Johnson turned to Alastair and put a hand on his shoulder.
“It seems that Providence is on your side, my friend, and has intervened to separate us. That was your counsel, but it was never mine. … So be it, then.” He walked to the window and seemed to be in trouble with his dingy cravat.
Next morning when Oglethorpe’s Rangers began their march towards Shap, the two travellers set out by an easterly road, forded the Lune and made for the Eden valley. The rains filled the streams and mosses, and their progress was slow, so that for days they were entangled among the high Cumbrian hills. News of the affair at Clifton, where Lord George beat off Cumberland’s van and saved the retreat, came to them by a packman in a herd’s sheiling on Cross Fell, and after that their journey was clear down the Eden, till the time came to avoid Carlisle and make straight across country for Esk. The last night they lay at an alehouse on the Lyneside, and Alastair counted thirty guineas from his purse.
“With this I think you may reach London,” he told Johnson, and when the latter expostulated, he bade him consider it a loan. “If I fall, it is my bequest to you; and if I live, then we shall assuredly meet again and you can repay me. I would fain make it more, but money is likely to be a scarce commodity in yonder army.”
“You have a duty clear before you,” said the other dismally. “For me, I have none such; I would I had. But I will seek no opiates in a life of barbarism. I am resolved to spend what days the Almighty may still allot me on the broad highway of humanity. When I have found my task I will adhere to it like a soldier.”
Next morning they rode to a ridge beneath which the swollen Esk poured through the haughlands. It was a day of flying squalls, and the great dales of Esk and Annan lay mottled with sun-gleams and purple shadows up to the dark hills, which, chequered with snow, defended the way to the north. Further down Alastair’s quick eye noted a commotion on the river banks, and dark objects bobbing in the stream.
“See,” he cried, “His Highness is crossing. We have steered skilfully, for I enter Scotland by his side.”
“Is that Scotland?” Johnson asked, his shortsighted eyes peering at the wide vista.
“Scotland it is, and somewhere over yon hills lies Ramoth-Gilead.”
Alastair’s mind had in these last days won a certain peace, and now at the sight of the army something quickened in him that had been dead since the morning on the Ashbourne road. Youth was waking from its winter sleep. The world had become coloured again, barriers were down, roads ran into the future. Hazard seemed only hazard now and not despair. Suddenly came the sound of wild music, as the pipers struck up the air of “Bundle and Go.” The strain rose far and faint and elfin, like a wandering wind, and put fire into his veins.
“That is the march for the road,” Alastair cried. “Now I am for my own country.”
“And I for mine,” said Johnson, but there was no spring in his voice. He rubbed his eyes, peered in the direction of the music, and made as if to unbuckle his sword. Then he thought better of it. “Nay, I will keep the thing to nurse my memory,” he said.
The two men joined hands; and Alastair, in his foreign fashion, kissed the other on the cheek. As they mounted, a shower enveloped them, and the landscape was blotted out, so that the two were isolated in a world of their own.
“We are naked men,” said Johnson. “Each must go up to his own Ramoth-Gilead, but I would that yours and mine had been the same.”
Then he turned his horse and rode slowly southward into the rain.
Postscript
Thus far Mr. Derwent’s papers.
With the farewell on the Cumberland moor Alastair Maclean is lost to us in the mist. Of the nature of Ramoth-Gilead let history tell; it is too sad a tale for the romancer. But one is relieved to know that he did not fall at Culloden, or swing like so many on Haribee outside the walls of Carlisle. For the Editor has been so fortunate as to discover a further document, after a second search among Mr. Derwent’s archives, a document in the handwriting of Mr. Samuel Johnson himself; and there seems to be the strongest presumption that it was addressed to Alastair at some town in France, for there is a mention of hospitality shown one Alan Maclean who had crossed the Channel with a message and was on the eve of returning. There is no superscription, the letter begins “My dear Sir,” and the end is lost; but since it is headed “Gough Square,” and contains a reference to the writer’s beginning work on his great dictionary, the date may be conjectured to be 1748. Unfortunately the paper is much torn and discoloured, and only one passage can be given with any certainty of correctness. I transcribe it as a memorial of a friendship which was to colour the thoughts of a great man to his dying day and which, we may be assured, left an impress no less indelible upon the mind of the young Highlander.
“… I send by your kinsman the second moiety of the loan which you made me at our last meeting, for I assume that, like so many of your race and politics now in France, you are somewhat in straits for money.
