Part 21

"Miss Cameron, madam--Mr Cameron," stuttered and sputtered out Captain Stubbs, starting to his feet, his face reddening with rage, and every feature exhibiting symptoms of the high indignation which he felt--"Mr Cameron, sir, I command you, sir, in the king's name, to turn your daughter out of this apartment, otherwise I shall order up half-a-dozen of my fellows, with pistol and sabre, to drive her from my presence; and it is not improbable, sir, that I may have her apprehended, and tried, and shot as a rebel, sir."

Whilst delivering himself of this appalling speech, Captain Stubbs strutted up and down the apartment, chafing with rage; at one time impatiently tugging on his gloves, at another buttoning up his coat with an air of determination, which he thought, no doubt, would strike terror into the breasts of his auditors.

Mr Cameron, unwilling that matters should be carried any farther, and still desirous to keep up appearances with his guest, now approached his daughter; and, taking her gently by the hand, and at the same time leading her towards the door--

"Grace," he said, "I think you had better retire. You do not appear disposed," he added--smiling in his daughter's face as he spoke, but taking care to conceal this expression of his real feelings from the enraged captain--"to make yourself agreeable to-day; and therefore it may be as well that you carry your temper to some other quarter."

"Oh, certainly, sir, since it is your pleasure," replied Miss Cameron, tripping towards the door, where she stood for an instant--looked full at the captain--said she would expect to hear from him at his convenience, as to time, place, and weapons--made him a stately curtsey, and left the apartment.

When she had gone--"Don't think I am _afraid_ of her, Mr Cameron," said Captain Stubbs. "I am a man, sir, and a soldier, sir," he continued, still pacing the room, in great indignation at the treatment he had received from his fair antagonist, "and not to be frightened with trifles; but I say, Mr A--a--," he added, in a more subdued tone, "as I am not a man to permit such small occurrences as this to direct my attention from any important object I may have in view, I beg to know distinctly what you have for dinner, and I insist upon you, at the same time, recollecting, sir, that I am a king's officer, sir, and have a right to civil treatment."

"What sort of dinner you are to have, Captain Stubbs," replied Mr Cameron, "I really do not exactly know; but you may rest assured that, in so far as it lies with me, you shall have civil treatment; and I request of you to point out to me in what way I may contribute to your comfort."

"Ah! well--very well," replied Captain Stubbs. "Am I, then, or am I not, to have a fowl _a la Conde_, sir--eh?"

"Surely, sir," said his host; "if any of my people can prepare such a dish as you speak of, you shall have it."

"What the devil, then!" exclaimed Stubbs, passionately; "and am I to lose my dinner if your Hottentots shouldn't happen to know how to cook it? No! hang me, sir, I'll superintend the thing myself. I'll do it with my own hands, if you will show me the way to your kitchen."

With this request Mr Cameron immediately complied, by marshalling the captain to the scene of his proposed labours. On arriving in the kitchen, he forthwith prepared himself for the work he was about to undertake, by throwing off his regimental coat, rolling up his shirt-sleeves to his shoulders, and seizing on a large carving-knife which happened to be lying within his reach. Thus prepared, Captain Stubbs, after having been provided, by his own special orders, with a pair of choice fowls, lemon juice, bacon, parsley, thyme, bay-leaf, cloves, &c. &c., commenced operations; and, forgetting his dignity in his devotion to good living, he might now be seen smeared, from finger-ends to elbows, with grease and offal, earnestly engaged in disembowelling, with his own hands, the fowls on which he meant to exercise his gastronomic skill.

