"Please God, I'll be at yer comman'," said Donal.

"Noo cry upo' Doory, for I wudna see less o' her nor I may. It may be years 'afore I get a sicht o' her lo'in' face again! But the same Lord 's in her an' i' me, an' we canna far be sun'ert, hooever lang the time 'afore we meet again."

Donal called Doory, and took his leave.



CHAPTER XLVII.

MORVEN HOUSE

Opposite Morven House was a building which had at one time been the stables to it, but was now part of a brewery; a high wall shut it off from the street; it was dinner-time with the humbler people of the town, and there was not a soul visible, when Donal put the key in the lock of the front door, opened it, and went in: he had timed his entrance so, desiring to avoid idle curiosity, and bring no gathering feet about the house. Almost on tiptoe he entered the lofty hall, high above the first story. The dust lay thick on a large marble table—but what was that?—a streak across it, brushed sharply through the middle of the dust! It was strange! But he would not wait to speculate on the agent! The room to which the earl had directed him was on the first floor, and he ascended to it at once—by the great oak staircase which went up the sides of the hall.

The house had not been dismantled, although things had at different times been taken from it, and when Donal opened a leaf of shutter, he saw tables and chairs and cabinets inlaid with silver and ivory. The room looked stately, but everything was deep in dust; carpets and curtains were thick with the deserted sepulchres of moths; and the air somehow suggested a tomb: Donal thought of the tombs of the kings of Egypt before ravaging conquerors broke into them, when they were yet full of all such gorgeous furniture as great kings desired, against the time when the souls should return to reanimate the bodies so carefully spiced and stored to welcome them, and the great kings would be themselves again, with the added wisdom of the dead and judged. Conscious of a curious timidity, feeling a kind of awesomeness about every form in the room, he stepped softly to the bureau, applied its key, and following carefully the directions the earl had given him, for the lock was Italian, with more than one quip and crank and wanton wile about it, succeeded in opening it. He had no difficulty in finding its secret place, nor the packet concealed in it; but just as he laid his hands on it, he was aware of a swift passage along the floor without, past the door of the room, and apparently up the next stair. There was nothing he could distinguish as footsteps, or as the rustle of a dress; it seemed as if he had heard but a disembodied motion! He darted to the door, which he had by habit closed behind him, and opened it noiselessly. The stairs above as below were covered with thick carpet: any light human foot might pass without a sound; only haste would murmur the secret to the troubled air.

He turned, replaced the packet, and closed the bureau. If there was any one in the house, he must know it, and who could tell what might follow! It was the merest ghost of a sound he had heard, but he must go after it! Some intruder might be using the earl's house for his own purposes!

Going softly up, he paused at the top of the second stair, and looked around him. An iron-clenched door stood nearly opposite the head of it; and at the farther end of a long passage, on whose sides were several closed doors, was one partly open. From that direction came the sound of a little movement, and then of low voices—one surely that of a woman! It flashed upon him that this must be the trysting-place of Eppy and Forgue. Fearing discovery before he should have gathered his wits, he stepped quietly across the passage to the door opposite, opened it, not without a little noise, and went in.

It was a strange-looking chamber he had entered—that, doubtless, once occupied by the ogre—The Reid Etin. Even in the bewilderment of the moment, the tale he had just heard was so present to him that he cast his eyes around, and noted several things to confirm the conclusion. But the next instant came from below what sounded like a thundering knock at the street door—a single knock, loud and fierce—possibly a mere runaway's knock. The start it gave Donal set his heart shaking in his bosom.

Almost with it came a little cry, and the sound of a door pulled open. Then he heard a hurried, yet carefully soft step, which went down the stair.

"Now is my time!" said Donal to himself. "She is alone!"

He came out, and went along the passage. The door at the end of it was open, and Eppy stood in it. She saw him coming, and gazed with widespread eyes of terror, as if it were The Reid Etin himself—waked, and coming to devour her. As he came, her blue eyes opened wider, and seemed to fix in their orbits; just as her name was on his lips, she dropped with a sharp moan. He caught her up, and hurried with her down the stair.

