The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

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      CHAPTER IV

       THE MAN WITH A PRICE ON HIS HEAD

       Table of Contents

      (1)

      The sky was clear with morning, and even decked for the sun’s coming with a few rosy feathers of cloud, at once brighter and tenderer than those he leaves behind at evening. But the hollows of the hills were yet cold and drowsy after the night; the mountain grasses, tawny and speckled like the hairs on a deerhide, stood motionless; the rust of the bracken shone with moisture. And the tiny ruined croft up the braeside, behind the old thorn which had so long guarded it from ill, seemed to slumber even more soundly than the fern and the grasses. For the little habitation was dead; half the moss-grown thatch had fallen in, and the young rowan-tree which now leant smotheringly over the roof could thrust its bright berries within if it chose.

      None the less there was life inside that abandoned shell of a building, but life which, like that outside, was scarcely yet stirring. In the half of the croft which still kept its thatch a man was lying on his back, lightly asleep; from time to time he moved a trifle, and once he opened his eyes wide and then, passing a hand over them, stared up at the sky between the rowan boughs with a little frown, as of one who is not over pleased to see daylight. Then he drew the cloak which covered him a little farther up, turned on his side, and thrusting a hand into the heap of dried bracken beneath his head, closed them again. The face on that makeshift pillow was that of a man in the middle forties, handsome and kindly, and not at first sight the face of one whom adventure or dubious dealings would have led to seek shelter in so comfortless a bedchamber, and whose apparent reluctance to leave it suggested that he had not, perhaps, enjoyed even that shelter very long.

      Presently, however, the sleeper opened his eyes again, raised his head as if listening, then laid it back in the fern and remained very still. Somewhere in the branches of the mountain ash above him a robin broke into its loud, sweet autumn song. But when it ceased a slow and rather dragging footfall could be heard, though dully, coming up the hill-side, and pausing at last outside the crazy half-shut door which was all that hid the present inmate of the ruin from the outer world. The latter, however, continued to lie without moving; perhaps he hoped thus to escape notice.

      A pause, then the broken door, catching in the weeds of the threshold, was pushed open. A tall man, his stature exaggerated by the little entry to proportions almost gigantic, stood there against the flushed sky, breathing rather fast. With one hand he leant upon the jamb, with the other he wiped the sweat from his forehead. As he stood, the light behind him, his face was not clearly discernible, nor could he, coming suddenly into this half-dark place, make out more of the man in the corner than that there was a man there.

      He peered forward. “Thank God that I have found you,” he said in Gaelic. “Give me a sign, and I will tell you why I have come.”

      The man under the cloak raised himself on an elbow. “I give you the sign of the Blackbird,” he said in the same tongue. It was the old Jacobite cant name for James Edward Stuart. “And what do you give me, honest man?”

      “I have no password,” answered the newcomer, entering. “But in exchange for the blackbird,” he gave a rather weary little laugh—“I give you the grouse, since it’s that fowl you must emulate for a while, Lochdornie. You must lie close, and not come into Lochaber as yet; I am come in all haste to warn you of that.”

      An exclamation interrupted him. The man in the corner was sitting up, throwing off the cloak which had served him for a blanket.

      “ ’Tis not Lochdornie—Lochdornie’s in Knoidart. You have warned the wrong man, my dear Ewen!” He was on his feet now, smiling and holding out his hands in welcome.

      “What! it’s you, Archie!” exclaimed Ewen in surprise so great that he involuntarily recoiled for an instant. Then he seized the outstretched hands with alacrity. “I did not know. . . . I thought it was Lochdornie I was seeking!”

      “Are you disappointed, then, at the exchange?” asked Doctor Cameron with a half-quizzical smile. “Even if you are, Eoghain mhóir, I am delighted to see you!

      “Disappointed—of course not! only puzzled,” answered Ewen, looking at him, indeed, with a light of pleasure on his tired face. “Had I known it was you I should have come less un—have made even more haste,” he substituted. “Then is Lochdornie here too?”

      “No, he is in Knoidart, where I was to have gone. I don’t know why we laid our first plans that way, for at the last moment we thought better of it, and changed places. Hence it comes that I am for Lochaber, instead of him. But what were you saying about a grouse and a warning? From whom are you bringing me a warning?”

      “From my young brother-in-law, Hector Grant. He’s of your regiment.” For Doctor Cameron was major in Lord Ogilvie’s regiment in the French service wherein Hector also held a commission.

      “He is, but I had no notion that he was in Scotland.”

      “But he knows that you and Lochdornie are; and seems, unluckily, to have carried that piece of news about him in some letter which——”

      “Sit down before you tell me, dear lad,” said his cousin, interrupting, “for you look uncommon weary. ’Tis true I have no seat to offer you——”

      “Yon fern will serve well enough,” said Ewen, going towards the heap of bracken and letting himself fall stiffly upon it. He was weary, for he had walked all night, and in consequence his injured leg was troubling him. Doctor Cameron sat down beside him.

      “I came on Hector,” resumed Ardroy, “last evening by Loch Treig side, staggering about like a drunken man from a blow on the head, and with his pockets rifled. It seems that while making for Cluny’s hiding-place he fell in with some man whom he could not shake off—a Government spy, he thought afterwards. When I found him Hector was trying himself to come to warn Lochdornie of the loss of the letter; but that was manifestly impossible, and he implored me to take his place. Luckily I was mounted . . . on a lame horse,” he added with a shrug. “So I have come, and glad I am to be in time.”

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