THE CAMERONIANS.

A Novel.

BY

JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF
'THE ROMANCE OF WAR,' 'OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH, ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1881.

[All Rights Reserved.]

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER

I. [NEWS AT LAST!]
II. [THE COINCIDENCE]
III. [EAGLESCRAIG ONCE MORE]
IV. [THE DIVIDED PAIR]
V. [A STRANGE ACCUSATION]
VI. [A FATAL PROOF FOUND]
VII. [CECIL'S VISITOR]
VIII. [BAFFLED!]
IX. [CROSS PURPOSES]
X. [THE TELEGRAM]
XI. [A DARK PREDICTION]
XII. [THE RECONNAISSANCE]
XIII. [THE WAYSIDE CHAPEL]
XIV. [THE BATTLE OF ZAITCHAR]
XV. [A RIDE FOR LIFE OR DEATH!]
XVI. [WHAT THE 'TIMES' TOLD]
XVII. [MARY'S LETTER]
XVIII. [THE HEIGHTS OF DJUNIS]
XIX. [WOUNDED]
XX. [SAVED!]
XXI. ['THE END CROWNS ALL']

THE CAMERONIANS.

CHAPTER I.
NEWS AT LAST!

From such terrible episodes and scenes as those that close our last chapter, and from such a land of wild barbarity, we gladly turn homewards for a time.

It was summer; and the season had scattered its roses and their leaves lavishly over the old Scoto-French garden of Eaglescraig, for such it was, with its closely-clipped privet hedges, its long grass walks, balustraded terraces, mossy sundials, and parterres, where deep box-edging was alternated by flower borders running along the paths, and where wall-flowers, sweet-williams, and tiger lilies, with moss and Provence roses, were varied by espaliers that in the coming time would be laden with fruit.

The summer was in its glory, but there was not much brightness within the house of Eaglescraig. So Cecil, who had latterly met with such scanty kindness from Sir Piers, was actually his grandson, and the honours of the old line were perhaps neither to die out, or pass to a far-away branch, after all!

John Balderstone had proved all this, and great were the content and glee thereat among the old visitors of the mansion; there being no regrets for Hew being 'scratched,' as he called it, 'and out of the running now,' for his general bearing had rendered him obnoxious to every one.

'So the whirligig of time brings about its revenge,' said old Tunley, the butler; 'pride always goes before a fall.'

'Yes!' coincided John Balderstone, with an angry smirk on his face; 'now, Master Hew may go to Hecklebirnie!'

'Where is that?'

'Three miles beyond—well, a very warm place, as our Scots proverb has it,' added the factor, as he drained a stiff jorum in Mr. Tunley's pantry.

Mrs. Garth rejoiced openly at the change that had come to pass.

'It would have been unnatural indeed,' she said, 'that a girl so sweet and sensitive as Mary should have been mated to Hew, whose actions, nature, and habits would have jarred on her softer nature perpetually.'

And Sir Piers heard her, ever and anon, making such remarks as this, without according the angry response they would once infallibly have elicited; while to Mary the relief was inexpressible! But meantime, where was Cecil now? This question was ever in her mind, causing an aching, gnawing anxiety there, amounting to positive physical pain; and she heard it daily on the lips of all around her, Hew excepted; and once in his cups the latter expressed to John Balderstone a fierce hope that the absent heir might be——'

'Stop, sir!' cried John; 'where?'

'Oh, anywhere,' replied Hew, with an angry gloom in his bilious-looking eyes; 'I am not particular as to climate, or locality.'

So far as Mary was concerned, his occupation was gone, like his hopes of everything now; and, gentle and tender though she was, Mary, remembering all the past, could feel no pity for him.

'Dear old Snarley!' she once exclaimed, catching up her pet terrier, and then talking at Hew; 'you, at least, have always loved me for myself alone—no thought have you of fortunes or acres, of rent-rolls and bank-notes; you would rather have a marrow-bone, than all—wouldn't you, my darling doggie?'

And Hew eyed her, and the dog too, viciously. He could no longer, as before, coarsely and vulgarly, taunt Mary with the obscurity of Cecil's birth, now that it was proved beyond all doubt to be superior to his own; neither could he avail himself now, as before, of the general's countenance and support, since his rival was the real heir of line and entail; while he was but a penniless dependent.

How bitterly and unwillingly, again and again, he anathematised the hour, in which that—to him—fatal packet was so inopportunely discovered by John Balderstone, and its blighting contents brought to light!

Had it only, by fate, been left forgotten, unknown in its place of concealment, for a year or so more, all might have gone well with him; but now—now—he could only curse heavily and grind his teeth in the impotency of his wrath and the deep bitterness of his disappointment.

'All the world's a stage, and the men and women only players;' but he who had played the deliberate villain in the drama of Cecil's life as yet, was still unmasked, and Hew grinned with malicious triumph as he thought of that.

The generous Sir Piers felt that he owed Hew some reparation for the loss of his Indian appointment, and the heavy blight that had fallen on all the prospects once before him; and he hoped that if Hew would only settle down to work and study, that something—he knew not precisely what—might be done for him yet; but Hew, exasperated by the trick fortune had played him, and the humiliating change in his position, had taken heavily to the bottle of late, and his naturally savage nature became at times inflamed to the verge of madness.

Mary was inevitably lost to him now; and that which he deemed much more important—her money! But if Cecil could be removed—crushed—destroyed—thrust out of his path and of this life too—he, Hew, would again be the heir of entail—heir to Eaglescraig and the baronetcy.

But where was Cecil now?

Could he but discover him—could he but cross his path, he would not be over particular about how he got rid of him; and at such times dark and terrible thoughts possessed him.

To drown care, and as a source of excitement, he had plunged deeper into his dissipations; he had become a more frequent visitor at race-courses, where a very little of his own money went into the pockets of others, while a good deal of the money of others accrued to him, by some mysterious process. He also stuck to his card playing—écarté being, as of old, his favourite game; and unless each rubber thereat represented a sum larger than he deemed sufficient to give zest to the game, even écarté had no charms for him.

Some of his escapades drew upon him the indignation of the general, and feeling himself all but discarded, his absences from Eaglescraig became longer and more frequent; so that none there knew precisely of his haunts or whereabouts, till the portly Mr. Tunley brought the startling intelligence one day that 'after a terrible bout of delirious trimmins, Master Hew was—or believed himself to be—dying, at the Montgomerie Arms Inn,' where he prayed the general in pity to come and see him once again.

Accompanied by a medical adviser and old John Balderstone, Sir Piers at once rode to the old posting-house indicated; and there, pale, wan, hollow cheeked, and with eyes unnaturally sunk and bloodshot, he found his once favoured protégé in a state that shocked him.

Hew was far from dying yet, as the doctor averred; and Sir Piers too—he 'had seen too much of that sort of thing up country, not to know all about it;' but, in his lowness and perturbation of spirit, Hew firmly believed that the hour of his demise was close indeed; and clinging to the hand of Sir Piers, while moaning and sobbing, he confessed how he had cheated and swindled often, and how he had maligned Cecil in many ways, and more than all, the cruel trick he had played him, on the night of the ball, by drugging his wine.

He uttered a veritable howl of dismay, and fell back in his bed, when he saw the sudden expression of horror, rage, and shame, that mingled in the face of the honourable old soldier, in whose heart there swelled up a great emotion of pity for Cecil.

He fiercely withdrew his hand from Hew's despairing and tenacious clutch, and started back a pace from the bed whereon the culprit lay.

