"Fraoch! Dh 'aindeoin co theireadh e!" (The Heath! Gainsay who dare!)

The slogan echoed and reechoed through the silent streets, and s.n.a.t.c.hed me in an instant out of the abstraction into which I had fallen. Hard upon the cry there came to me the sound of steel ringing upon steel. I legged it through the empty road, flung myself round a corner, and came plump upon the combatants. The defendant was a l.u.s.ty young fellow apparently about my own age, of extraordinary agility and no mean skill with the sword. He was giving a good account of himself against the four a.s.sailants who hemmed him against the wall, his point flashing here and there with swift irregularity to daunt their valiancy. At the moment when I appeared to create a diversion one of the four had flung himself down and forward to cling about the knees of their victim with intent to knife him at close quarters. The young man dared not shorten his sword length to meet this new danger. He tried to shake off the man, caught at his white throat and attempted to force him back, what time his sword still opposed the rest of the villains.

Then I played my small part in the entertainment. One of the rascals screamed out an oath at sight of me and turned to run. I pinked him in the shoulder, and at the same time the young swordsman fleshed another of them. The man with the knife scrambled to his feet, a ludicrous picture of ghastly terror. To make short, in another minute there was nothing to be seen of the cutpurses but flying feet scampering through the night.

The young gentleman turned to me with a bow that was never invented out of France. I saw now that he was something older than myself, tall, well-made, and with a fine stride to him that set off the easy grace of his splendid shoulders. His light steady blue eyes and his dark ruddy hair proclaimed him the Highlander. His face was not what would be called handsome: the chin was over-square and a white scar zigzagged across his cheek, but I liked the look of him none the less for that. His frank manly countenance wore the self-reliance of one who has lived among the hills and slept among the heather under countless stars. For dress he wore the English costume with the extra splash of colour that betokened the vanity of his race. "'Fore G.o.d, sir, you came none too soon," he cried in his impetuous Gaelic way. "This riff-raff of your London town had knifed me in another gliff. I will be thinking that it would have gone ill with me but for your opportune arrival. I am much beholden to you, and if ever I can pay the debt do not fail to call on Don--er--James Brown."

At the last words he fell to earth most precipitately, all the fervent ring dropping out of his voice. Now James Brown is a common name enough, but he happened to be the first of the name I had ever heard crying a Highland slogan in the streets of London, and I looked at him with something more than curiosity. I am a Scotchman myself on the mother's side, so that I did not need to have a name put to his nationality.

There was the touch of a smile on my face when I asked him if he were hurt. He gave me the benefit of his full seventy three inches and told me no, that he would think shame of himself if he could not keep his head with his hands from a streetful of such sc.u.m. And might he know the name of the unknown friend who had come running out of the night to lend him an arm?

"Kenneth Montagu," I told him, laughing at his enthusiasm.

"Well then, Mr. Kenneth Montagu, it's the good friend you've been to me this night, and I'll not be forgetting it."

"When I find myself attacked by footpads I'll just look up Mr. James Brown," I told him dryly with intent to plague.

He took the name sourly, no doubt in an itching to blurt out that he was a Mac-something or other. To a Gaelic gentleman like him the Sa.s.senach name he used for a convenience was gall and wormwood.

We walked down the street together, and where our ways parted near Arlington Street he gave me his hand.

"The lucky man am I at meeting you, Mr. Montagu, while we were having the bit splore down the street. I was just weanying for a lad handy with his blade, and the one I would be choosing out of all England came hot-foot round the corner."

I made nothing of what I had done, but yet his Highland friendliness and flatteries were balm to a sick heart and we parted at my door with a great deal of good-will.

[1] The author takes an early opportunity to express his obligations to the letters of Horace Walpole who was himself so infinitely indebted to the conversation of his cronies.

CHAPTER II

A CRY IN THE NIGHT

"Past ten o'clock, and a clear starry night!" the watch was bawling as I set out from my rooms to keep my appointment with Lord Balmerino. I had little doubt that a Stuart restoration was the cause for which he was recruiting, and all day I had balanced in my mind the pros and cons of such an attempt. I will never deny that the exiled race held for me a strong fascination. The Stuarts may have been weak, headstrong Kings in their prosperity, but they had the royal virtue of drawing men to them in their misfortune. They were never so well loved, nor so worthy of it, as when they lived in exile at St. Germains. Besides, though I had never mixed with politics, I was a Jacobite by inheritance. My father had fought for a restoration, and my uncle had died for it.

There were no fast bound ties to hold me back. Loyalty to the Hanoverians had no weight with me. I was a broken man, and save for my head could lose nothing by the venture. The danger of the enterprise was a merit in my eyes, for I was in the mood when a man will risk his all on an impulse.

And yet I hung back. After all an Englishman, be he never so desperate, does not fling away the scabbard without counting the cost. Young as I was I grued at the thought of the many lives that would be cut off ere their time, and in my heart I distrusted the Stuarts and doubted whether the game were worth the candle.

I walked slowly, for I was not yet due at the lodgings of Balmerino for an hour, and as I stood hesitating at a street corner a chaise sheered past me at a gallop. Through the coach window by the shine of the moon I caught one fleeting glimpse of a white frightened girl-face, and over the mouth was clapped a rough hand to stifle any cry she might give. I am no Don Quixote, but there never was a Montagu who waited for the cool second thought to crowd out the strong impulse of the moment. I made a dash at the step, missed my footing, and rolled over into the mud. When I got to my feet again the coach had stopped at the far end of the street. Two men were getting out of the carriage holding between them a slight struggling figure. For one instant the clear shrill cry of a woman was lifted into the night, then it was cut short abruptly by the clutch of a hand at the throat.

