VII.—A Parley and a Surprise

You must ride with fortune if you expect to win many of her favours. Like a woman, she sighs to be courted, even if she fears to be captured. She likes adventures for themselves, and may be good to you if you give her some. But the man who lets her ride by alone, or with somebody who has already bridled her, and then goes out in pursuit, has a long chase before him.

My affair with the Black Colonel was both private and public, and thus, in a two-fold sense, the right policy was to take the offensive. Yes, I would tell him bluntly that there could be nothing between us on the matters he had raised, and that it was war to the dirk, with such an eventual issue as God might will.

This was my decision, and it seemed to me that, as an officer and a gentleman, I must intimate it to him at first-hand by invading his retreat, the Colonel's Bed, over there in Strathdee, near his Inverey. Singly, and alone, I would seek the Black Colonel in his den, honourably shake myself clear of his dark overtures, and tell him to cease his designs.

If I were to read this chronicle as remote from its occurrences as you may do, I should, probably, toss my head and call that a quixotic decision, but I have enough pride in being a Gordon, to wish that I may stand fairly with the future, in small as in great matters. Therefore, I beg you that you put yourself in my place, bearing in mind the difficult conditions of the time in the Scottish Highlands.

A man needs a stout heart, a clear head, and a sure hand, to hold his own in a welter of interests and antagonisms such as beset me. The eternal instinct in a full man is to get through, to achieve, to live, aye, and to love, thus making life a great, clamorous thing not a mere existence. So concluding, I took the first occasion by the hand, with what personal risk there might be, and made across the rugged bridge of mountain which both binds and divides the Don and the Dee, to interview the Black Colonel.

My mood was less heroic by the time I had done the miles of scarped hill, clinging moor, and lifting wood, with bridle-paths for roads, which took me to the locality of the Colonel's Bed. Where it was exactly I did not know, but he had friends around who kept him informed, and I counted on meeting one of them. Then I could send a message to him, saying I desired to speak with him privately, and he would guess the rest.

Things fell out like that, and I was bidden to rest in a Highland shieling, squat of form, thatched with rushes, floored with earth, and eat a bannock and drink a bowl of goat's milk, while my message went forward and an answer returned. Perhaps two hours passed, and I slept a little, for I was tired, before that answer did arrive by the eternal Red Murdo.

To be sure, I would be made welcome by his master, but I must not feel offended if I was blindfolded during the walk to the Colonel's Bed. This request, courteously put by Red Murdo, showed me the situation I had invited for myself, but, having gone so far, I was not to turn back, and I said, "Very well." He tied a coarse tartan scarf of home-spun wool, which he wore himself, tightly round my eyes, so tightly that at first it hurt a little, and we started for our destination.

We had a rough, difficult track, all up and down again, to follow, as my feet discovered, with no sight to guide them. But Red Murdo, a study in loyalty to his chief and in consideration for me, supported me sturdily, and I broke no shin on the many rocks strewing our road.

I was wondering if we should ever arrive, when I heard the rush of a stream almost beneath us. Instinctively I stopped, as one does when an unseen danger is near, but Red Murdo said, "It's a' right; we're near there." Next I felt as if I were walking in a cave, for there was a peculiar hollow echo to our tread. Then the tartan scarf was removed from my eyes, and, opening them, I saw the Black Colonel holding out his hand.

"Glad, Sir Visitor, to see you," he said, "and such hospitality as this poor place can offer is yours."

I took his hand, without holding it, bowed stiffly, and sat myself on a chair made of birch branches, to which he pointed. It was, apart from an equally rude litter-bed and a rough table, the only furniture in the refuge. This I saw by the light of a fire of broken wood and peat which burned slowly in a corner, where, apparently, the smoke found some channel of escape, because it drifted slowly upward in spirals.

My feeling had been right, for this was a cave, or, rather, a tunnel, worn in the course of centuries by the stream which had now deserted it, to flow lower down. Above us, as I judged, rose the side of a small hill, and immediately without there would be a sheer drop to the departed waters, whose noise soughed like a strong wind among pine trees.

It was a retreat made by Nature in her chance moods, and used by the Black Colonel at that straitened time of his life. Probably only he, Red Murdo, and a few others actually knew he was there, though he had boasted that many did, and I should know no more than that I had been a visitor to the Colonel's Bed. And yet I should probably know a good deal more, for otherwise why was I there?

Anyhow, after the previous hour or two of tensity, it was a relief to be face to face with my man, I able to read his, if I could, he able to read mine. It was only in the grey half-light of his hole in the rocks, but, at least, we should look each other in the eyes, as men wish to do when they are acting honestly towards each other, even if later they must fight.

You are quick, at a drawn moment, to seize the picture of a man, to sound his being, and the Black Colonel, as he stood there courteously attentive, intelligently alert, made a picture which vouchsafed a clear personality. He would have been something ripely over thirty, but ten years of adventure and philandering sat lightly on him, and he looked even younger than he was. A dark man keeps the freshness of youth well, until it begins to go in the greying of his hair, when it goes quickly; while a fair man grows middle-aged soon, but fends off old age well, or, at all events, the look of it.

The Black Colonel was dark entirely; dark of skin, or rather olive, as you find men and women among a Celtic people; dark of eye to the point of a scowl, behind which, however, there was a well of mirth; dark of hair and dark of beard. His hair he wore long, not being always within reach of scissors, and his beard had that silky texture which comes of never having known a razor.

Once, as the story went, he asked Red Murdo, so-called for sundry reasons besides his tousled red hair, to shave him with the sharp edge of a dirk. The experiment began so ill that it never actually began at all, and the Black Colonel had a virgin beard in which he took a due conceit—why not? He thought it manly, where, perhaps he was right, and he had learned in France that women thought it manly, so he was doubly right.

The Celts, wherever found, are not generally tall, and the Black Colonel was a pure Celt in body as well as in nature. He was upstanding, bore himself easily, was clean in line and tough of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood the test admirably.

Moreover, he had that physical quality peculiar to the Celt which you might call elasticity, for it is comparable to a mountain ash which bends but does not break. There was, too, a fineness, a delicacy about him, such as