Down in the deep-cut glen it had been almost dark, for the wooded hills rose steeply above the track. But when the horses had struggled up the last stony patch of moraine and reached the open uplands the riders found a clear amber twilight. And when they had passed the cleft called the Wolf's Throat, they saw a great prospect to the west of forest and mountain with the sun setting between two peaks, a landscape still alight with delicate, fading colours. Overhead the evening star twinkled in a sky of palest amethyst. Involuntarily they halted.
Alison pointed to lights a mile down the farther slope.
"There are the cars with the baggage," she said, "and the grooms to take the horses back. We can get to our inn in an hour. You are safe, Dickson, for we are across the frontier. Let's stop here for supper, and have our last look at Evallonia."
Mr McCunn descended heavily from his horse.
"Ay, I'm safe," he said. "And to-morrow there will be a telegram from France saying I'm dead. Well, that's the end of an auld song." He kicked vigorously to ease his cramped legs, and while Dougal and Sir Archie took the food from the saddle-bags and the two women spread a tablecloth on a flat rock, he looked down the ravine to the dim purple hollow which was the country they had left.
Jaikie's last word to Dougal at Melina had been an injunction to make the end crown the work. "Be sure and have a proper finish," he had told him. "You know what he is. Let him think he's in desperate danger till he's over the border. He would break his heart if he thought that he was out of the game too soon." So Dougal had been insistent with Prince Odalchini. "You owe Mr McCunn more than you can ever repay, and it isn't much that I ask. He must believe that Juventus is after him to bring him back. Get him off to-night, and keep up the pretence that it's deadly secret. Horses—that's the thing that will please his romantic soul."
So Dickson had all day been secluded in the House of the Four Winds, his meals had been brought him by Dougal, and Peter Wappit had stood sentry outside his chamber door. As the afternoon wore on his earlier composure had been shot with restlessness, and he watched the sun decline with an anxious eye. But his spirits had recovered when he found himself hoisted upon an aged mare of Prince Odalchini's, which was warranted quiet, and saw the others booted and spurred. He had felt himself living a moment of high drama, and to be embraced and kissed on both cheeks by Prince Odalchini had seemed the right kind of farewell. The ride through secluded forest paths had been unpleasant, for he had only once been on a horse in his life before, and Archie bustled them along to keep up the illusion of a perilous flight. Dougal, no horseman himself, could do nothing to help him, but Alison rode by his side, and now and again led his beast when he found it necessary to cling with both hands to the saddle.
But once they were in the mountain cleft comfort had returned, for now the pace was easy and he had leisure for his thoughts. He realised that for days he had been living with fear. "You're not a brave man," he told himself. "The thing about you is that you're too much of a coward to admit that you're afraid. You let yourself in for daft things because your imagination carries you away, and then for weeks on end your knees knock together… . But it's worth it—you know it's worth it, you old epicurean," he added, "for the sake of the relief when it's over." He realised that he was about to enjoy the peace of soul which he had known long ago at Huntingtower on the morning after the fight.
But this time there was more than peace. He cast an eye over his shoulder down the wooded gorge—all was quiet—he had escaped from his pursuers. The great adventure had succeeded. Far ahead beyond the tree-tops he saw the cleft of the Wolf's Throat sharp against the sunset. In half an hour the frontier would be passed. His spirit was exalted. He remembered something he had read—in Stevenson, he thought—where a sedentary man had been ravished by a dream of galloping through a midnight pass at the head of cavalry with a burning valley behind him. Well, he was a sedentary man, and he was not dreaming an adventure, but in the heart of one. Never had his wildest fancies envisaged anything like this. He had been a king, acclaimed by shouting mobs. He had kept a throne warm for a friend, and now he was vanishing into the darkness, an honourable fugitive, a willing exile. He was the first grocer in all history that had been a Pretender to a Crown. The clack of hooves on stone, the jingling of bits, the echo of falling water were like strong wine. He did not sing aloud, for he was afraid of alarming his horse, but he crooned to himself snatches of spirited songs. "March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale" was one, and "Jock o' Hazeldean" was another.
Even on that hill-top the summer night was mild, and the fern was warm, baked by long hours of sun. The little company felt the spell of the mountain quiet after a week of alarums, and ate their supper in silence. Dickson munched a sandwich with his face turned east. He was the first to speak.
"Jaikie's down there," he said. "I wonder what will become of Jaikie? He's a quiet laddie, but he's the dour one when he's made up his mind. Then he's like a stone loosed from a catapult. But I've no fear for Jaikie now he has you to look after him." He turned to beam upon Alison and stroked her arm.
"He doesn't know what to do," said the girl. "We talked a lot about it in the summer. He went on a walking-tour to think things out and discover what he wanted most."
"Well, he has found that out," said Dickson genially. "It's you, Miss Alison. Jaikie's my bairn, and now I've got another in yourself. I'm proud of my family. Dougal there is already a force for mischief in Europe."
Dougal grinned. "I wonder what Mr Craw will say about all this. He'll be over the moon about it, and he'll think that he and his papers are chiefly responsible. Humbug! There are whiles when I'm sick of my job. They talk about the power of the Press, and it is powerful enough in ordinary times. The same with big finance. But let a thing like Juventus come along, and the Press and the stock exchange are no more than penny whistles. It's the Idea that wins every time—the Idea with brains and guts behind it."
"Youth," said Janet. "Yes, youth is the force in the world to-day, for it isn't tired and it can hope. But you have forgotten Mr McCunn. He made the success of Juventus possible, for he found it its leader. It's a pity the story can't be told, for he deserves a statue in Melina as the Great Peacemaker."
"It's the same thing," said Dougal. "He's youth."
"In two months' time I'll be sixty-three," said Dickson.
"What does that matter? I tell you you're young. Compared to you Jaikie and I are old, done men. And you're the most formidable kind of youth, for you've humour, and that's what youth never has. Jaikie has a little maybe, but nothing to you, and I haven't a scrap myself. I'll be a bigger man than Craw ever was, for I haven't his failings. And Jaikie will be a big man, too, though I'm not just sure in what way. But though I become a multimillionaire and Jaikie a prime minister, we will neither of us ever be half the man that Mr McCunn is. It was a blessed day for me when I first fell in with him."
"Deary me," said Dickson. "That's a grand testimonial, but I don't deserve it. I have a fair business mind, and I try to apply it—that's all. It was the Gorbals Die-hards that made me. Eight years ago I retired from the shop, and I was a timid elderly body. The Die-hards learned me not to be afraid."
"You don't know what fear is," said Dougal.
"And they made me feel young again."
"You could never be anything but young."
"You're wrong. I'm both timid and old—the best you can say of me is that, though I'm afraid, I'm never black-afraid, and though I'm old, I'm not dead-old."
"That's the best that could be said about any mortal man," said Archie solemnly. "What are you going to do now? After this game of king-making, won't Carrick be a bit dull?"
"I'm going back to Blaweary," said Dickson, "to count my mercies, for I'm a well man again. I'm going to catch a wheen salmon, and potter about my bits of fields, and read my books, and sit by my fireside. And to the last day of my life I'll be happy, thinking of the grand things I've seen and the grand places I've been in. Ay, and the grand friends I've known—the best of all."
"I think you are chiefly a poet," said Alison.
Dickson did not reply for a moment. He looked at her tenderly and seemed to be pondering a new truth.
"Me!" he said. "I wish I was, but I could never string two verses together."