Leaving Captain Stubbs, of his majesty's ---- regiment of horse, thus becomingly employed, we shall return to a personage who, we should suppose, will be fully more interesting to the reader. This is Grace Cameron. That lady, on leaving the presence of her father, and him of the fowl _a la Conde_, returned to her own apartment, when, recollecting that the dragoons were still in front of the house, she walked up to the window, to gratify her curiosity by taking another peep at the warlike display; and it was while thus employed that Miss Cameron, for the first time, perceived that there was a prisoner amongst the soldiers. The prisoner was a boy of about thirteen or fourteen years of age. He was mounted behind one of the dragoons, to whom he was secured by a cord, which was passed round the bodies of both. Grace thought she perceived that the boy looked up at the windows of the house with more earnestness and anxiety than curiosity; and, when his eye at length rested on that she occupied, he threw a peculiar intelligence into his look, accompanied by certain expressive but almost imperceptible signs, that convinced her that he was desirous of holding some communication with her. Satisfied of this, Grace raised the window at which she stood, and beckoned to the serjeant of the troop to approach nearer. He rode up to within a few yards of the house.

"Is that poor boy a prisoner, sir?" inquired Miss Cameron.

"Yes, ma'am," replied the serjeant, touching his hat.

"For what has he been taken up? What has he done?"

"Done, ma'am! Lord love you, ma'am--excuse me--he has done nothing as I knows of; but our captain suspects him of being a rebel."

"Where did you fall in with him?"

"Why, ma'am, we picked him up on the road as we came along this morning. Captain saw him skulking behind a hedge. 'There's a blackguard-looking rascal, serjeant,' says he. 'He has the rebel cut about him as perfect as a picture. Pick him up, and strap him to one of the fellows, and we'll see what the cat-o'-nine-tails will bring out of him.'"

"Gracious heaven!" exclaimed Grace, shocked at this instance of military despotism, "is it possible that such a state of things exists--that you can apprehend and punish whomsoever you please, without a shadow of crime being established against them? You cannot have such a power, serjeant. It is impossible."

"Oh, bless you, ma'am, but we have, though," replied the serjeant. "Captain may hang or shoot a dozen every day, if he has a mind, without ever axing them a question. We could never get through our work otherwise; and, as to this young rogue's being a rebel, there's no doubt of it. He's all in rags; and, as captain says, every poor-looking ragged rascal is sure to be a rebel."

"Pretty grounds, truly, on which to subject a man to the treatment of a felon!" said Miss Cameron. "However," she continued, "will it be any dereliction of your duty, serjeant, to permit me to speak for a moment with the unfortunate lad?"

"By no means, ma'am," replied the serjeant. "Provided he's kept fast till captain's pleasure is known regarding him, I don't see it signifies a pinch of gunpowder who speaks to him."

Availing herself of the permission granted her, Grace was in an instant afterwards beside the prisoner, whose looks brightened up with an expression of extreme delight as she approached him. After asking the lad a few trivial questions, she observed him cautiously stealing something forth from a concealment in his dress. It was a letter. Watching an opportunity, he slipped this document unperceived into her hand.

Trembling with agitation, although she knew not well for what, Grace crammed the letter into her bosom, and saying to its bearer that she would speak with him again, she hurried into the house, and sought a retired apartment, when, pulling it from her bosom, she discovered, from the handwriting of the address, that it was from Malcolm M'Gregor. With a beating heart and trembling hand, she opened it, and read--

"DEAREST GRACE,--All is lost. The Prince's army is defeated and dispersed, and I am now a wandering fugitive in my native land, with the axe of the executioner suspended over my neck. This is a dreadful reverse, and carries with it destruction to all our hopes--to mine, individually, utter annihilation. I have only time to add, dearest Grace, that, if I can escape the bloodhounds that are in pursuit of us, I must seek safety in a foreign land. I will, however, endeavour to see you before I go. I _must_ see you, Grace, and shall do so at all hazards. I have hitherto escaped unhurt. God bless you," &c. &c.

With mingled feelings of joy and grief--joy to find that her lover still lived, and had escaped the dangers of the battle-field, and grief for the unfortunate position in which he was now placed--Grace returned the letter to her bosom, and hastily left the apartment, when she was met by her father, who insisted upon her joining Captain Stubbs and himself at dinner; requesting her, at the same time, to conduct herself in a conciliatory way to the captain, and thus to endeavour to make her peace with him, as he was such a man, he said, as might occasion them trouble, if allowed to leave the house with any feelings of irritation towards them.

