We found him quietly smoking a cigar and gazing out of the window.
But he turned with a kindly smile towards us as soon as we entered, and the next minute we were all seated round the table, and business--_the_ business--was entered into.
M"Rae listened without a word. He never even moved a muscle while Townley told all his long story, or rather read it from paper after paper, which he took from his bag. The last of these papers was Duncan"s own confession, with Archie"s signature and mine as witnesses alongside Moncrieff"s.
He opened his lips at last.
"This is your signature, and you duly attest all this?"
He put the question first to Archie and then to me.
Receiving a reply in the affirmative, it was but natural that I should look for some show of emotion in M"Rae"s face. I looked in vain. I have never seen more consummate coolness before nor since. Indeed, it was a coolness that alarmed me.
And when he rose from the table after a few minutes of apparently engrossing thought, and walked directly towards a casket that stood on the writing-table, I thought that after all our cause was lost.
In that casket, I felt sure, lay some strange doc.u.ment that should utterly undo all Townley"s work of years.
M"Rae is now at the table. He opens the casket, and for a moment looks critically at its contents.
I can hear my heart beating. I"m sure I look pale with anxiety.
Now M"Rae puts his hand inside and quietly takes out--a fresh cigar.
Then, humming a tune the while, he brings the casket towards Townley, and bids him help himself.
Townley does as he is told, but at the same time bursts into a hearty laugh.
"Mr. M"Rae," he says, "you are the coolest man that ever I met. I do believe that if you were taken out to be shot--"
"Stay," said M"Rae, "I _was_ once. I was tried for a traitor--tried for a crime in France called "Treason," that I was as guiltless of as an unborn babe--and condemned."
"And what did you do?"
"Some one on the ground handed me a cigar, and--I lit it.
"Nay, my dear friends, I have lost my case here. Indeed, I never, it would seem, had one.
"M"Crimman," he continued, shaking me by the hand, "Coila is yours."
"Strathtoul," I answered, "is our blood feud at an end?"
"It is," was the answer; and once again hand met hand across the table.
Need I tell of the home-coming of the M"Crimmans of Coila? Of the clansmen who met us in the glen and marched along with us? Of the cheering strains of music that re-echoed from every rock? Of the flags that fluttered over and around our Castle Coila? Of the bonfires that blazed that night on every hill, and cast their lurid light across the darkling lake? Or of the tears my mother shed when, looking round the tartan drawing-room, the cosiest in all the castle, she thought of father, dead and gone? No, for some things are better left to the reader"s imagination.
I throw down my pen with a sigh of relief.
I think I have finished my story; my n.o.ble deerhound thinks so too. He gets slowly up from the hearthrug, conies towards me, and places his honest head on my arm, but his eyes are fixed on mine.
It is not patting that he wants, nor petting either.
"Come out now, master," he seems to say, speaking with soft brown eyes and wagging tail; "come out, master; mount your fleetest horse, and let us have a glorious gallop across the hills. See how the sun shines and glitters on gra.s.s, on leaves and lake! While you have been writing there day after day, I, your faithful dog, have been languishing. Come, master, come!"
And we go together.
When I return, refreshed, and run up stairs to the room in the tower, I find dear auntie there. She has been reading my ma.n.u.script.
"There is," she says, "only one addition to make."
"Name it, auntie," I say; "it is not yet too late."
But she hesitates.
"It is almost a secret," she says at last, bending down and smoothing the deerhound.
"A secret, auntie? Ha, ha!" I laugh. "I have it, auntie! I have it!"
And I kiss her there and then.
"It is Townley"s secret and yours. He has proposed, and you are to--"
But auntie has run out of the room.
And now, come to think of it, there is something to add to all this.
Can you guess _my_ secret, reader mine?
Irene, my darling Irene and I, Murdoch M"Crimman, are also to be--
But, there, you have guessed my secret, as I guessed auntie"s.
And just let me ask this: Could any better plan have been devised of burying the hatchet betwixt two rival Highland clans, and putting an end for ever to a blood feud?
THE END.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
THE BOY"S OWN BOOKSHELF.
This is a Series of Popular Reprints from volumes of the BOY"S OWN PAPER, most of which are now quite out of print. The Books are very attractively bound, and are freely Ill.u.s.trated.