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I was to be taken at Dundee, when in my hot haste, and thinking I had an easy capture, I rushed the town without precautions, as I might have done. While in quiet Glenogilvie my lady waited for his triumphant coming, victor and lover. It was a saving mercy, as her people would say, that our scouts drew their fire and brought out the situation.
And beside her, oh! fickleness of a woman's heart, oh! irony of life, oh! cruelty to the most faithful passion, Colonel Livingstone, now my Lord Kilsyth. And an expression of fierce satisfaction lit up the Covenanter's ghastly face. "This then was thy revenge, Jean, for the insult I offered at Glenogilvie, and I was right in my fear that thy love was shattered.
And as his master asked this question with studied calmness and the gentlest of accents, Grimond shuddered, for this was the heart of the matter, and there was murder in the answer. Not to Dundee where then? To Glenogilvie, only last night in great haste, as if afraid of someone or something happening. Of whom, of what?
And that was the last Jean Cochrane saw of Claverhouse. Since the day Dundee rode away from Glenogilvie, after the scene with Jean, he was a man broken in heart, but he hid his private wound bravely, and gave himself with the fiercer energy to the king's business.
For a brief space Claverhouse bent his head, for he seemed to feel the child in his arms, as he had held him before leaving Glenogilvie. Then he rallied his manhood, who had never been given to quail before the hardest strokes of fortune. "God rest his innocent soul, if this be his lot; but I live and with me my house."
So Jock was reinstated without pardon asked or given, and with no reference to the tragedy of Glenogilvie, and Dundee knew that he had beside him a faithful and fearless watchdog of the tough old Scottish breed.
Even the pitiable scene at Glenogilvie and his gnawing vain regret faded for the moment from his memory and from his heart. If the Lowlands had been cold as death to the good cause, the Highlands had at last taken fire; if he had not one-tenth the army he should have commanded, had every Highlander shared his loyalty to the ancient line, he had sufficient for the day's work.
They might have baited the trap at Dudhope had they been cleverer, and I been taken in my home with her by my side but that would have been dangerous. Now it is left for me to see whether the town could be rushed, and I have the last joy of one good stroke at Colonel Livingstone. But if that be beyond my reach, as I fear it may, then haste me to Glenogilvie."
But that determined Whig, Captain Balfour, discovered the plot, and I had a message yesterday afternoon that it was hopeless. So for fear of arrest I hurried to Glenogilvie, and tried to intercept your coming. Blame not me, for I could do no more and what mean you by calling me ever by my title and not by my name, after our parting for so long and dangerous a time?"
As Grimond busied himself with preparations for the evening meal among other dark suspicions he had taken into his head that Dundee might be poisoned his master's eye fell on him, and at the sight memory woke. John Graham recalled the days when Grimond received him from the charge of his nurse, and took him out upon the hills round Glenogilvie.
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