The Black Colonel | Page 8

of the eye
he asked, "Who was she, captain? Wench or maid?" And he
pronounced the words in different tones, as if I needed to be instructed
about the difference he implied by them. A man says nothing to an
arch-pleasantry like that, unless he be no man and only a babbler and
boaster of his conquests. Then he has had none, and is a liar. No sort of
fellow more fills men with contempt, and women, by their woman's
instinct, pass him by, for any confidence whatever, in word or in deed.
"Don't let it be one of the Black Colonel's flames," said the lieutenant
with a laugh, as he went out again, without the answer he had not
expected, being himself a gentleman. "It needs a long spoon to sup with
that dark devil at any time, but come between him and his rustic
gallantries and you'll need a longer spoon than Corgarff Castle happens
to possess."
The Black Colonel and I, as you will have gathered, were on different
sides in politics, though we belonged to neighbouring clans which had
many associations; he a Farquharson, I a Gordon. He was Jock
Farquharson of Inverey, the last of his house, as I can say looking back
on him, and doomed, so a woman of second-sight had declared, when
he was born, to be the last; while I, Ian Gordon, was a cadet of the
Balmoral Gordons, captain in his Majesty's Highland Foot, with no
more to expect than what my commission brought me, and that was
little enough.
He was a Jacobite, keeping that rebel flame alive in the Aberdeenshire
Highlands, when, on the heels of the "Forty-Five," a red and woeful
time, we were half-heartedly scotching it with garrisons in the Castles

of Braemar and Corgarff. Yes, I wore the scarlet tunic of King George,
thanks to family circumstances which had woven themselves before I
was born, but the tartan lay under it, next my heart. We were rivals in
war, thrown on different sides by the fates which gamble so strangely
with mere men. Was there to be a still more vital rivalry? As has been
hinted, I had more than rumours of the Black Colonel's strange powers
among women. What if he had Marget Forbes in his dark eye?
Wherever the heart is concerned you have intuition, and that is why a
woman has more of such super-sense, or rather, I would say, of
wonderously delicate feeling, than a man. She needs it, being oftener
heart-strung, because the wells of her heart are more emotional.
I suspected, from the first, why the Black Colonel wanted to meet me,
and for no other reason would I have consented to meet him. But our
meeting had been so brief, so disturbed, so futile as regards its purpose,
that I had got no light from him whatever. Still, ever since then I had
been seeing, in the mirror of life, the face of Marget Forbes, a daughter
of the clan whose name she bore, a handsome lass with a long pedigree,
heiress to the lands of Corgarff, now forfeit for the Jacobite cause,
when they should come back to her line, and incidentally, but all
importantly, a kinswoman both of Jock Farquharson and myself.
Memory is rarely honest with us, because it is imperfect, and
unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was
wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of
bony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal of
the guard. His hand went easily to the salute. He had a message in his
face.
"What is it?" said I, for I expected nothing of moment, beyond a poor
devil of a Jacobite captured, or a "sma' still" raided and its rude whisky
drunk by the red-coat raiders until they were merrily "fou."
"Sir," he answered in the parade voice which the regular soldier soon
acquires, this, softened by his nice Scots drawl, "Sir, there's a man
outside an' he says he's a letter for you and that he maun gie it to
yoursel'."

"What's he like? Where does he come from? Is he friend or no friend?"
"Canna' say, sir. I should think no friend. He's short and swack o' body,
red of hair and face, wears a kilt o' Farquharson tartan, and winna' say
where he comes frae. He has a letter for you, sir, and is to deliver it
himself, an' that's a' he'll tell."
"Bring him in," I ordered, and in came, as, by now, I half expected, Red
Murdo, the Black Colonel's henchman. I had seen him before, and by
hearsay was more than familiar with his repute as an excellent servant
to his not so excellent master.
"A letter,"