'It is well that we have all heard this confession of a crime, as black as assassination—a confession which I request you both to commit to memory, and you, John Balderstone, most carefully to writing. As for you, sir,' he added, with a withering glance at Hew, 'I shall never look upon your face again, and now leave you with the doctor and your own conscience, if you have such a thing about you! Order my horse,' he concluded, as he rang the bell, and quitted the room without glancing again at Hew, whose wasted face was buried in the pillows, among which he was groaning heavily.

Buried in deep, anxious, and angry thoughts—angry with himself too—the general rode slowly home.

So—so—this was the secret and true character of Hew Montgomerie—a blackleg—a cheat—the perpetrator of a great villany, on an innocent man! 'When anything in which we have most believed, grows shadowy and unreal, we are apt to grow unreal to ourselves;' and the general, who had once believed greatly in Hew, now knew not what to think.

'Jealousy and avarice are the meanest of passions,' he thought, and terribly had Hew given full swing to both. 'Jealousy, I know, has driven people to incredible acts of deceit; but this act of Hew's has been, beyond all calculations, infamous!'

'It has been just as my heart foreboded!' said Mary to Mrs. Garth, when the revelation reached them, and the measure of her horror of Hew was now full. She then thanked Heaven for her wealth, that she might share it with the bruised and the fallen; but whither was he gone?

Alas! no one could find the smallest clue to it.

After the revelation, which fear of death had wrung from him, Hew recovered rapidly, and made many a solemn promise 'to eschew horseflesh and bits of painted pasteboard;' but it was only a case of 'the devil was sick,' etc., for when well he plunged into his old bad courses, far exceeding the allowance the general so generously made to him, and then he disappeared for a time.

Autumn had come now; the crops had been gathered, and the gleaners were busy on the upland slopes and fertile braes of Cunninghame and Kyle; the last of the high-piled wains had gone homeward over the furrowed fields and through the leafy grass lanes that led to the picturesque rickyard; the fern and heath-covered wastes were in all their beauty, the great gorse-bushes in all their golden bloom, and the woodlands wore many a varied hue, from dark-green to russet-brown and pallid yellow.

Since the discovery made by John Balderstone, and the revelations of Hew, the general had been rather a changed and broken-down man; but he now clung to Mary Montgomerie more than ever, and daily she drove him in her pony-carriage—the same in which Cecil was wont to accompany her, wrapped cosily up in the skins of animals he had shot in India—handling the ribbons so prettily with her gauntleted little hands, and always comporting herself so sweetly and tenderly to him, and just as a favourite daughter would have done.

He felt that a great crime had been committed against one who was his own flesh and blood; and that, in ignorance, he had condoned that crime; and, more than all, in society had visited it with all the acrimony he deemed due and proper to the occasion.

'I have again been guilty of rash judgment—of indiscretion and of cruelty!' he said again and again to himself in secret; and his mind drew painful pictures of the ruined Cecil, a wanderer or outcast, perhaps in penury, misery, and despair, driven, it might be, to suicide; and, remembering the real or fancied vision he had seen in time past, had a nervous and childish fear of perhaps beholding another.

Already had the father been wronged; and now, how much more deeply the son! Was a curse coming upon his race—a curse like that which blighted the Campbells of Glenlyon, and more than one other family, for some crime committed in ages past? It almost seemed so; and he had no language wherewith to express his loathing of Hew, and the cunning and cowardice of the latter.

Tidings of Cecil or how to trace him, were the daily thought of all at Eaglescraig, and the general wrote again and again, but vainly, to Leslie Fotheringhame, to Dick Freeport, Acharn, and other members of the corps on the subject; but none could afford the slightest clue to the mystery that enveloped his disappearance.

The presence of friends, if not avoided, was certainly not courted at Eaglescraig now; even the general forgot his reminiscences of India and the Cameronians in this new anxiety, and the days passed slowly, gloomily, and monotonously on, till Mary bethought her of Annabelle Erroll, who she knew had a sorrow of her own, and pressed her to visit them again.

The curiously and mysteriously worded advertisements inserted by John Balderstone in the second column of the Times, concerning Cecil, and seeking some knowledge of his whereabouts, never reached him by the banks of the Morava, or beyond the slopes of the Balkan mountains; and fears began to gather in the hearts of those who loved him, that if not gone to the Antipodes, he must be dead!

'I am breaking up, John,' he would say querulously to his old friend, 'and am about as much use now as a Scotch M.P. or a third wheel to a field-piece!'

Yet, as we are all creatures of habit, he adhered to his old ways mechanically. As an Indian veteran, accustomed to be up at gun-fire and when the cantonment ghurries clanged, he was always wont to be abroad early; and there was one morning, which he never forgot, when he was up and about earlier than usual.

He had been through the stables with Pate Pastern, the groom, and seen the carriage-horses, his own roadster, Mary's pad and her ponies; he had been with old Dibble, the gardener, about potting the flowers, though he scarcely knew a daffodil from a rhododendron; had seen the shepherd off to look after the cattle, and now came the postman with the letters and papers; but he tossed them all aside and muttered:

'What can interest me now?'

But Mary always had the power of rousing and interesting him, and, breakfast over, she began to read the morning paper aloud, as she often did, for he loved to hear her silvery voice. She turned, as was her wont with him, to the Indian news, though many a hearty laugh he had at her haphazard pronunciation of Hindostanee names and words; and, after giving him all the news from Simla, Calcutta, and so forth, her eyes fell on those from the Danubian provinces and the East; and she was in the act of reading, when her voice broke; as a swelling came into her throat she stopped, and, while tightly clutching her paper, fell back in her chair, with her face deadly pale.

'Mary, my darling, you are ill; what is the matter?' exclaimed Sir Piers, starting from his easy-chair and ringing the bell furiously.

'News of Cecil!' she replied, faintly.

'News of Cecil—when—how?'

'See, see! oh, heavens!' she exclaimed, smoothing out the paper and then pushing back her hair from her temples.

It was the special correspondent's detailed account of the battle by the Morava, and the singular gallantry of 'the British volunteer, Mr. Cecil Falconer,' in rescuing and remounting General Tchernaieff, after a brigade of Cossacks had given way; of his promotion and decoration with the Takova cross, and all that the reader already knows.

Tremulously the general read the notice again and again, with a glow of pride and joy in his old face—joy in which Mary did not fully share, for dread of the perils surrounding the absent one was her immediate second thought; but all suspense—all uncertainty were ended now. The absent, the wronged, and the lost one was discovered, but oh how far away!

'My boy's boy! my boy's boy!' muttered Sir Piers, wiping his spectacles, which had become covered with moisture. 'Tunley, call Mrs. Garth—the chief of my household staff—she must hear of this at once. Quick, she is in the compound!' he added, referring to the garden, as an Anglo-Indian never rids himself of his old associations. And motherly old Mrs. Garth, who was looking just as we saw her last, with her grey hair thick and soft, and with keen bright eyes under a pair of shrewd Scotch eyebrows, heard with genuine joy the sudden tidings of Cecil, for whom she had always had the strongest regard.

The day was passed in surmises and plans for the future, and Mary hurried away to her own room, to find perfect seclusion at last—away from all! She locked her door; threw off her dress as if it stifled her; donned her robe de toilette; let down the masses of her hair for coolness, threw them over her shoulders, and sat down with her dimpled chin resting in the pinky palm of her left hand, to think—think—think it all out.

What should she do! Write!

She threw open her desk and blotting-pad; but her brain was too excited—her poor heart beat too fast and too painfully to permit her to steady her thoughts, and she paced to and fro, so wearily.

