t a question of time till his eye lit on me.

The fellow began to tell his story, got nearly through before his ferret
eyes circled round to me, then broke off to burst into a screed of the
Gaelic as he pointed a long finger at me.

The Duke flung round on me in a cold fury. "Is this true, fellow?"

I came forward shrugging.

"To deny were folly when the evidence is writ so plain," I said.

"And who the devil are you?"

"Kenneth Montagu, at your service."

Cumberland ordered the room cleared, then turned on Volney a very grim
face. "I'll remember this, Sir Robert. You knew him all the time. It has a
bad look, I make plain to say."

"'Twas none of my business. Your troopers can find enough victims for you
without my pointing out any. I take the liberty of reminding your Highness
that I'm not a hangman by profession," returned Volney stiffly.

"You go too far, sir," answered the Duke haughtily. "I know my duty too
well to allow me to be deterred from performing it by you or by anybody
else. Mr. Montagu, have you any reason to give why I should not hang you
for a spy?"

"No reason that would have any weight with your Grace," I answered.

He looked long at me, frowning blackly out of the grimmest face I had ever
fronted; and yet that countenance, inexorable as fate, belonged to a young
man not four years past his majority.

"Without dubiety you deserve death," he said at the last, "but because of
your youth I give you one chance. Disclose to me the hiding-place of the
Pretender and you shall come alive out of the valley of the shadow."

A foretaste of the end clutched icily at my heart, but the price of the
proffered safety was too great. Since I must die, I resolved that it
should be with a good grace.

"I do not know whom your Grace can mean by the Pretender."

His heavy jaw set and his face grew cold and hard as steel.

"You fool, do you think to bandy words with me? You will speak or by
heaven you will die the death of a traitor."

"I need not fear to follow where so many of my brave comrades have shown
the way," I answered steadily.

"Bah! You deal in heroics. Believe me, this is no time for theatricals.
Out with it. When did you last see Charles Stuart?"

"I can find no honourable answer to that question, sir."

"Then your blood be on your own head, fool. You die to-morrow morning by
the cord."

"As God wills; perhaps to-morrow, perhaps not for fifty years."

While I was being led out another