“I cried her name as I ran through the forest, but truly she was gone.”
Urquhart stopped his story and eagerly dashed some lines upon the clay. “Pardon!” he said. “Just like that, for a moment. Ah! that is something like it!”
“Well, well!” I cried. “And what followed?”
“I think—indeed, I know—she loved me, but—I went back to the war without a single word from her again.”
“Oh, to the deuce with your story!” I cried at that, impatient. “I did not bargain for a tragedy.”
“In truth it is something of a farce, as you shall discover in a moment,” said the sculptor. “Next day the captain sent for me. ‘Do you know General Fraser?’ said he, looking at a letter he held in his hand. I told him I had not the honour. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘it looks as if the family had a curious penchant for the drum, to judge from the fact that his brother gave yours to the regiment, and also’—here he smiled slyly—’from the interest of his niece. He is not an hour returned from Spain to his native town when he asks me to send you with your drum to his house at noon.’
“‘Very good, sir,’ I answered, with my heart thundering, and went out of the room most hugely puzzled.
“I went at noon to the tall white house, and was shown into a room where sat Margory, white to the lips, beside the window, out of which she looked after a single hopeless glance at me. A middle-aged gentleman in mufti, with an empty sleeve, stood beside her, and closely scrutinised myself and my instrument as I entered.
“‘This is the—the person you have referred to?’ he asked her, and she answered with a sob and an inclination of her head.
“‘You have come—you are reputed to have come of a respectable family,’ he said then, addressing me; ‘you have studied at Edinburgh; you have, I am told, some pretensions to being something of a gentleman.’
“‘I hope they are no pretensions, sir,’ I answered warmly. ‘My people are as well known and as reputable as any in Argyll, though I should be foolishly beating a drum.’
“‘Very good,’ said he, in no way losing his composure. ‘I can depend on getting the truth from you, I suppose? You were with the 71st as drummer at Ciudad Rodrigo?’
“‘I was, sir,’ I replied. ‘Also at Badajos, at Talavera, Busaco—’
“‘An excellent record!’ he interrupted. ‘I might have learned all about it later had not my wound kept me two months in hospital after Ciudad. By the way, you remember being sent as drummer with a picket of men down a lane?’