'Thank heaven, dear Annabelle is coming!' she exclaimed more than once.

This battle by the Morava had been fought, by the date given, more than a month ago. A whole month! What might not have happened since then? In what fresh perils might not Cecil have been plunged? And much had happened, such as the gentle mind of Mary could not have conceived, or deemed possible, in this age of the world.

Now the news of the Servian war—a war to her hitherto unknown or devoid of interest—became suddenly invested with a new and terrible importance.

The regiment, of course, heard betimes of Cecil's exploit and the honours awarded him; and, as may readily be supposed, the mess had quite an ovation in consequence.

For certain cogent reasons of his own, Hew Montgomerie heard the tidings with unmixed satisfaction.

'In Servia—fighting in Servia, of all places in the world!' he muttered; 'if he only gets knocked on the head, I may find my old place at Eaglescraig again! But he may escape and come safely home. Why should I not go to Servia, and mar his future in some fashion?' he added, as a dark and cruel expression stole into his shifty eyes; 'but how to get there—and where the devil is Servia?'

Hew's ideas on geography were decidedly vague, and even Bradshaw failed to show how he could get there; but, intent on his diabolical thoughts nevertheless, he continued to think and to mutter:

'Fighting, is he! A bullet may rid me of him—rid me all the sooner that, no doubt, he sets little store upon his life now. Anyway, I should like it soon to be settled whether I am to have Eaglescraig after all!'

And he began to consider intently how he could reach Servia before Cecil could hear of his changed fortune; in what capacity he could act when there; what was the language spoken; where was the money to come from with which he was to travel? And for some days he resolved himself into a species of committee of ways and means, combined with many dark, cruel and malignant thoughts.

CHAPTER II.
THE COINCIDENCE.

On her way to Eaglescraig, Annabelle Erroll proceeded by way of Glasgow, and had barely taken her seat in the compartment of a first-class railway carriage, when a gentleman entered, and took his place at an opposite corner. Then the train glided out of the station; smoky Tradeston on the right, and the dense masses of the ancient Gorbals on the left, were quickly far behind, and the view on either side became more open, as it sped on its way; and ere long Annabelle forgot all about her companion, in watching the estuary of the Clyde, the rock of Dumbarton, the mighty blue mass of Ben Lomond, and the glorious panorama of the hills of Argyle.

Her companion had leisurely opened a courier bag, and taken therefrom various serials, without offering one to her, as she sat with averted face, intent on the scenery. He seemed one of those composed travellers who can hear unmoved the scream and whistle of any number of engines; the startling shout of 'Change here!' as the train pulled up at some confusing junction, from where travellers branched off in all directions—some the right, but many the wrong; and where leisurely and indolent porters spent the stirring yet monotonous day in cramming passengers and portmanteaus into carriages, to get rid of them as fast as possible for the next batch of portmanteaus and passengers, without caring whither they went or what became of them.

He could see, by furtive glances over the top of his paper, that his companion was a tall and elegant girl, faultlessly attired in a rich sealskin, with gold ornaments; with feet and hands which—when the latter left her tiny muff—were well-shaped and small. There was a haughty grace in the carriage of her handsome head; she wore a smart hat, and a thick black veil tied over her face effectually concealed her features. He took in all this at a glance as he settled himself to his newspaper, while she scarcely dared to breathe, as in him she had now recognised Leslie Fotheringhame!

Where was he going—what was he doing here, in 'mufti' too? The calm, high-bred face, to which the dark eyebrows and thick, black, heavy moustache imparted so much character—the face that was ever dwelling in her memory was before her again. In repose, she thought it seemed older than it should have been, or was wont to be; and when eventually he did venture to address her, when he smiled, it grew young and bright again, like the face she remembered in the pleasant time beside the Tay, and the last season at Edinburgh.

She saw that he had still at his watch-chain a tiny gold locket, which she remembered well; for it had been her gift to him, and contained a microscopic likeness of herself on one side, and a lock of her golden hair on the other—or had done so, when she saw it last.

Did it contain them now, or had they given place to memorials of—of that other woman—a hateful and humiliating thought!

How she longed for an excuse or opportunity to get into another carriage, or for other passengers to come in, ere he recognised her; but the train was an express one, and no addition could be made to their number for some time to come.

Secure, as yet, behind the mask of her veil, she watched him, while her heart beat with lightning-speed, and swelled with unavailing regret. Intent, apparently, on his paper, he had not recognised her. He had, of course, ceased to care for her, she thought, when he had learned to love that other one; and so now, her coming, and her going, her joy and her sorrow, were nothing to him—were less than the snow of last winter!

Yet she was woman enough to love him now, when breathing the same atmosphere with him—seated within a yard of him—to love him, in these the days of his biting indifference, even as she had done in those when a smile of hers could bring him so winningly to her side.

'What a fool I am!' she thought; 'oh, I hate myself! Would that I were a man—they can so easily forget!'

At that moment one of her bracelets became unclasped and fell at his feet.

He picked it up, and not sorry, perhaps, for an excuse to address her, said simply: 'Permit me?' and clasped it round her white and shapely wrist.

'Thanks,' she replied as briefly; but her voice, though low, instantly stirred a chord in his heart; the memory of her figure rushed upon him; he gazed keenly at the fair face half hidden by its veil of lace.

'Annabelle—Miss Erroll!' said he, in a strange voice, while lifting his hat, and half offering a hand: a motion which she ignored, and felt herself grow pallid in being discovered at last—pallid with something of anger too, for, with all her natural sweetness, Annabelle had a heart of pride.

'We are old friends,' said he, with some confusion or emotion of manner; 'at least we can be that?'

'Not even that, I fear,' said she, with affected firmness; and then added a little irrelevantly: 'would that I had never come here; an express train, too—how provoking!'

'Is my company so hateful—or are we to be enemies now?'

'As you please,' she replied, with growing irritation, for, her secret sentiments apart, the sudden situation exasperated her, after all that had occurred. 'To meet you here was, at least, the last thing I could have expected.'

'Or wished?'

'I have no reason for not replying in the affirmative—yes.'

He sighed, and for a moment looked out of the window at the past-flying landscape, across which the white cloud of the engine smoke was whirling. After a pause, he asked in a tone of assumed indifference:

'Are you going far by this train?'

'Far or near cannot possibly interest you, Captain Fotheringhame; but I may mention that I am going to Eaglescraig in Cunninghame.'

'Eaglescraig!' he exclaimed, forgetting his pretended calmness of manner.

'And you?' she inquired, for she had a tender interest in him, in spite of herself.

'I am going there too,' he replied, with the slightest twinkle of mischief in his handsome eyes.

'By invitation?' asked Annabelle, aghast, conceiving that her friend Mary had formed some scheme concerning them.

'No; I have volunteered a visit to the general, out of my friendship for Cecil Falconer—or Montgomerie, we must call him now. I have seen several notices concerning him in the public prints; I know all about his changed fortunes, and I want to be of service, if I can, to him and the old general. Thus I took this train, by a singular coincidence.'

'One I would have avoided, could I have known, foreseen, what was thereby involved.'

'Do not say so, I implore you,' said he.

She made no response to this; but sat with her face resolutely turned to the carriage window, while biting her cherry nether lip, and with difficulty restraining tears of vexation behind her veil; while Fotheringhame, as he looked at her, thought just then that no woman could compare with her—not even Mary Montgomerie—in his eyes; and he longed to see her face unveiled, but dared not, in her present mood, venture to hint of such a wish.

