"You have confessed," he said. Then to the others: "This fellow is one of Malbrouck's pack. He has been nosing in the Scotch westlands. Here are the numbers of Kenmure and Nithsdale to enable the great Duke to make up his halting mind. See, he has been with Roxburghe too.... We have a spy before us, gentlemen, delivered to our hands by a happy incident. Whig among the sectaries and with Stair and Roxburghe, and Jacobite among our poor honest folk, and wheedling the secrets out of both sides to sell to one who disposes of them at a profit in higher quarters. Faug! I know the vermin. An honest Whig like John Argyll I can respect and fight, but for such rats as this--What shall we do with it now that we have trapped it?"

"Let it go," said the boy, Nick Wogan. "The land crawls with them and we cannot go rat-hunting when we are aiming at a throne." He picked up Lovel's ring and spun it on a finger tip. "The gentleman has found more than news in the north. He has acquired a solid lump of gold."

The implication roused Mr. Lovel out of his embarra.s.sment. "I wear the ring by right. I had it from my father." His voice was tearful with offended pride

"The creature claims gentility," said Talbot, as he examined the trinket.

"Lovel you call yourself. But Lovel bears barry nebuly or chevronels.

This coat has three plain charges. Can you read them, Nick, for my eyes are weak! I am curious to know from whom he stole it."

The boy scanned it closely. "Three of something I think they are fleur-de-lys, which would spell Montgomery. Or lions' heads, maybe, for Buchan?"

He pa.s.sed it to Lord Charles, who held it to a candle's light. "Nay, I think they are c.u.mmin garbs. Some poor fellow dirked and spoiled."

Mr. Lovel was outraged and forgot his fears. He forgot, indeed, most things which he should have remembered. He longed only to establish his gentility in the eyes of those three proud gentlemen. The liquor was ebbing in him and with it had flown all his complacence. He felt small and mean and despised, and the talents he had been pluming himself on an hour before had now shrunk to windlestraws.

"I do a.s.sure you, sirs," he faltered, "the ring is mine own. I had it from my father, who had it from his. I am of an ancient house, though somewhat decayed."

His eyes sought those of his inquisitors with the pathos of a dog.

But he saw only hostile faces--Talbot's grave and grim, Lord Charles'

contemptuous, the boy's smiling ironically.

"Decayed, indeed," said the dark man, "pitifully decayed. If you be gentle the more shame on you."

Mr. Lovel was almost whining. "I swear I am honest. I do my master's commissions and report what I learn."

"Aye, sir, but how do you learn it? By playing the imposter and winning your way into an unsuspecting confidence. To you friendship is a tool and honour a convenience. You cheat in every breath you draw. And what a man gives you in his innocence may bring him to the gallows. By G.o.d! I'd rather slit throats on a highway for a purse or two than cozen men to their death by such arts as yours."

In other circ.u.mstances Mr. Lovel might have put up a brazen defence, but now he seemed to have lost a.s.surance. "I do no ill," was all he could stammer, "for I have no bias. I am for no side in politics."

"So much the worse. A man who spies for a cause in which he believes may redeem by that faith a dirty trade. But in cold blood you practise infamy."

The night was growing wilder, and even in that sheltered room its echoes were felt. Wind shook the curtains and blew gusts of ashes from the fire. The place had become bleak and tragic and Mr. Lovel felt the forlornness in his bones. Something had woke in him which shivered the fabric of a lifetime. The three faces, worn, anxious, yet of a n.o.ble hardihood, stirred in him a strange emotion. Hopes and dreams, long forgotten, flitted like spectres across his memory. He had something to say, something which demanded utterance, and his voice grew bold.

"What do you know of my straits?" he cried. "Men of fortune like you! My race is old, but I never had the benefit of it. I was bred in a garret and have all my days been on nodding terms with starvation.... What should I know about your parties? What should I care for Whig and Tory or what king has his hinderend on the throne? Tell me in G.o.d's name how should such as I learn loyalty except to the man who gives me gold to buy food and shelter? Heaven knows I have never betrayed a master while I served him."

The shabby man with the lean face had secured an advantage. For a moment the pa.s.sion in his voice dominated the room.

"Cursed if this does not sound like truth," said the boy, and his eyes were almost friendly.

But Talbot did not relax.

"By your own confession you are outside the pale of gentility. I do not trouble to blame you, but I take leave to despise you. By your grace, sir, we will dispense with your company."

The ice of his scorn did not chill the strange emotion which seemed to have entered the air. The scarecrow by the fire had won a kind of dignity.

"I am going," he said. "Will you have the goodness to send for my horse?... If you care to know, gentleman, you have cut short a promising career.... To much of what you say I submit. You have spoken truth--not all the truth, but sufficient to unman me. I am a rogue by your reckoning, for I think only of my wages. Pray tell me what moves you to ride out on what at the best is a desperate venture?"

