Out in the Forty-Five Part 62

"Why, is she Mrs Raymond? I saw all that. I suppose Duncan got away without any difficulty?"

"Annas is Mr Raymond's wife," I said. "But, Angus, I cannot think how it is, but--I am afraid you do not understand."

"Understand what?"

"Is it possible you do not know what price was paid for your ransom?"

Angus rose hastily, and laid his hand on my arm.

"Speak out, Cary! What do I not know?"

"Angus, Colonel Keith bought your life with his own."

In all my life I never saw a man's face change as the face of Angus Drummond changed then. It was plainly to be read there that he had never for a moment understood at what cost he had been purchased. A low moan of intense sorrow broke from him, and he hid his face upon the table.

"I think he paid the price very willingly, Angus," I said, softly. "And he sent Annas a last message for you--he bade you, to the utmost of what your opportunities might be, to be to G.o.d and man what he hoped to have been."

"O Duncan, Duncan!" came in anguish from the white lips. "And I never knew--I never thought--"

Ah, it was so like Angus, "never to think."

He lifted his head at last, with the light of a settled purpose s.h.i.+ning in his eyes.

"To man I can never be what he would have been. I am a proscribed fugitive. You harbour me at a risk even now. But to G.o.d! Cary, I have been a rebel: but I never was a deserter from that service. G.o.d helping me, I will enlist now. If my worthless life have cost the most precious life in Scotland, it shall not have been given in vain."

"There was Another who gave His life for you, Angus," I could not help saying.

"Ay, I have been bought twice over," was the trembling answer. "G.o.d help me to live worthy of the cost!"

We all keep the name of Duncan Keith in our inmost hearts--unspoken, but very dear. But I think it is dearest of all in a little house in the outskirts of Amsterdam, where, now that my Uncle Drummond has been called to his reward, our Flora keeps home bright for a Protestant pastor who works all the day through in the prisons of Amsterdam, among the lowest of the vile; who knows what exile and imprisonment are; and who, once in every year, as the day of his subst.i.tute's death comes round, pleads with these prisoners from words which are overwhelming to himself,--"Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price."

Many of those men and women sink back again into the mire. But now and then the pastor knows that a soul has been granted to his pleadings,-- that in one more instance, as in his own case, the price was not paid in vain.

Note 1. The recognised Jacobite way of answering:--"The King _over the water_."

THE END.