As he reached the first floor, he heard the sound of swift ascending steps, and the next moment was face to face with Forgue. The youth started back, and for a moment stood staring. His enemy had found him! But rage restored to him his self-possession.

"Put her down, you scoundrel!" he said.

"She can't stand," Donal answered.

"You've killed her, you damned spy!"

"Then I have been more kind than you!"

"What are you going to do with her?"

"Take her home to her dying grandfather."

"You've hurt her, you devil! I know you have!"

"She is only frightened. She is coming to herself. I feel her waking!"

"You shall feel me presently!" cried Forgue. "Put her down, I say."

Neither of them spoke loud, for dread of neighbours.

Eppy began to writhe in Donal's arms. Forgue laid hold of her, and Donal was compelled to put her down. She threw herself into the arms of her lover, and was on the point of fainting again.

"Get out of the house!" said Forgue to Donal.

"I am here on your father's business!" returned Donal.

"A spy and informer!"

"He sent me to fetch him some papers."

"It is a lie!" said Forgue; "I see it in your face!"

"So long as I speak the truth," rejoined Donal, "it matters little that you should think me a liar. But, my lord, you must allow me to take Eppy home."

"A likely thing!" answered Forgue, drawing Eppy closer, and looking at him with contempt.

"Give up the girl," said Donal sternly, "or I will raise the town, and have a crowd about the house in three minutes."

"You are the devil!" cried Forgue. "There! take her—with the consequences! If you had let us alone, I would have done my part.—Leave us now, and I'll promise to marry her. If you don't, you will have the blame of what may happen—not I."

"But you will, dearest?" said Eppy in a tone terrified and beseeching.

Gladly she would have had Donal hear him say he would.

Forgue pushed her from him. She burst into tears. He took her in his arms again, and soothed her like a child, assuring her he meant nothing by what he had said.

"You are my own!" he went on; "you know you are, whatever our enemies may drive us to! Nothing can part us. Go with him, my darling, for the present. The time will come when we shall laugh at them all. If it were not for your sake, and the scandal of the thing, I would send the rascal to the bottom of the stair. But it is better to be patient."

Sobbing bitterly, Eppy went with Donal. Forgue stood shaking with impotent rage.

When they reached the street, Donal turned to lock the door. Eppy darted from him, and ran down the close, thinking to go in again by the side door. But it was locked, and Donal was with her in a moment.

"You go home alone, Eppy," he said; "it will be just as well I should not go with you. I must see lord Forgue out of the house."

"Eh, ye winna hurt him!" pleaded Eppy.

"Not if I can help it. I don't want to hurt him. You go home. It will be better for him as well as you."

She went slowly away, weeping, but trying to keep what show of calm she could. Donal waited a minute or two, went back to the front door, entered, and hastening to the side door took the key from the lock. Then returning to the hall, he cried from the bottom of the stair,

"My lord, I have both the keys; the side door is locked; I am about to lock the front door, and I do not want to shut you in. Pray, come down."

Forgue came leaping down the stair, and threw himself upon Donal in a fierce attempt after the key in his hand. The sudden assault staggered him, and he fell on the floor with Forgue above him, who sought to wrest the key from him. But Donal was much the stronger; he threw his assailant off him; and for a moment was tempted to give him a good thrashing. From this the thought of Eppy helped to restrain him, and he contented himself with holding him down till he yielded. When at last he lay quiet,

"Will you promise to walk out if I let you up?" said Donal. "If you will not, I will drag you into the street by the legs."

"I will," said Forgue; and getting up, he walked out and away without a word.

Donal locked the door, forgetting all about the papers, and went back to Andrew's. There was Eppy, safe for the moment! She was busy in the outer room, and kept her back to him. With a word or two to the grandmother, he left them, and went home, revolving all the way what he ought to do. Should he tell the earl, or should he not? Had he been a man of rectitude, he would not have hesitated a moment; but knowing he did not care what became of Eppy, so long as his son did not marry her, he felt under no obligation to carry him the evil report. The father might have a right to know, but had he a right to know from him?