There was nothing but sincerity in the voice, and Talbot answered.

"I fight for the King ordained by G.o.d and for a land which cannot flourish under the usurper. My loyalty to throne, Church, and fatherland constrains me."

Lovel's eye pa.s.sed to Lord Charles. The Highlander whistled very softly a bar or two of a wild melody with longing and a poignant sorrow in it.

"That," he said. "I fight for the old ways and the old days that are pa.s.sing."

Nick Wogan smiled. "And I for neither--wholly. I have a little of Talbot in me and more of Charles. But I strike my blow for romance--the little against the big, the n.o.ble few against the base many. I am for youth against all dull huckstering things."

Mr. Lovel bowed. "I am answered. I congratulate you, gentlemen, on your good fortune. It is my grief that I do not share it. I have not Mr.

Talbot's politics, nor am I a great Scotch lord, nor have I the felicity to be young.... I would beg you not to judge me harshly."

By this time he had struggled into his coat and boots He stepped to the table and picked up the papers.

"By your leave," he said, and flung them into the fire.

"You were welcome to them," said Talbot. "Long ere they got to Marlborough they would be useless."

"That is scarcely the point," said Lovel "I am somewhat dissatisfied with my calling and contemplate a change."

"You may sleep here if you wish," said Lord Charles.

"I thank you, but I am no fit company for you. I am better on the road."

Talbot took a guinea from his purse "Here's to help your journey," he was saying, when Nick Wogan flushing darkly, intervened. "d.a.m.n you, James don't be a boor," he said.

The boy picked up the ring and offered it to Mr. Lovel as he pa.s.sed through the door. He also gave him his hand.

The traveller spurred his horse into the driving rain, but he was oblivious of the weather. When he came to Brampton he discovered to his surprise that he had been sobbing. Except in liquor, he had not wept since he was a child.

CHAPTER 12. IN THE DARK LAND

The fire was so cunningly laid that only on one side did it cast a glow, and there the light was absorbed by a dark thicket of laurels. It was built under an overhang of limestone so that the smoke in the moonlight would be lost against the grey face of the rock. But, though the moon was only two days past the full, there was no sign of it, for the rain had come and the world was m.u.f.fled in it. That morning the Kentucky vales, as seen from the ridge where the camp lay, had been like a furnace with the gold and scarlet of autumn, and the air had been heavy with sweet October smells. Then the wind had suddenly shifted, the sky had grown leaden, and in a queer dank chill the advance-guard of winter had appeared--that winter which to men with hundreds of pathless miles between them and their homes was like a venture into an uncharted continent.

One of the three hunters slipped from his buffalo robe and dived into the laurel thicket to replenish the fire from the stock of dry fuel. His figure revealed itself fitfully in the firelight, a tall slim man with a curious lightness of movement like a cat's. When he had done his work he snuggled down in his skins in the glow, and his two companions shifted their positions to be near him. The fire-tender was the leader of the little party The light showed a face very dark with weather. He had the appearance of wearing an untidy perruque, which was a tight-fitting skin-cap with the pelt hanging behind. Below its fringe straggled a selvedge of coa.r.s.e black hair. But his eyes were blue and very bright, and his eyebrows and lashes were flaxen, and the contrast of light and dark had the effect of something peculiarly bold and masterful. Of the others one was clearly his brother, heavier in build, but with the same eyes and the same hard pointed chin and lean jaws. The third man was shorter and broader, and wore a newer hunting shirt than his fellows and a broad belt of wool and leather.

This last stretched his moccasins to the blaze and sent thin rings of smoke from his lips into the steam made by the falling rain.

He bitterly and compendiously cursed the weather. The little party had some reason for ill-temper. There had been an accident in the creek with the powder supply, and for the moment there were only two charges left in the whole outfit. Hitherto they had been living on ample supplies of meat, though they were on short rations of journey-cake, for their stock of meal was low. But that night they had supped poorly, for one of them had gone out to perch a turkey, since powder could not be wasted, and had not come back.

"I reckon we're the first as ever concluded to winter in Kaintuckee," he said between his puffs. "Howard and Salling went in in June, I've heerd.

And Finley? What about Finley, Dan'l?"

"He never stopped beyond the fall, though he was once near gripped by the snow. But there ain't no reason why winter should be worse on the O-hio than on the Yadkin. It's a good hunting time, and snow'll keep the redskins quiet. What's bad for us is wuss for them, says I.... I won't worry about winter nor redskins, if old Jim Lovelle 'ud fetch up. It beats me whar the man has got to."

"Wandered, maybe?" suggested the first speaker, whose name was Neely.