back entrance. Now his lordship skipped gaily from behind me and opened the door. He stepped softly in, and I was pushed after him by his dragoons.

"'Friends will rescue you and bring you to me,'" he quoted, jeering me. "There's no Margaret for you, Farmer Wheatman. I shall have her yet!" Then, beast as he was, while the men kept me back, nearly tearing my arms out of their sockets, he stuck the point of his rapier over my heart and babbled half-delirious beastliness.

We were in a big, bare kitchen, the other door of which was closed. There was no sign of anyone about, and Brocton, still with his sword ready for me, bawled out, "Where are you, you old hag?"

The door opened at once. Brocton dropped his sword in his fright and I clapped my foot on it. The two men fled like rabbits. Familiar as the picture is to my mind, it is hard to find words to fit this crowning moment of my adventures.

Margaret walked into the room.

For a second she was minded to rush at me, but thought better of it, and walked up to his lordship. She towered over his limp, cringing figure, and said coldly, "You are too poor a cur to be struck by a woman or I would strike you."

She was not alone. Master Freake was now wringing my shackled hands delightedly, and a little, deft man, whom I knew on sight to be Dot Gibson, was searching his unresisting lordship's pockets for the key of the irons. A minute later he banged them on the floor and said, "And how do you find yourself, sir?"

There's no more to be said about Brocton. He was as good as dead for the remainder of the business, and no one heeded him any more than if he had been a loathsome insect that a man's foot had trodden on. And what killed him was the presence of a third man, a perfect stranger to me. He was an old-looking rather than an old man, with rheumy eyes that looked through narrow slits, and a big unshapely nose; the skin of his face was brown and crinkled like a dried-up bladder; his whole appearance as a man was mean and paltry. What distinction he had was given him by gorgeous clothing and the attendance of a pompous ass in a flaming livery. Yet Brocton dared not look at him again, as he shuffled forward on his man's arm to speak to Master Freake.