A noble nature finds it almost impossible to deal with questions on other than the highest grounds: where those grounds are unrecognized, the relations of responsibility may be difficult indeed to determine. All Donal was able to conclude on his way home, and he did not hurry, was, that, if he were asked any questions, he would speak out what he knew—be absolutely open. If that should put a weapon in the hand of the enemy, a weapon was not the victory.



CHAPTER XLVIII.

PATERNAL REVENGE.

No sooner had he entered the castle, where his return had been watched for, than Simmons came to him with the message that his lordship wanted to see him. Then first Donal remembered that he had not brought the papers! Had he not been sent for, he would have gone back at once to fetch them. As it was, he must see the earl first.

He found him in a worse condition than usual. His last drug or combination of drugs had not agreed with him; or he had taken too much, with correspondent reaction: he was in a vile temper. Donal told him he had been to the house, and had found the papers, but had not brought them—had, in fact, forgotten them.

"A pretty fellow you are!" cried the earl. "What, you left those papers lying about where any rascal may find them and play the deuce with them!"

Donal assured him they were perfectly safe, under the same locks and keys as before.

"You are always going about the bush!" cried the earl. "You never come to the point! How the devil was it you locked them up again?—To go prying all over the house, I suppose!"

Donal told him as much of the story as he would hear. Almost immediately he saw whither it tended, he began to abuse him for meddling with things he had nothing to do with. What right had he to interfere with lord Forgue's pleasures! Things of the sort were to be regarded as non-existent! The linen had to be washed, but it was not done in the great court! Lord Forgue was a youth of position: why should he be balked of his fancy! It might be at the expense of society!

Donal took advantage of the first pause to ask whether he should not go back and bring the papers: he would run all the way, he said.

"No, damn you!" answered the earl. "Give me the keys—all the keys—house-keys and all. I should be a fool myself to trust such a fool again!"

As Donal was laying the last key on the table by his lordship's bedside, Simmons appeared, saying lord Forgue desired to know if his father would see him.

"Oh, yes! send him up!" cried the earl in a fury. "All the devils in hell at once!"

His lordship's rages came up from abysses of misery no man knew but himself.

"You go into the next room, Grant," he said, "and wait there till I call you."

Donal obeyed, took a book from the table, and tried to read. He heard the door to the passage open and close again, and then the sounds of voices. By degrees they grew louder, and at length the earl roared out, so that Donal could not help hearing:

"I'll be damned soul and body in hell, but I'll put a stop to this! Why, you son of a snake! I have but to speak the word, and you are—well, what—. Yes, I will hold my tongue, but not if he crosses me!—By God! I have held it too long already!—letting you grow up the damnablest ungrateful dog that ever snuffed carrion!—And your poor father periling his soul for you, by God, you rascal!"

"Thank heaven, you cannot take the title from me, my lord!" said Forgue coolly. "The rest you are welcome to give to Davie! It won't be too much, by all accounts!"

"Damn you and your title! A pretty title, ha, ha, ha!—Why, you infernal fool, you have no more right to the title than the beggarly kitchen-maid you would marry! If you but knew yourself, you would crow in another fashion! Ha, ha, ha!"

At this Donal opened the door.

"I must warn your lordship," he said, "that if you speak so loud, I shall hear every word."