Obedient to her father's commands, Grace joined the party, and not only avoided giving Stubbs any farther offence, but got so far into his good graces that she actually prevailed on him to order the release of the boy who had been the bearer of Malcolm's letter--an order which Grace took care to see immediately fulfilled; nay, Captain Stubbs not only did this, but began, after dinner, when his temper had been mollified by the good things of which he had partaken, to play the gallant--and in this character he was standing at a window with Miss Cameron, when, suddenly dropping the awkward badinage which he had been attempting--

"But who the devil have we got here?" he exclaimed, his eye having caught a man in a mean dress, who, on discovering the dragoons as he approached the house, suddenly stopped short, and, in evident surprise and alarm, sprung to one side of the road, and endeavoured to conceal himself behind a low and rather thin hedge that ran parallel to the house, and directly in front of it. Stubbs pointed him out to Miss Cameron; she started, and turned pale; for, meanly dressed as he was, she at once recognised in the stranger her lover, Malcolm M'Gregor. He had come, she doubted not, in this disguise, to pay the visit which his letter had promised. In the meantime, Stubbs, flushed with the wine he had drunk, and desirous of showing Miss Cameron his promptitude and energy on sudden emergencies, threw up the window violently, and called out to the soldiers to pursue the fugitive, and to fire upon him, if he did not surrender himself. It was in vain that Miss Cameron--at this trying moment forgetting the additional danger to which the warm and earnest expressions of her interest in the fate of her lover would subject him--implored Captain Stubbs to allow him to escape.

"For Heaven's sake," she exclaimed, in the agony of her feelings, and seizing him almost convulsively by the hand as she spoke, "do not commit murder! Do not send the soldiers after him, captain. I will do anything for you--I will go on my bended knees to you," said the distracted girl, "if you will call your men back, and allow him to escape." To this appeal Stubbs made no other reply than by repeating, with additional vehemence, his orders to the soldiers; half-a-dozen of whom, with the serjeant at their head, now galloped furiously off in the direction which he pointed out. Then, turning round to Miss Cameron, with a look of mingled triumph and self-complacency--

"Why, madam," he said, "we must do our duty. We soldiers mustn't stand on trifles. The fellow must be shot; and, if he isn't shot, he must be hanged--that's all; so there's but two ways of it--eh? Tight work that, madam, isn't it--eh?"

At this instant, the report of a carbine was heard, and immediately after, another and another.

"Oh heavens! they have killed him, they have killed him!" exclaimed Miss Cameron, covering her face with her hands, and throwing herself into a seat, in an agony of horror and despair. "They have murdered him, the ruthless savages. Oh Malcolm, my beloved Malcolm! that you had never loved me, that you had never looked on this fatal face!--for it is I, and I alone, that have been the cause of your cruel and untimely death." And here the violence of her feelings choked her utterance, and she burst into a flood of tears.

Fortunately Captain Stubbs was too intently occupied in watching the proceedings of the party who were in pursuit of the fugitive, to hear all that Miss Cameron had permitted to escape her in her agony; or, indeed, to notice her distress at all. Quizzing-glass in hand, he was employed in looking at the chase, and ever and anon giving utterance to the various feelings which its various turns excited.

"Ha, you've pinned him at last, serjeant," muttered the captain, in his own peculiar and elegant phraseology, on perceiving the fugitive stumble and fall, immediately after a carbine had been discharged at him by the officer just named.

"No, you blind rascal," again muttered Stubbs, on seeing the fallen man taking once more to his feet, and clearing hedges and ditches with an activity that sufficiently showed he had sustained, at any rate, no serious injury. "You haven't touched him. I'll have you back to the ranks again for that, you scoundrel, or my name's not Stubbs." And, after a moment's pause--"Ay, ay, you villain," he added, "he's off, he's off; you'll never get within shot of him again. Hang me, if I don't get every man of you flogged to death for this!"

When Captain Stubbs said the fugitive had escaped, he was right. The nature of the ground had been all along greatly in his favour, being so interspersed and encumbered with hedges, ditches, walls, and trees, that the dragoons had little or no chance of ever being able to overtake him, should he escape their carbines; and these had hitherto been discharged at him without effect.