As his presence seemed to give her such extreme annoyance, he felt half inclined to relinquish his plan of visiting Sir Piers; but then he had written to the latter, announcing his intention of coming, and had obtained two or three days' leave for that special purpose.

The recent tidings of Cecil in the public prints—the brilliant exploit he had performed in the war in Servia—'in Servia, of all places in the world,' as Fotheringhame said—fortunately gave this luckless pair of travellers a kind of neutral ground on which to meet—a neutral subject on which to converse, apart from themselves; but in no instance can a man and a woman who have ever been more to each other than friends meet, after parting under any circumstances, without having emotion of a deeper kind—be it love, or be it hate—than ordinary individuals. Thus, ever and anon the conversation of these two manifested a decided tendency to take a personal and explanatory turn; yet they sat rigidly apart, each in their own corner of the carriage.

'Poor Cecil!' said Fotheringhame; 'he may have tired of treading life's dull road ere the report of his good fortune reaches him—the heir of an old baronetcy and an estate.'

'With the affection of a dear girl like Mary Montgomerie too!'

'True,' added Fotheringhame, with much sadness of tone; 'she does not forget, as some so readily can, what Motherwell calls "the love of life's young day."

Thinking that, if not acting, this remark conveyed a taunt, Annabelle said:

'You seem somewhat changed in way and manner since we saw each other last.'

'If so, I have had good reason therefor.'

'You were once gay enough, and happy too.'

'Happy when you made me so; but Heaven knows, Annabelle,' he exclaimed, with sudden emotion, 'that gaiety and pleasure have long been strangers to me.'

'So duplicity brings about its own punishment,' she replied, pointedly and pitilessly.

'Duplicity?' said he, looking up with a surprise that seemed at least genuine; 'I do not understand—you slighted my visits—returned my letters——'

'Good reason had I to do so. I had hoped we might avoid this subject——'

'Reason?' he queried, as her voice broke.

'Remember your mysterious friend,' said Annabelle, bitterly; 'she was not Blanche Gordon; so who was she—what was she? But I despise myself for asking!'

'She was then what she is no longer now—an unhappy creature,' was the enigmatical reply, from which Annabelle, whose pride revolted from making further inquiries, drew all kinds of singular deductions.

And now, at this crisis in their conversation, the train stopped, and as an influx took place of those fresh passengers so longed for by Annabelle a short time before, it could not be resumed in any form, and the rest of the journey was performed by them in silence, or nearly so.

CHAPTER III.
EAGLESCRAIG ONCE MORE.

Mary, in the general's snug and well-appointed old family carriage, with a stately hammer-cloth and heraldically bedecked panels, awaited Annabelle at the railway station; and though expecting Leslie Fotheringhame at the same time, and quite prepared to welcome him warmly as Cecil's friend and whilom brother officer, and though not surprised to see him arrive, she was certainly surprised to find that he and Annabelle had come together, and clapped her little ungloved hands merrily, as she received them, in a childlike way that almost provoked the latter, who was a proud and rather reserved girl.

She coloured deeply and with positive vexation, even under the eye of her dearest friend, for thus arriving at the same time, by the same train, and in the same carriage, with Leslie Fotheringhame; and this emotion made her more shy, more resentful to him apparently, and more resolved to keep as much as possible aloof from him.

And he, piqued by this, of which he was speedily conscious, conceived a vague and direful jealousy of some person as yet unknown, and it coloured his manner accordingly.

For the first time, on this occasion, he saw fully the soft fair face of Annabelle, as she raised her veil, and her velvet-like lips met those of Mary. Would they ever touch his again?

The weather was duly discussed, and the advent of Snarley gave them something to talk of, as that much-petted cur was nestling cosily under the skin of a man-eater that would have gobbled him up at a mouthful; and he now welcomed both with much yelping and effusiveness.

Mary felt the situation of her friends to be an awkward one, and exerted herself to make both feel at ease, as they drove under the evening sunshine to Eaglescraig, where both were welcomed by Sir Piers in the grand old dining-hall, the oak panels of which were nearly hidden by ancestral portraits, and from the tall windows of which there was a noble view of mountain and coppice, of rocky cliffs and the far-stretching Firth of the dark blue Clyde; and at the elbow of the host stood old Tunley, with a silver salver of decanters and glasses.

'Too late for tiffin and too early for dinner, Fotheringhame,' said the general; 'just a nip to keep the cold out, and then the dressing-bell will ring, and Tunley will see that you are attended to.'

Tunley, like most of the old servants, many of whom had been born on the estate, had but one creed—the welfare of the family of Eaglescraig. Their sorrow had been sincere when 'Master Piers come to evil,' with his father; and it had been renewed now by the strange story of Cecil, which had, of course, taken a powerful hold of their fancies; thus he and they all viewed the advent of Fotheringhame with the deepest interest, believing that he was in some mysterious way to restore the wanderer to his home, and was, indeed, but the forerunner of that event.

One word more about Tunley. The poor man felt ashamed of one feature in his past blameless life, and daily intercourse with the general and Mrs. Garth made him feel it keenly; for this most respectable of British butlers had never served, even for an hour, in the Cameronians, and this he deemed somewhat of a blot upon his scutcheon.

'Mrs. Captain Garth, of course, you remember,' said the general to Fotheringhame (who was imbibing a liqueur glass of mountain-dew), indicating the old lady, who was seated in an easy-chair, holding a hand-screen to shield her face from the glow of the fire; 'widow of my old friend Garth of Ours—and now, I think, we all know each other.'

Sir Piers had some vague idea that there had been a flirtation—a lovers' quarrel, or some such folly—between Leslie Fotheringhame and Annabelle Errol; but that was nothing to the old man—they would square it, no doubt, if they were so disposed. And he thought only of making welcome his guest—a Cameronian too!—friend of his grandson, who had been so horribly used; and as for Annabelle, Mary would look after her.

Dinner duly came, and passed with the usual commonplace conversation; the presence of the servants precluding all from talking freely, and conversing on the matter nearest their hearts—the volunteer in Servia. But Fotheringhame, from his place by Mary's side, had but one thought—how surpassing fair looked Annabelle! Her dress was a plain and simple muslin one; a blue flower of some kind was amid the masses of her golden hair, and the brother of it nestled amid the soft lace in the swell of her bosom.

After the ladies had returned to the drawing-room, the object which had brought him to Eaglescraig seemed half forgotten for a time, and his thoughts had followed her; but now the hospitable general was pushing the decanters to and fro; Tunley had withdrawn; and anon Fotheringhame roused himself, for he was full of joyous enthusiasm at distinction won by his friend in a foreign service, though he cordially wished that he had never been driven to seek it there—a service in which he had been driven by desperation to seek a new home; and Fotheringhame quite won the heart of the general, who now—in all that Cecil had done and achieved—was assured that he saw but the reflection and reproduction of his own character, vaguely known as 'a chip of the old block,' and that it was from him that Cecil inherited all this fire and spirit. He became quite jovial, and ere the evening was over began to sing, in a very quavering treble, snatches of 'the old Subadahr.'

'At the mess, we knew not what to think of his disappearance,' said Fotheringhame, playing with his walnuts; 'some hinted of California and the Rocky Mountains, others of Ballarat, the Diamond Fields of Natal, the Cape war and the Zulus, and everywhere else that the desperate and the broken——'

'The desperate and the broken!' sighed the general, setting down an untasted glass.

'Yes, Sir Piers—go to mend their fortunes, to seek excitement, oblivion, and too often to end their lives; but certainly no man among us ever thought of Servia!'

