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Along one of the best roads in the kingdom, or by the swift and comfortable service of the Highland railway, the traveller ascends by easy gradations from Pitlochrie, through the beautiful grounds of Faskally to the little village and station of Killiecrankie, where a guide earns an unlaborious livelihood by conducting the panting Saxon over the famous battle-field and to various commanding points of the defile.
By daybreak all were to reassemble at the Falls of Bruar, within a mile or two of Castle Blair. One after the other the small parties moved off swiftly and silently in the darkness, one marching some ten miles off to the house of Faskally, others attacking Lude, Kinnachin, Blairfettie, and many other houses where the English garrisons were sleeping in security.
"There was another, you must remember: his uncle Alfred." "Alfred Le Geyt?" "No; HE died in his bed, quietly. Alfred Faskally." "What a memory you have!" I cried, astonished. "Why, that was before our time in the days of the Chartist riots!" She smiled a certain curious sibylline smile of hers. Her earnest face looked prettier than ever.
"Well his mother's father was General Faskally, you know," she replied, after a pause, in her strange, oblique manner. "Mr. Le Geyt is General Faskally's eldest grandson." "Exactly," I broke in, with a man's desire for solid fact in place of vague intuition. "But I fail to see quite what that has to do with it." "The General was killed in India during the Mutiny."
And one of the Faskally girls, his cousin, of whom his wife was jealous that beautiful Linda became a Catholic, and went into a convent at once on Marcus's death; which, after all, in such cases, is merely a religious and moral way of committing suicide I mean, for a woman who takes the veil just to cut herself off from the world, and who has no vocation, as I hear she had not."
But my grandfather" I started; during the twelve months that I had been brought into daily relations with Hilda Wade, that was the first time I had heard her mention any member of her own family, except once her mother "my grandfather, who knew him well, and who was present in the crowd at the time, assured me many times that Alfred Faskally really jumped over of his own accord, NOT pursued by the mob, and that his last horrified words as he leaped were, 'I never meant it!
"I recall the story now," I answered; "but, do you know, as it was told me, I think they said the mob THREW Faskally over in their desire for vengeance." "That is the official account, as told by the Le Geyts and the Faskallys; they like to have it believed their kinsman was murdered, not that he committed suicide.
As she reached the last again, she answered, slowly: "You must have forgotten the circumstances. It was no mere accident. General Faskally had made a serious strategical blunder at Jhansi. He had sacrificed the lives of his subordinates needlessly. He could not bear to face the survivors.
Alfred Faskally, who never meant to kill the man, or even to hurt him, but who was laying about him roundly, without realising the terrific force of his blows, was so horrified at what he had done when he heard the woman's cry, that he rushed off straight to Waterloo Bridge in an agony of remorse and flung himself over. He was drowned instantly."
And I have many times heard the story about Alfred Faskally." "So have I but I forget it." "Unfortunately, I CAN'T forget.
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