I scudded toward them, lugging at my sword as I ran, but while I was yet fifty yards away the door of the house opened and closed behind them. An instant, and the door reopened to let out one of the men, who slammed it behind him and entered the chaise. The postilion whipped up his horses and drove off. The door yielded nothing to my hand. Evidently it was locked and bolted. I cried out to open, and beat wildly upon the door with the hilt of my sword. Indeed, I quite lost my head, threatening, storming, and abusing. I might as well have called upon the marble busts at the Abbey to come forth, for inside there was the silence of the dead. Presently lights began to glimmer in windows along the dark street, and nightcapped heads were thrust out to learn what was ado. I called on them to join me in a rescue, but I found them not at all keen for the adventure. They took me for a drunken Mohawk or some madman escaped from custody.

"Here come the watch to take him away," I heard one call across the street to another.

I began to realize that an attempt to force an entrance was futile. It would only end in an altercation with the approaching watch. Staid citizens were already pointing me out to them as a cause of the disturbance. For the moment I elected discretion and fled incontinent down the street from the guard.

But I was back before ten minutes were up, lurking in the shadows of opposite doorways, examining the house from front and rear, searching for some means of ingress to this mysterious dwelling. I do not know why the thing stuck in my mind. Perhaps some appealing quality of youth in the face and voice stirred in me the instinct for the championship of dames that is to be found in every man. At any rate I was grimly resolved not to depart without an explanation of the strange affair.

What no skill of mine could accomplish chance did for me. While I was inviting a crick in my neck from staring up at the row of unlighted windows above me, a man came out of the front door and stood looking up and down the street. Presently he spied me and beckoned. I was all dishevelled and one stain of mud from head to foot.

"D' ye want to earn a shilling, fellow?" he called.

I grumbled that I was out of work and money. Was it likely I would refuse such a chance? And what was it he would have me do?

He led the way through the big, dimly-lighted hall to an up-stairs room near the back of the house. Two heavy boxes were lying there, packed and corded, to be taken down-stairs. I tossed aside my cloak and stooped to help him. He straightened with a jerk. I had been standing in the shadow with my soiled cloak wrapped about me, but now I stood revealed in silken hose, satin breeches, and laced doublet. If that were not enough to proclaim my rank a rapier dangled by my side.

"Rot me, you're a gentleman," he cried.

I affected to carry off my shame with bl.u.s.ter.

"What if I am!" I cried fiercely. "May not a gentleman be hungry, man? I am a ruined dicer, as poor as a church mouse. Do you grudge me my shilling?"

He shrugged his shoulders. Doubtless he had seen more than one broken gentleman cover poverty with a brave front of fine lawn and gilded splendour of array.

"All one to me, your Royal 'Ighness. Take 'old 'ere," he said facetiously.

We carried the boxes into the hall. When we had finished I stood mopping my face with a handkerchief, but my eyes were glued to the label tacked on one of the boxes.

_John Armitage, The Oaks, Epsom, Surrey._

"Wot yer waitin' for?" asked the fellow sharply.

"The shilling," I told him.

I left when he gave it me, and as I reached the door he bawled to be sure to shut it tight. An idea jumped to my mind on the instant, and though I slammed the door I took care to have my foot an inch or two within the portal. Next moment I was walking noisily down the steps and along the pavement.

Three minutes later I tiptoed back up the steps and tried the door. I opened it slowly and without noise till I could thrust in my head. The fellow was nowhere to be seen in the hall. I whipped in, and closed the door after me. Every board seemed to creak as I trod gingerly toward the stairway. In the empty house the least noise echoed greatly. The polished stairs cried out hollowly my presence. I was half way up when I came to a full stop. Some one was coming down round the bend of the stairway. Softly I slid down the bal.u.s.trade and crouched behind the post at the bottom. The man--it was my friend of the shilling--pa.s.sed within a foot of me, his hand almost brushing the hair of my head, and crossed the hall to a room opposite. Again I went up the stairs, still cautiously, but with a confidence born of the knowledge of his whereabouts.

The house was large, and I might have wandered long without guessing where lay the room I wanted had it not been for a slight sound that came to me--the low, soft sobbing of a woman. I groped my way along the dark pa.s.sage, turned to the left, and presently came to the door from behind which issued the sound. The door was locked on the outside, and the key was in the lock. I knocked, and at once silence fell. To my second knock I got no answer. Then I turned the key and entered.

A girl was sitting at a table with her back to me, her averted head leaning wearily on her hand. Dejection spoke in every line of her figure.

She did not even turn at my entrance, thinking me no doubt to be her guard. I stood waiting awkwardly, scarce knowing what to say.

"Madam," I began, "may I-- Is there----?" So far I got, then I came to an embarra.s.sed pause, for I might as well have talked to the dead for all the answer I got. She did not honour me with the faintest sign of attention. I hemmed and hawed and bowed to her back with a growing confusion.

At last she asked over her shoulder in a strained, even voice,

"What is it you're wanting now? You said I was to be left by my lane to-night."

I murmured like a gawk that I was at her service, and presently as I shifted from one foot to the other she turned slowly. Her face was a dumb cry for help, though it was a proud face too--one not lacking in fire and courage. I have seen fairer faces, but never one more to my liking. It was her eyes that held me. The blue of her own Highland lochs, with all their changing and indescribably pathetic beauty, lurked deeply in them.

Unconsciously they appealed to me, and the world was not wide enough to keep me from her when they called. Faith, my secret is out already, and I had resolved that it should keep till near the end of my story!

I had dropped my muddy cloak before I entered, and as she looked at me a change came over her. Despair gave way to a startled surprise. Her eyes dilated.