'It was most kind of you to volunteer this visit, Fotheringhame, to assist me with your advice and knowledge of a European world that is somewhat new to me now,' said Sir Piers, grasping his hand.

'Not at all, Sir Piers; I would do anything to serve Cecil. I thought two heads might be better than one; I am younger and more active than you—

'But, egad, I have seen the day!'

'And so, I thought, we must talk the matter over at leisure, yet without delay.'

'All right—the decanters stand with you. And now, Fotheringhame, you are aware of how he was a victim of a vile scheme—how his wine was drugged by a scoundrel whose attested confession I possess?'

Aware of how deep had once been the general's interest in Mr. Hew Caddish Montgomerie, Fotheringhame merely bowed an assent; and, after a few minutes' silence, inquired where he was now?

'None know, and none care,' replied the general, hotly; 'he has disappeared altogether—let us hope for ever. But if life lasts me, by the Heaven that hears me, I shall set the honour of my boy right and clear before the regiment, the Horse Guards, and the world, or lay my commission at the foot of the throne!'

'In an affair of jealousy——'

'Jealousy!' exclaimed the general, with a fierce grimace; 'we settled these, and other affairs, differently in my time, before the service went to the dogs. Egad! I knew a fellow, when I was a sub at Vellore, who was shot for declining to dine at a certain mess-table. Did you ever hear the story?'

'No, general!'

'Well, you see, it happened in this way,' began Sir Piers, who, having obtained an audience, fell back at once into his old Indian train of thought. 'We were cantonned at Nussirabad, in the wild black province of Ajmir, with the 76th Bengal Native Infantry, when there came from England, to join that corps, a Captain Evelyn, a quiet and gentlemanly young fellow, whom all liked, save some of the 76th, who, sooth to say, were nearly all fiery rackety Irishmen, and by no means good examples of the Emerald Isle; for cards, brandy-pawnee, and incessant uproar were the order of the day, and of the night too, in every bungalow in their lines, generally finishing at a very late hour by breaking each other's heads with the billiard-cues, and shying the balls out of the windows; while they were born-devils at pig-sticking, horse-racing, and not a pretty ayah was safe within ten coss of them. Such were the officers of the Moriartie-ka-Pultan, for the corps had been raised by an Irishman, and bore his name.

'Evelyn declined to join their mess, not on that account, but because he wished to live economically, being engaged to a young lady who was coming up country, chaperoned by Mrs. Erroll, the mother of Mary's friend, then a young and lovely matron—a mere girl in fact, and travelling dawk, as we all did in those days; and with the utmost politeness he explained all this to the president of the mess committee. That personage, a certain Captain Darby O'Dowd, swore that this was a distinct affront to the whole corps, and that Evelyn must be paraded about gunfire. The mess consisted of sixteen, and as he could not fight them all, they leisurely cast lots, and the task fell to O'Dowd, who challenged Evelyn, with the intimation that if he—the valiant Darby—fell, the next in seniority would take his place.

'Evelyn was too high-spirited to decline this outrageous challenge, and they met at gunfire, in the open plain, while the sun was as yet below the hills of Ajmir. I remember it all as if it were yesterday, for I had the mainguard.

'Evelyn, thinking, no doubt, of the girl who was far away, and whom he might never see again, standing with his second, worthy John Garth of Ours, pale and sad, yet resolute in aspect, on one hand; on the other, O'Dowd, with his second, a Captain O'Spudd, and all the mess of the 76th, anxious to have their turn in the shooting, grouped close by, and pale and bloated enough they looked in the cold, half light of the unrisen sun as it stole across the plain, and all shaky enough with their over-night potations.

'"Having no personal injury to redress, gentlemen, I decline to fire," exclaimed Evelyn, in a loud, firm voice.

'"Plaze yourself, me boy," replied the relentless O'Dowd as he fired; and, shot through the heart, poor Evelyn fell dead on his face!

'Even in those days there was a devil of a row about this remarkable duel, and it was a close shave with O'Dowd escaping being hung for it; but a verdict of "Not guilty" was returned, and he was killed soon after in action by a grape-shot; and O'Spudd died of a sunstroke in the jungle, and was buried there in his blanket.'

The general followed up this by many other stories, all more or less bloodthirsty, till his guest became somewhat silent—bored by them, no doubt; and then he said:

'Fotheringhame, the sherry stands with you—just "a white washer," and then we shall join the ladies.'

CHAPTER IV.
THE DIVIDED PAIR.

Mrs. Garth was dozing dreamily before the fire, and the two girls were at the piano, when the general and Fotheringhame entered the drawing-room.

They were idling over the instrument, before which Annabelle was seated, and over the keys of which Mary was occasionally running her fingers, as if apparently to conceal a little confidential conversation that was in progress between them.

'You'll have a turn with the guns to-morrow, Fotheringhame,' said the general, 'but you must excuse my absence; my day is past for that sort of thing. The rocketers I once could bring down, pass over my head contemptuously now; and bullfinches seem much bigger in the hunting-field than they used to be, so I funk them entirely, and seek a quiet gate, as I don't like to come a spread eagle into the field; and, by Jove! the doctor has already hinted about a respirator. D—n! fancy a fellow at the head of a brigade with a respirator! I was nearly drowned the other day, and would have been but for Mary, when landing a twenty-pound pike from Eaglescraig Loch; so it is time I gave over these little vanities, and left them to my juniors and successors; though, Heaven knows, that if I was anxious about my estate in this world just when it is time to be thinking of the other, it was not for myself, but for those who are to come after me,' added the general in a softened tone, for now much of the peppery nature of the old stock-comedy guardian had left him. 'Fond of music, Fotheringhame?' he asked, after a pause.

'Very.'

'Ah; dare say we shall find you something in that way. Mary is no bad performer.'

'Pray excuse me—to-night,' urged Mary.

'Then I won't excuse Annabelle,' said the general, patting the shoulder of the latter, while Fotheringhame drew near; 'do favour us with the little song I have so often heard you sing with such extreme sweetness and pathos.'

'Which, Sir Piers?'

'What is it? oh yes—"Love me always, love me ever," or something of that kind. There must be some tender association connected with it, I am sure,' continued Sir Piers, in utter ignorance of how his remarks cut two ways, like a double-edged sword.

'I have not the music—and—and I have quite forgotten the words,' replied Annabelle, growing painfully pale, and wishing that the floor would open and swallow her up, conscious that Leslie Fotheringhame was standing at her back. The latter saw the ill-concealed emotion that pervaded her whole frame, and he felt keenly for her.

'Is this girl to be, for good or for evil, my destiny after all?' he thought, as he regarded with his old admiration the beauty of her refined face and her brilliant complexion—that dazzling and wonderful fairness which almost invariably accompanies the possession of golden and auburn hair.

Annabelle did not leave the piano; it afforded her a pretext for keeping her face turned from those around her, and, impelled by some new emotion, she sang in succession some of her gayest and most effective songs, while Fotheringhame hovered near, leaving to Mary the task of turning the music, and steadily and keenly he regarded the singer. Was this gaiety real, or was she acting a part? he thought; and seeing that he came nearer, Mary withdrew.

'You regard me with surprise,' said Annabelle, finding his eyes fixed on her, and feeling a desperate necessity for saying something. Indeed, they had scarcely spoken since leaving the railway carriage.

'Certainly, I am surprised,' said he; 'I did not expect to be standing by your side thus, and hearing your voice again.'