"Hear and be damned to you!—That fellow there—you see him standing there—the mushroom that he is! Good God! how I loved his mother! and this is the way he serves me! But there was a Providence in the whole affair! Never will I disbelieve in a Providence again! It all comes out right, perfectly right! Small occasion had I to be breaking heart and conscience over it ever since she left me! Hang the pinchbeck rascal! he's no more Forgue than you are, Grant, and never will be Morven if he live a hundred years! He's not a short straw better than any bastard in the street! His mother was the loveliest woman ever breathed!—and loved me—ah, God! it is something after all to have been loved so—and by such a woman!—a woman, by God! ready and willing and happy to give up everything for me! Everything, do you hear, you damned rascal! I never married her! Do you hear, Grant? I take you to witness; mark my words: we, that fellow's mother and I, were never married—by no law, Scotch, or French, or Dutch, or what you will! He's a damned bastard, and may go about his business when he pleases. Oh, yes! pray do! Marry your scullion when you please! You are your own master—entirely your own master!—free as the wind that blows to go where you will and do what you please! I wash my hands of you. You'll do as you please—will you? Then do, and please me: I desire no better revenge! I only tell you once for all, the moment I know for certain you've married the wench, that moment I publish to the world—that is, I acquaint certain gossips with the fact, that the next lord Morven will have to be hunted for like a truffle—ha! ha! ha!"

He burst into a fiendish fit of laughter, and fell back on his pillow, dark with rage and the unutterable fury that made of his being a volcano. The two men had been standing dumb before him, Donal pained for the man on whom this phial of devilish wrath had been emptied, he white and trembling with dismay—an abject creature, crushed by a cruel parent. When his father ceased, he still stood, still said nothing: power was gone from him. He grew ghastly, uttered a groan, and wavered. Donal supported him to a chair; he dropped into it, and leaned back, with streaming face. It was miserable to think that one capable of such emotion concerning the world's regard, should be so indifferent to what alone can affect a man—the nature of his actions—so indifferent to the agony of another as to please himself at all risk to her, although he believed he loved her, and perhaps did love her better than any one else in the world. For Donal did not at all trust him regarding Eppy—less now than ever. But these thoughts went on in him almost without his thinking them; his attention was engrossed with the passionate creatures before him.

The father too seemed to have lost the power of motion, and lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavily. But by and by he made what Donal took for a sign to ring the bell. He did so, and Simmons came. The moment he entered, and saw the state his master was in, he hastened to a cupboard, took thence a bottle, poured from it something colourless, and gave it to him in water. It brought him to himself. He sat up again, and in a voice hoarse and terrible said:—

"Think of what I have told you, Forgue. Do as I would have you, and the truth is safe; take your way without me, and I will take mine without you. Go."

Donal went. Forgue did not move.

What was Donal to do or think now? Perplexities gathered upon him. Happily there was time for thought, and for prayer, which is the highest thinking. Here was a secret affecting the youth his enemy, and the boy his friend! affecting society itself—that society which, largely capable and largely guilty of like sins, yet visits with such unmercy the sins of the fathers upon the children, the sins of the offender upon the offended! But there is another who visits them, and in another fashion! What was he to do? Was he to hold his tongue and leave the thing as not his, or to speak out as he would have done had the case been his own? Ought the chance to be allowed the nameless youth of marrying his cousin? Ought the next heir to the lordship to go without his title? Had they not both a claim upon Donal for the truth? Donal thought little of such things himself, but did that affect his duty in the matter? He might think little of money, but would he therefore look on while a pocket was picked?

On reflection he saw, however, that there was no certainty the earl was speaking the truth; for anything he knew of him, he might be inventing the statement in order to have his way with his son! For in either case he was a double-dyed villian; and if he spoke the truth was none the less capable of lying.



CHAPTER XLIX.

FILIAL RESPONSE.

One thing then was clear to Donal, that for the present he had nothing to do with the affair. Supposing the earl's assertion true, there was at present no question as to the succession; before such question could arise, Forgue might be dead; before that, his father might himself have disclosed the secret; while, the longer Donal thought about it, the greater was his doubt whether he had spoken the truth. The man who could so make such a statement to his son concerning his mother, must indeed have been capable of the wickedness assumed! but also the man who could make such a statement was surely vile enough to lie! The thing remained uncertain, and he was assuredly not called upon to act!