The last effort of the fugitive--that which secured his final escape, and which had called forth the expressions of Captain Stubbs' displeasure--was his plunging into a thick plantation that grew on the face of a steep and rocky hill, where it was impossible for the troopers to pursue him. The latter finding this, two or three shots were discharged at random into the wood; a volley of oaths followed, and the pursuit was abandoned.

The dragoons turned their horses' heads towards Duntruskin House, where they soon after rejoined their comrades.

During the pursuit, Miss Cameron awaited its result in deep but silent wretchedness, till, aroused by the delightful intelligence communicated involuntarily by Stubbs, that the fugitive yet lived--

"He is not killed, then!" she exclaimed, in a paroxysm of rapture, starting from her seat, her face flushed with joy, and her soft dark eye beaming with inexpressible happiness. "He is not killed, then!" she said, rushing wildly to the window. "Oh, thank God, thank God for his mercies!" she exclaimed, on perceiving that the fugitive appeared to be still unhurt, and that he was continuing his exertions to escape, with unabated energy.

Unable, however, to look longer upon the doubtful and critical struggle between the pursuers and the pursued, she had again retired from the window, and again her fears for the eventual safety of her lover had returned. These, however, Captain Stubbs' latter exclamations had once more removed.

"Off! is he off?" she wildly repeated, taking up the words in which the joyful event had been communicated; and she again flew to the window. "Dear Captain Stubbs," she exclaimed--forgetting in the excitation of the moment all former feelings and antipathies regarding him she addressed--"is he indeed off? Has--has"--and she was about to pronounce the name of M'Gregor, when a sudden recollection of the imprudence of doing so struck her, and she merely added, "has the man really escaped?" Having quickly satisfied herself that it was so, Miss Cameron, unable longer to control the warm and overflowing sense of gratitude which she felt towards the Omnipotent Being who had protected the beloved object of her affections in the moment of peril, clasped her hands together, looked upwards with a countenance strongly expressive of thankfulness and joy, and breathed a short but fervent prayer of thanksgiving.

The scene was one which Stubbs could not comprehend. He thought it very odd, but he said nothing. In a few seconds after, Grace left the apartment--a step to which she was urged by two motives. Captain Stubbs had threatened that he would instantly go himself, with his whole troop, on foot, to search the wood in which the fugitive had concealed himself--a measure which, if executed, would almost certainly secure the capture of M'Gregor, or, at least, render it a very probable event. The other motive, proceeding from this circumstance, was, to see whether she could not fall on any means of preventing the threatened expedition.

On leaving the apartment, Grace met the serjeant on his way to Captain Stubbs, to make his report of the proceeding in which he had just been engaged. Without well knowing for what precise purpose, but with some general idea that she might prevail on him, by some means or other, to second her views in defeating the object of Stubbs' proposed search, she stopped him, and hurriedly conducted him into an unoccupied apartment.

"Oh, serjeant!" she exclaimed, in great agitation, and scarcely knowing what she said, "will you--will you do me a favour--a great favour, serjeant? For God's sake, do not refuse me!"

The man looked at her in utter amazement.

"Your captain," continued Grace, "proposes renewing the pursuit of the person that has just escaped you. I am interested in that person. Now, serjeant, will you do what you can to prevent this search taking place, or to render it unavailing if it does?" And with these last words she put a purse, containing ten guineas, into the serjeant's hand.

The man looked from the gift to the giver, and again from the latter to the former, in silent astonishment, for several seconds. At length--

"Why, miss," he said, "since you _are_ in such a taking about this matter, and as I don't mind a poor fellow's escaping now and then, I _will_ do what I can to serve you in the case." And he put the purse into his pocket.

"Oh, thank you, serjeant, thank you!--God bless you for these words!" said Grace, in a rapture of joy. "But how--how, serjeant, will you manage it?"

"Oh, leave me alone for that, miss," replied the latter; "I knows how to manage it, and I'll do it effectually, I warrant you. I can send captain in any direction I please on the shortest notice. He don't like the smell of gunpowder, though he be a soldier; and, when he can, always follows the wind that brings it."