Full fell the light of the chandelier on the lovely upturned eyes that did not soften in the least, as he hoped they would do, at his slight allusion to the past.

'Captain Fotheringhame,' said Annabelle, quite calmly, and in an ordinary tone, 'you look at me as though I were somehow changed.'

'Oh, you are not in the least changed, he replied, in a low voice, and with a bitter smile; 'you are volatile and—cruel as ever.'

'Cruel!' she repeated, under cover of a musical crash, while the colour rushed to her cheeks and delicate neck; but she disdained to say more, and thus, to one or two half-broken utterances of his, finding that she made no response, Fotheringhame drew back and rejoined the general.

How long was all this to go on? was Annabelle's bitter thought. In the old time, by the silver birches on the Tay-side, they had met, loved, quarrelled, and parted, she thought, for ever; but to meet and quarrel again with just cause on one side, with the prayer in her heart that they might never look in each other's faces again, and here they were now, by an unexpected coincidence, a strange freak of destiny, under the same roof, and in the same room, compelled to meet at least as mutual friends!

Thus, when they parted for the night, his voice was as calm and his smile and bow as coldly polite as her own. Then he and the general withdrew to the smoking-room, to talk over Cecil's affairs, and scheme out some plan for his future, and the girls gladly sought their rooms, which adjoined each other, and plunged at once into gossip and hair-dressing.

For weeks and weeks past Mary's life had been one of dull routine; she had fed her pet birds, her pigeons, watched her flowers, and watered her ferns, as usual; it was such a relief to do, or be doing, anything: but now that Annabelle Erroll had come, she felt almost happy in her companionship—for both had enough to talk about.

'Have you met as acquaintances merely?' asked Mary, with eagerness.

'Yes; but acquaintances of a peculiar kind, certainly. How could it be otherwise, after all that has passed between us? I must studiously ignore the past,' continued Annabelle; 'nor shall his strange and sharp allusion to it move me, save in the way of annoyance and surprise.'

To her it seemed very strange and unaccountable that Leslie Fotheringhame should adopt an indignant tone with her, as if he were the wronged party, and that she had nothing to complain of in reference to his conduct with the unknown lady.

'Why did he so studiously, so cruelly deceive me?' she exclaimed, on the verge of tears; 'but that I inherit the spirit of my father, the old colonel, he would have broken my heart—I loved him so!'

'Poor Annabelle!' said Mary, caressing her; 'twice engaged, and twice separated—you are a curious pair. Let us hope that the third time may prove successful and irrevocable!'

'Never!' exclaimed Annabelle. 'Did he not openly tell me that she—that woman—is happy now? What did he mean by that?—for there was something of mournful exultation in his tone!'

'It is all very strange,' said Mary, in perplexity; 'can there have been some simple, yet perhaps inexplicable, mistake at the bottom of this unhappy business?'

'No, Mary—I tell you no!' replied Annabelle, with angry energy; 'the woman in the matter was a fact palpable enough. And what can the unexplained mystery of his interest in her be? and is it not to him degradation, and to me insult?'

'Unexplained; it might not have been.'

'How?'

'You forget the rejected correspondence—the last unopened letter.'

'Anyway,' replied Annabelle, with a forced laugh, 'unlike the Grande Duchesse, I shall no longer dote upon the military. I'll look out for an easy-going parson, or plain country gentleman, and, as Hawley Smart says, "more weddings take place from pique than the world wotteth of," and Hawley is right.' Then, dropping this tone, she twined her white arms round her friend, and, gazing into her soft face, said, 'Dear Mary, how poorly you are looking!'

'Well, have I not had much cause for anxiety, and tears too, think you?'

'No man, I believe now, is worth the grief that robs a woman of her peace and rest.'

'Oh, Annabelle, the thought of Leslie Fotheringhame embitters you; but I sorrow for Cecil—and there are men and men, remember. How strange it seems that now I must think and speak of him not as Falconer (his mother's name), but as Cecil Montgomerie!' she added, with a soft smile, gazing on vacancy.

'I thought,' said Annabelle, after a pause, 'that I should have died when dear old Sir Piers so awkwardly asked me to sing that stupid song to-night—died of shame and mortification! Surely no woman has ever been more thoroughly humbled than I! How unfortunate all this is!' she added, almost weeping with vexation; 'mamma knew of our engagement, and that he is my cousin. She knows how shamefully he treated me after the night of that most unlucky ball; and all about that—that person—the woman with the golden-hazel eyes; and how shall I be able to convince her, proud, resentful, and justly-suspicious as she is, that our meeting here is a miserable coincidence—a circumstance beyond my control?'

'It looks like Fate, my dear Belle.'

'Fate? How can you romance so after all that has happened?'

'What happened may be a mistake—a coincidence, too—explainable perhaps, though I have not much hope of that. If dear Cecil were but home, he might clear it all up for us. Home! when will that be? Soon, I hope—oh, so soon!' she added, as she kissed her friend and sought her pillow.

Annabelle lay far into the night awake, revolving endless schemes and conversations in her busy little head. She naturally longed to be gone from Eaglescraig, and nothing but a sure knowledge that Fotheringhame's leave was for a very brief period, pacified her at all. That they should be in the same house, and meeting perpetually at the same table, was intensely awkward under the circumstances of their changed position.

Annabelle felt this keenly, and thus she sedulously avoided Leslie Fotheringhame, who felt conscious that she did so, and misconstrued it either into an aversion for himself, or a regard for some other man—a regard inspired, perhaps, by pique, or wounded self-esteem.

CHAPTER V.
A STRANGE ACCUSATION.

Meanwhile how fared it with Cecil, and what was now his fate?

He had permitted the cold, damp earth to be heaped upon him, only moving sufficiently—unseen in the gloom of the night and of the hole wherein he lay—to keep his body, though partially buried, from being so entirely; fortunately, the would-be assassins were satisfied that they had effectually concealed him from the troops, who were certainly in motion close by, and then retired for a time, intending, as they stated, to return shortly, and make sure of their prey.

The moment they were gone, though scarcely daring to breathe, and oblivious of many a sore and bruise, of which he became conscious hours after, Cecil rose, clambered out of the hollow, shook his clothes as free as possible of the soil that had covered him, secured his pistols in his belt anew, and on looking to his sword, thanked heaven that, in his fall, the steel scabbard had saved the blade from injury.

Drawing a long breath, a sigh of relief, he prepared for immediate flight, though giddy, bruised, and weak. Lights were flitting to and fro in the farmhouse close by, and he could actually hear the voices of Guebhard and his Montenegrins, so not a moment was to be lost in retiring. Even the farmer and his people were to be sedulously avoided, and though Cecil did think of his horse, it was chiefly with reference to the impossibility of recovering it.

A sound made him shrink behind a bush, and then he saw one of his late assailants creeping towards the hole, softly, slowly, stealthily, on his hands and knees, with a yataghan in his teeth, and his eyes turned more than once towards the house from which he had stolen on deadly intent, to anticipate his leader and companions, by finishing off their victim if any life remained in him, and obtaining the valuable diamond ring of Palenka, the despatches and other plunder.

A moment he paused in his progress, irresolutely, for the voice of a cuckoo, roused by the recent noise, was now heard in a tree close by; and the Black Mountaineer, affrighted by an idea of the vila, which often assumes, as the Servians also believe, the form of that bird, let the yataghan fall from his mouth.