But how would Forgue carry himself? His behaviour now would decide or at least determine his character. If he were indeed as honourable as he wished to be thought, he would tell Eppy what had occurred, and set himself at once to find some way of earning his and her bread, or at least to become capable of earning it. He did not seem to cherish any doubt of the truth of what had fallen in rage from his father's lips, for, to judge by his appearance, to the few and brief glances Donal had of him during the next week or so, the iron had sunk into his soul: he looked more wretched than Donal could have believed it possible for man to be—abject quite. It manifested very plainly what a miserable thing, how weak and weakening, is the pride of this world. One who could be so cast down, was hardly one, alas, of whom to expect any greatness of action! He was not likely to have honesty or courage enough to decline a succession that was not his—even though it would leave his way clear to marry Eppy. Whether any of Forgue's misery arose from the fact that Donal had been present at the exposure of his position, Donal could not tell; but he could hardly fail to regard him as a dangerous holder of his secret—one who would be more than ready to take hostile action in the matter! At the same time, such had seemed the paralysing influence of the shock upon him, that Donal doubted if he had been, at any time during the interview, so much aware of his presence as not to have forgotten it entirely before he came to himself. Had he remembered the fact, would he not have come to him to attempt securing his complicity? If he meant to do right, why did he hesitate?—there was but one way, and that plain before him!

But presently Donal began to see many things an equivocating demon might urge: the claims of his mother; the fact that there was no near heir—he did not even know who would come in his place; that he would do as well with the property as another; that he had been already grievously wronged; that his mother's memory would be yet more grievously wronged; that the marriage had been a marriage in the sight of God, and as such he surely of all men was in heaven's right to regard it! and his mother had been the truest of wives to his father! These things and more Donal saw he might plead with himself; and if he was the man he had given him no small ground to think, he would in all probability listen to them. He would recall or assume the existence of many precedents in the history of noble families; he would say that, knowing the general character of their heads, no one would believe a single noble family without at least one unrecorded, undiscovered, or well concealed irregularity in its descent; and he would judge it the cruellest thing to have let him know the blighting fact, seeing that in ignorance he might have succeeded with a good conscience.

But what kind of a father was this, thought Donal, who would thus defile his son's conscience! he had not done it in mere revenge, but to gain his son's submission as well! Whether the poor fellow leaned to the noble or ignoble, it was no marvel he should wander about looking scarce worthy the name of man! If he would but come to him that he might help him! He could at least encourage him to refuse the evil and choose the good! But even if he would receive such help, the foregone passages between them rendered it sorely improbable it would ever fall to him to afford it!

That his visits to Eppy were intermitted, Donal judged from her countenance and bearing; and if he hesitated to sacrifice his own pride to the truth, it could not be without contemplating as possible the sacrifice of her happiness to a lie. In such delay he could hardly be praying "Lead me not into temptation:" if not actively tempting himself, he was submitting to be tempted; he was lingering on the evil shore.

Andrew Comin staid yet a week—slowly, gently fading out into life—darkening into eternal day—forgetting into knowledge itself. Donal was by his side when he went, but little was done or said; he crept into the open air in his sleep, to wake from the dreams of life and the dreams of death and the dreams of sleep all at once, and see them mingling together behind him like a broken wave—blending into one vanishing dream of a troubled, yet, oh, how precious night past and gone!

Once, about an hour before he went, Donal heard him murmur, "When I wake I am still with thee!"

Doory was perfectly calm. When he gave his last sigh, she sighed too, said, "I winna be lang, Anerew!" and said no more. Eppy wept bitterly.

Donal went every day to see them till the funeral was over. It was surprising how many of the town's folk attended it. Most of them had regarded the cobbler as a poor talkative enthusiast with far more tongue than brains! Because they were so far behind and beneath him, they saw him very small!

One cannot help reflecting what an indifferent trifle the funeral, whether plain to bareness, as in Scotland, or lovely with meaning as often in England, is to the spirit who has but dropt his hurting shoes on the weary road, dropt all the dust and heat, dropt the road itself, yea the world of his pilgrimage—which never was, never could be, never was meant to be his country, only the place of his sojourning—in which the stateliest house of marble can be but a tent—cannot be a house, yet less a home. Man could never be made at home here, save by a mutilation, a depression, a lessening of his being; those who fancy it their home, will come, by growth, one day to feel that it is no more their home than its mother's egg is the home of the lark.