In a few minutes after, Serjeant Higginbotham was in the presence of the pink of chivalry, Captain Stubbs. Having informed the latter briefly of the result of the pursuit, he added, that, when he was out, he had seen "something suspicious."

"What was it?" inquired Stubbs, in a tone and with a look of alarm.

"Why, sir," responded the serjeant, "a crowd of people assembled on the face of the hill where the fellow escaped us."

"The devil! Are they rebels, think you, serjeant?" said the captain, with increased perturbation.

"And, please your honour, I think as how there is no doubt of it," replied Higginbotham.

"In great force, you say, serjeant?" added Stubbs; "in overwhelming force--madness to attack them--you can depone on oath before a court-martial?"

"To be sure I can, sir," rejoined the former.

"That's a good fellow; order my horse to the door instantly, and let the men fall in."

These orders were immediately obeyed; and in the next instant Captain Stubbs appeared at the door.

"In what direction are these rascals?" he said, addressing the serjeant, as he was about to mount his charger.

"In that direction, your honour," replied the latter, pointing towards the place of M'Gregor's concealment.

"Ah!" ejaculated Captain Stubbs; and, in a moment after, he was in full gallop, followed by his whole troop, in the opposite direction.

We should certainly fail, were we to attempt to describe the joy of Grace Cameron when she beheld the departure of the dragoons. That joy, as will readily be believed, was extreme.

For some time after the troopers had left the house, Grace continued to keep her eye on the spot where M'Gregor had disappeared, in the hope that he would again show himself. Nor was she mistaken. Malcolm appeared also to have been able to see from his hiding-place the departure of the soldiers; for they had not been more than a quarter-of-an-hour gone, when he again appeared at the skirts of the wood where he had been concealed, and made towards the house. On recognising him, Grace hastened out to meet him.

This meeting we need not describe, as it very much resembled all other meetings of a similar kind--only that it was, perhaps, a little more interesting, from the peculiar situation of the parties. The lovers had much to say to each other, and much was said in a very small space of time. Amongst other things, Malcolm informed Grace that it was his intention to request her father for an asylum for three or four days, when, he said, it was his intention to proceed to the coast, and to endeavour to effect his escape from thence to France.

The asylum that Malcolm requested was readily granted by Mr Cameron, and a place of concealment was found for him, which promised every security--and there was need that it should; for, on the following day, the surrounding country was filled with soldiers, who were everywhere making the strictest search for the fugitive insurgents; and of these several parties had already paid domiciliary visits to Duntruskin House.

The constant state of terror and alarm for the safety of her lover, in which these visits kept Grace Cameron, and the imminent risk he ran of being discovered, at length suggested to the romantic girl an undertaking which well accorded with her strong affection and noble spirit; but which certainly, had it been known, must have appeared to all but herself as utterly hopeless.

On the second day after the occurrence just related, Grace, seizing such an opportunity as she thought favourable for her purpose, suddenly flung her arms around her father's neck, and said, smiling affectionately in his face as she spoke--

"Father, I am going to ask you a favour."

"Well, Grace, my dear," replied he, "I tell you, before you ask it, that, if it be reasonable in itself, and within my power, I shall grant it."

"Thank you, my dear father," said Grace; "but I am afraid you will _not_ think it reasonable. Nevertheless, you must grant it."

"Nay, Grace, that's more than I bargain for," rejoined Mr Cameron, laughing. "But let me know what it is you want, and I shall then be better able to judge of its propriety."

"Well, then, father," replied Grace, "will you allow me to go from home for two days, to take my pony with me--for I mean to travel--and allow Macpherson to accompany me?"

"Where do you propose going to, Grace?" inquired her father, rather gravely.

"That's a question, father," said his daughter, "that relates to a part of the bargain I mean to drive with you which I have not yet arrived at, and which will seem to you the most unreasonable of the whole, I daresay. You must not ask me where I am going to, nor what I'm going to do. On my return, you shall know all."