Ere he could pick it up, Cecil, whose blood was now at fever-heat, passed his sword twice furiously through the body of the wretch, with his foot spurned it head-long into the hole (where, to the bewilderment of Guebhard and his ruffians, it was found some time after), and then, animated by a species of despairing energy, he hurried, breathless and panting, stumbling heavily at every step, into the thick wood that lay near, intent only on immediate escape and concealment for a time—at least till day broke, and he could look about him; nor did he pause in his flight until he felt assured that some miles lay between him and his enemies.

A great weariness, the result of long and over exertion of mind and body, came over him; and on finding a dry and sheltered place, under the branches of a great laurel bush or tree, he fell fast asleep, fearless of the wild hogs, of which vast numbers feed in the woods.

When he awoke, stiff and benumbed, a silvery mist was rising from the dark green foliage of the forest, and above the mist was the blue sky and the clear bright morning sunshine, as he began to search for a path, which he hoped might lead him to a highway, though such he knew, in Servia, were only to be found in the neighbourhood of towns.

The sound of a cavalry trumpet at no great distance caught his ear. It gave him a species of electric shock, and he remembered, that to the fears expressed by Guebhard of troops being in the vicinity, he no doubt owed his life. He pressed eagerly, anxiously forward in the direction whence the sound had come, the rabbits scuttling briskly out of his way, as he hurried along a narrow track; and at length he was rewarded by reaching a regular beaten road, on which was a long string of horses and mules laden with provisions, forage, and stores, proceeding under an escort of Russian Lancers from Belgrade to the front—direct to Tchernaieff's headquarters, as the officer in command—a capitan—informed him.

The latter, a handsome man, kid-gloved and glazed booted, wore a very dashing uniform; a green tunic, piped with scarlet, faced with black velvet and laced with gold, and on his breast glittered the medals he had won in the expeditions to Khiva and elsewhere, with the orders of St. Andrew and St. Vladimir.

Cecil made his position, his wants, and his recent troubles known in French, which the Ruski spoke fluently. The latter summoned a sergeant, who procured a horse and some food—i.e., biscuits and brandy—for Cecil; and now his heart grew lighter as he rode on and felt himself in perfect safety, but not the less intent on having public or private vengeance upon Captain Mattei Guebhard.

He saw once more the Morava, and after a few hours' riding, was thankful when the escort passed the outposts of the Russo-Servian army at Deligrad, and he could proceed without delay to the quarters of General Tchernaieff.

Inspired more than he had ever been since he came to Servia by the sights and sounds around him—the tents, the huts, the batteries of artillery with their limbers all drawn up wheel to wheel; the cavalry, their horses picketed in close ranks or at exercise upon the plateau; the strains of a magnificent Russian band playing the 'Blue Danube,' and then the 'Manolo'—he ceased to think or question himself, like Mr. Mallock, 'Is life worth living?' He was too young yet to find that there was nothing in it. Since that bright summer day when Warren Hastings, 'then just seven years of age,' as we are told, 'lay on the bank of a rivulet, which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis,' and registered a vow that he would, one day, be lord of Daylesford, how many vows of anticipated honours, wealth and greatness have been registered, that may never have been fulfilled!

But some such emotion—some such hope of a brilliant future, swelled up in the heart of Cecil, as he dismounted from his horse at the door of an edifice, two sentinels before which, and the Russian flag flying thereon, indicating it to be the headquarters of General Tchernaieff.

Officers and orderlies belonging to every arm of the service, horse, foot, artillery, engineers, hospitals and ambulances, were passing in and out, when Cecil sent in his name to the general, who had just come from vespers in the little iron church, which had been sent to him by the ladies of Moscow, and in which he had been depositing two or three standards recently taken from the Turks, prior to their transmission to the Emperor at St. Petersburg.

Cecil's jaded aspect, his tattered uniform, soiled, sodden, and of no particular colour now, for the brown of the tunic and the scarlet of the facings and braid were all of one dingy hue, attracted some attention among the gorgeous, and almost fantastic, costumes of the Russian staff and cavalry officers in the ante-room, through which he was quickly ushered into the presence of Tchernaieff.

The latter, who wore a short, brown shell-jacket, with a rolling collar laced with gold, and crimson overalls, was smoking a huge pipe and seated at a table littered with papers and printed journals, from which he started up as Cecil entered, and, drawing himself up to the full height of his short pudgy figure, while all his short, stubbly hair seemed to bristle, and his wiry moustaches to stick out like those of a cat, he eyed him with considerable sternness, indignation, and surprise, mingled in a face that was never at any time a very handsome one.

Count Palenka, who was writing at the table, laid down his pen and eyed Cecil with cold hauteur, even hostility, and did not accord him the vestige of a recognition.

'What on earth can be in the wind now?' thought the latter, as his late bright hopes vanished into thin smoke. Mechanically he took the despatches from his sabretache, and said respectfully:

'I have the honour to deliver to your excellency these documents, entrusted to me by his Majesty the King.'

'His Majesty the King does not owe you many thanks for the haste you have made!' replied Tchernaieff, as he somewhat rudely snatched the papers from Cecil's hand, while his eyes literally glared at him.

'I do not understand this bearing of yours, general,' said he, haughtily.

'You may understand, however, Herr Lieutenant, that you loitered for many days idly at Palenka.'

'A dislocated arm—dislocated when fording the Morava—detained me there.'

'A likely story, truly,' said Tchernaieff, with growing indignation; 'why ford a river that has bridges, and why the devil ford it at all, before coming to the town of Tjuprija?'

'I lost the direct road and fell into the river in the night. The family of the Count——'

'Knew not that they were harbouring a traitor,' said Palenka, grimly.

'A traitor, Herr Count!' exclaimed Cecil.

'I have said it; so don't repeat my words.'

'There must be some strange misconception in all this,' replied Cecil, more bewildered than indignant, perhaps; 'the way was beset——'

'By Captain Mattei Guebhard,' interrupted Tchernaieff.

'You know it!'

'From his own lips. He is now in camp, and very properly and duly reported to me that he had done so; but that you escaped him, he knows not how, after killing one of his men, and causing, by misadventure, the death of another.'

Cecil was more and more bewildered by the strange candour of Guebhard in acknowledging the outrageous conduct of which he had been guilty; but the injurious treatment now so unexpectedly accorded him, after all he had undergone, filled him with just anger and indignation.

'Who dares to accuse me of wrong, or even of error?' he demanded.

'That you will discover in time.'

'Of what am I accused?' he continued.

'That also you will learn in time; and in time you may see the mines of Siberia, if you escape death! Meanwhile you will withdraw, and remain under close arrest. Count Palenka, take his sword.'

'The officer of the nearest guard can do that. Your excellency must hold me excused,' was the haughty and contemptuous reply of Palenka; and a few minutes afterwards Cecil found himself disarmed and a prisoner under close arrest, with special sentries guarding the door of the house, in an apartment of which he was left to his own bitter and confused thoughts.

That he was the victim of some strange and malevolent report made by Guebhard to the general and Count Palenka, he could not doubt; but of what nature could that slander be? Palenka had called him a 'traitor.' He could only be so to King Milano Obrenovitch, and he felt certain that no act of his own could draw such an epithet upon him, so to Guebhard now did the whole tide of his fury turn.

CHAPTER VI.
A FATAL PROOF FOUND.

Food and wine were placed before him; he recoiled from the former, but drank the latter like one who had been long athirst.

After all he had undergone, and all he had done, to preserve and deliver in safety these unlucky despatches, this, then, was the grim and degrading welcome that awaited him in the camp of the allied Servian and Russian armies?

What did it all mean? Some dreadful mistake, or a false and malicious accusation, which time must soon unravel. Meanwhile, how difficult it was to be patient or calm under the circumstances; and he asked himself again and again, would Fortune never be tired of persecuting him?