For some time Donal's savings continued to support the old woman and her grand-daughter. But ere long Doory got so much to do in the way of knitting stockings and other things, and was set to so many light jobs by kindly people who respected her more than her husband because they saw her less extraordinary, that she seldom troubled him. Miss Carmichael offered to do what she could to get Eppy a place, if she answered certain questions to her satisfaction. How she liked her catechizing I do not know, but she so far satisfied her interrogator that she did find her a place in Edinburgh. She wept sore at leaving Auchars, but there was no help: rumour had been more cruel than untrue, and besides there was no peace for her near the castle. Not once had lord Forgue sought her since he gave her up to Donal, and she thought he had then given her up altogether. Notwithstanding his kindness to her house, she all but hated Donal—perhaps the more nearly that her conscience told he had done nothing but what was right.

Things returned into the old grooves at the castle, but the happy thought of his friend the cobbler, hammering and stitching in the town below, was gone from Donal. True, the craftsman was a nobleman now, but such he had always been!

Forgue mooned about, doing nothing, and recognizing no possible help save in what was utter defeat. If he had had any faith in Donal, he might have had help fit to make a man of him, which he would have found something more than an earl. Donal would have taught him to look things in the face, and call them by their own names. It would have been the redemption of his being. To let things be as they truly are, and act with truth in respect of them, is to be a man. But Forgue showed little sign of manhood, present or to come.

He was much on horseback, now riding furiously over everything, as if driven by the very fiend, now dawdling along with the reins on the neck of his weary animal. Donal once met him thus in a narrow lane. The moment Forgue saw him, he pulled up his horse's head, spurred him hard, and came on as if he did not see him. Donal shoved himself into the hedge, and escaped with a little mud.



CHAPTER L.

A SOUTH-EASTERLY WIND.

One morning, Donal in the schoolroom with Davie, a knock came to the door, and lady Arctura entered.

"The wind is blowing from the south-east," she said.

"Listen then, my lady, whether you can hear anything," said Donal. "I fancy it is a very precise wind that is wanted."

"I will listen," she answered, and went.

The day passed, and he heard nothing more. He was at work in his room in the warm evening twilight, when Davie came running to his door, and said Arkie was coming up after him. He rose and stood at the top of the stair to receive her. She had heard the music, she said—very soft: would he go on the roof?

"Where were you, my lady," asked Donal, "when you heard it? I have heard nothing up here!"

"In my own little parlour," she replied. "It was very faint, but I could not mistake it."

They went upon the roof. The wind was soft and low, an excellent thing in winds. They knew the paths of the roof better now, and had plenty of light, although the moon, rising large and round, gave them little of hers yet, and were soon at the foot of the great chimney-stack, which grew like a tree out of the house. There they sat down to wait and hearken.

"I am almost sorry to have made this discovery!" said Donal.

"Why?" asked lady Arctura. "Should not the truth be found, whatever it may be? You at least think so!"

"Most certainly," answered Donal. "And if this be the truth, as I fully expect it will prove, then it is well it should be found to be. But I should have liked better it had been something we could not explain."

"I doubt if I understand you."

"Things that cannot be explained so widen the horizon around us! open to us fresh regions for question and answer, for possibility and delight! They are so many kernels of knowledge closed in the hard nuts of seeming contradiction.—You know, my lady, there are stories of certain houses being haunted by a mysterious music presaging evil to the family?"

"I have heard of such music. But what can be the use of it?"

"I do not know. I see not the smallest use in it. If it were of use it would surely be more common! If it were of use, why should those who have it be of the class less favoured, so to speak, of the Lord of the universe, and the families of his poor never have it?"

"Perhaps for the same reason that they have their other good things in this life!" said Arctura.

