He paused a minute, not daring to trust himself to speak more words. Then he continued--
"I have led you into all this. I thought there would have been a rescue-party long before now. There would have been if Patsy Ferris had been here. Now there is nothing for it but to give ourselves up. What is the use of making things worse by shooting two or three poor enlisted men who never did us any harm?"
And so it came to pass that Stair Garland and Eben the Spy were marched under strong escort to the gaol of Stranryan, while Julian Wemyss was shut up in his own house with a guard quartered on him. Thus had it been ordered from London, for there the Princess Elsa had been busy, and the local commanders knew that even when the Government is that of a Regent George, it cannot treat an ex-ambassador like a common felon.
Stranryan is a largish town, historical and ancient, as its narrow and crooked streets sufficiently attest. At that period of the year it was exceedingly malodorous, and in the gutters tangle-headed children fished for spoil, or with noise and clangour dragged the damaged dead cat and the too-long-drowned puppy from the green ooze of one midden hole to another.
But to make some amends for this, one was never far away from the salt waters of the loch. And a breath straight from the great sea came every now and then all day long, to air out the packed houses and crooked alleys. Down on the sea front were many boats. For at the season when the Bothy was captured and Stair and the spy led to the "Auld Castle," the herring boats were getting ready for the Loch Fyne catch--a good three hundred of them, and their brown and red sails brightened everything.
Fish-scales glistened on the cobbled quays of the little port. Salesmen and buyers moved piles of fish contumeliously, saying, "It is naught! It is naught!" after the manner of their kind since the days of Solomon--who had experience in such matters, for he was undoubtedly scandalously "had" in his traffic with the spice merchants.
The gaol of Stranryan was also on the water front, and especially when the Irish harvesters landed among the products of the herring catch, it was the witness of complex and accumulated villainies. There were faction fights among the Irishry themselves. There were fights between all the Irish united and the douce burghers and tradesmen of Stranryan--fights about eggs and chickens, fights about water and other privileges, fights which ended in sleepers being ousted from barns and stables, or triumphantly retaining possession thereof. There were also religious quarrels, in which the true "Protestants" of the two countries broke the heads of the true "Kyatholics," and had their heads broken in turn, all to the greater glory of God.