Would he ever forget, he had thought, that mauvais quart d'heure in the place that so nearly became his grave? and now he was in peril as great again.

'A traitor,' had been the epithet applied by Count Palenka towards him. In what way could he ever be so? Was he to be made the victim—the scapegoat of some dark political game, between the Servian prince he served, and the general of the Russian army? 'You may see Siberia yet, if you escape death,' had been the menace of the latter, who actually owed his life at his—Cecil's—hands. He recalled the words, and knowing all of which these men were capable, and all they had the power to do, with all his natural courage, could not but feel appalled.

The room to which he had been consigned was on the upper floor of a house in the little town of Deligrad. It had little other furniture than a wooden divan, that ran round it, and whereon were spread the bear and wolf skins on which he could seat himself, or repose at night.

Its windows were little more than narrow slits, and through them he could see the camp, spreading over the low-lying eminences which bound, on the east, the Valley of the Morava—the long streets of tents and huts, and little tentes-d'abri, the smoke of the fires at which the soldiers cooked their food; and the Servian tricolour flying on a huge earthen redoubt, formed on the summit of the most commanding height, and armed with heavy guns, pointed grimly towards the point from which the Turks might be expected to approach.

Amid these streets of tents, drums were beaten and bugles sounded all day long; orderlies spurred their horses to and fro, and Servian peasants drove waggons drawn by white bullocks, or led long lines of laden ponies, and itinerant sutlers and vendors of grapes and apples, sardines, tomatoes and tobacco, etc., went incessantly about, together with itinerant fiddlers and bagpipers.

Beyond all this, he could see the road winding away to Belgrade, near two long, low, whitewashed edifices, the abodes of suffering and death. On each a white flag with a red cross was displayed to indicate that they were hospitals, on which no shot or shell must fall, even if the infidels succeeded in storming the heights of Djunis, which overhang the other side of the Morava.

Daily Cecil watched all this from his windows, till his soul sickened at it all and of inaction, after the fierce excitement of recent events; but after a week had elapsed, the clash of arms, as the two sentinels at the door accorded a salute to some visitors, followed by the clatter of spurs and steel scabbards on the wooden staircase of the house, preceded the entrance into Cecil's room of an officer in the uniform of the Servian staff, the provost-marshal and a gentleman in civilian costume, who announced himself as the deputy minister of police from Belgrade, and who was attended by a subordinate in a kind of uniform.

'Police?' replied Cecil, in an inquiring tone; 'it is, then, some civil—error that I am accused of?'

'No error at all, Herr Lieutenant; but of a crime against the State,' replied the civilian—a black-bearded man, with the ribbon of the Takova cross at his lapelle—in a somewhat gruff manner. 'Information has been lodged with the authorities that you have, or have borne about you, papers of a treasonable nature.'

'Lodged, by whom?'

'Captain Mattei Guebhard.'

Cecil laughed, but angrily, nevertheless.

'Herr Lieutenant,' said the provost-marshal, a grim-looking old sabreur, 'you may find this a hanging, and not a laughing, matter!'

'Thus,' continued the deputy minister of police, 'we have orders to examine your person for secret papers, if, by the delay foolishly accorded to you, they have not been destroyed.'

'Papers—what papers?'

'That, as yet, can only be known to yourself.'

On this his attendant made a pace towards Cecil, who haughtily motioned him by his hand to pause, ere he laid a hand upon him.

'You delivered the despatches of General Tchernaieff to the King at Belgrade?' resumed the police official.

'To the King—yes.'

'Don't repeat my words, please!'

'Mein Herr?'

'I say, don't repeat my words!' exclaimed the other, who manifested rather a disposition to bully. 'You tarried unnecessarily at the castle of Palenka?'

'I met with an accident, of which the general is, I presume, fully aware, though the count seems somewhat dissatisfied,' said Cecil, in whom this questioning excited surprise and indignation, rather than alarm.

'There you met Captain Guebhard?'

'To my sorrow, and no small disgust, I did.'

'And though unable, as you averred, to proceed, you refused to give him the documents; but conveyed them in a contrary direction from the camp, with what purpose is best known to yourself; and but for the circumstance of your meeting an escort of Servian troops, the general would never have received them at all?'

'This statement is false in its tenor,' replied Cecil, haughtily; 'and I am utterly in the dark as to your inferences.'

'Ah—indeed! Permit me to examine your sabretache.'

'It is empty.'

'We shall see,' replied the official, as he unbuckled the accoutrement so named, and which was suspended by three slings from the waistbelt. 'What have we here?' he added, as he drew from an inner pocket, which Cecil never knew it possessed, a small parchment document, and uttered a genuine cry of astonishment; 'here is enough to hang a battalion!' he added. 'Herr Lieutenant, here we find you in open communication with the Pretender, Kara Georgevitch!'

'Who the deuce is he?' asked Cecil, with equally genuine surprise.

'Do not pretend ignorance, and thus add to the crime for which you will be so severely punished, that I am actually sorry for you,' replied the deputy minister of police, regarding Cecil with great sternness nevertheless. 'Here is your commission as colonel—bearing your own name—to raise a regiment of Montenegrin deserters, for the service of Kara Georgevitch—the exile—the outlaw—the Pretender to the Servian throne, to whom, no doubt, you intended to convey alike the King's despatches and the general's plan of the campaign!'

'Impossible—you are under some delusion,' said Cecil, with anger now.

'I need scarcely ask you to look upon what you know already exists,' replied the other, with some indignation, and then holding the document before the eyes of Cecil, who saw plainly and undoubtedly that it was all he stated it to be, and his name written there as 'Cecil Falconer,' and that, among other signatures, that of Kara Georgevitch was appended to it.

So completely was he bewildered by this strange circumstance, that he permitted the document to be taken away before he had farther examined it; and while a drawn sword was placed against his heart, the pockets of his uniform, and even the lining thereof, were roughly examined for other treasonable papers, after which his visitors retired, and he was left—astounded—to his own reflections.

He was the victim of a deep-laid scheme by Guebhard. He saw it all, and in his suppressed passion could scarcely breathe—yes, he saw it all now; but how to prove it? Failing to abstract or obtain by fair means the despatches at Palenka, for the information of this Kara Georgevitch, with whom the fact of having this—probably blank—commission proved him to be in communication—he had beset the way, and finding that Cecil baffled him, had now brought this false accusation against him.

He remembered the warning of Margarita, and that he had detected Guebhard meddling with his sabretache. Could he doubt, now, that he had intended to abstract the despatches on one hand, while concealing in it this perilous and already prepared document on the other?

It was not until a day or two more had elapsed that Cecil understood his peril fully or what the involvement meant, and that there were two claimants to the Servian throne—Milano Obrenovitch the successful one, now reigning, and Kara Georgevitch, a pretender. It was a position exactly the same as if some one in Scotland, in the days of 'the Forty-Five,' had been found with a commission to raise a regiment of Highlanders for 'King James VIII.;' and thus Cecil found himself, as yet, in a predicament of no ordinary magnitude, in which those for the prosecution would have it all their own way, and the defence, conducted by himself, must seem weak indeed.

Again and again, Pelham, Stanley, and one or two other kind-hearted Englishmen, who, in search of a 'new sensation,' were taking a turn of service against the Turks, endeavoured to visit him, and to take some measures for his safety; but all were bluntly refused access to the prison in which he lay, for so closely was the house guarded, that it became a prison in reality now.