"I am answered," confessed Donal, "and have no more to say. These tales, if they require of us a belief in any special care over such houses, as if they were more precious in the eyes of God than the poorest cottage in the land, I cast them from me."

"But," said Arctura, in a deprecating tone, "are not those houses which have more influence more important than the others?"

"Surely—those which have more good influence. But such are rarely the great houses of a country. Our Lord was not an Asmonaean prince, but the son of a humble maiden, his reputed father a working man."

"I do not see—I should like to understand how that has to do with it."

"You may be sure the Lord took the position in life in which it was most possible to do the highest good; and without driving the argument—for every work has its own specialty—it seems probable that the true ends of his coming will still be better furthered from the standpoint of humble circumstances, than from that of rank and position."

"You always speak," said Arctura, "as if there were only the things Jesus Christ came for to be cared about:—is there nothing but salvation worthy a human being's regard?"

"If you give a true and large enough meaning to the word salvation, I answer you at once, Nothing. Only in proportion as a man is saved, will he do the work of the world aright—the whole design of which is to rear a beautiful blessed family. The world is God's nursery for his upper rooms. Oneness with God is the end of the order of things. When that is attained, we shall do greater things than the Lord himself did on the earth!—But was not that AEolus?—Listen!"

There came a low prolonged wail.

The ladder was in readiness; Donal set it up in haste, climbed to the cleft, and with a sheet of brown paper in his hands, waited the next cry of the prisoned chords. He was beginning to get tired of his position, when suddenly came a stronger puff, and he heard the music distinctly in the shaft beside him. It swelled and grew. He spread the sheet of paper over the opening, the wind blew it flat against the chimney, and the sound instantly ceased. He removed it, and again came the sound. The wind continued, and grew stronger, so that they were able to make the simple experiment until no shadow of a doubt was left: they had discovered the source of the music! By certain dispositions of the paper they were even able to modify it.

Donal descended, and said to Davie,

"I wish you not to say a word about this to any one, Davie, before lady Arctura or I give you leave. You have a secret with us now. The castle belongs to lady Arctura, and she has a right to ask you not to speak of it to any one without her permission.—I have a reason, my lady," he went on, turning to Arctura: "will you, please, desire Davie to attend to what I say. I will immediately explain to you, but I do not want Davie to know my reason until you do. You can on the instant withdraw your prohibition, should you not think my reason a good one."

"Davie," said Arctura, "I too have faith in Mr. Grant: I beg you will keep all this a secret for the present."

"Oh surely, cousin Arkie!" said Davie. "—But, Mr. Grant, why should you make Arkie speak to me too?"

"Because the thing is her business, not mine. Run down and wait for me in my room. Go steadily over the bartizan, mind."

Donal turned again to Arctura.

"You know they say there is a hidden room in the castle, my lady?"

"Do you believe it?" she returned.

"I think there may be such a place."

"Surely if there had been, it would have been found long ago."

"They might have said that on the first report of the discovery of America!"

"That was far off, and across a great ocean!"

"And here are thick walls, and hearts careless an timid!—Has any one ever set in earnest about finding it?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then your objection falls to the ground. If you could have told me that one had tried to find the place, but without success, I would have admitted some force in it, though it would not have satisfied me without knowing the plans he had taken, and how they were carried out. On the other hand it may have been known to many who held their peace about it.—Would you not like to know the truth concerning that too?"

"I should indeed. But would not you be sorry to lose another mystery?"

"On the contrary, there is only the rumour of a mystery now, and we do not quite believe it. We are not at liberty, in the name of good sense, to believe it yet. But if we find the room, or the space even where it may be, we shall probably find also a mystery—something never in this world to be accounted for, but suggesting a hundred unsatisfactory explanations. But, pardon me, I do not in the least presume to press it."

Lady Arctura smiled.

"You may do what you please," she said. "If I seemed for a moment to hesitate, it was only that I wondered what my uncle would say to it. I should not like to vex him."

"Certainly not; but would he not be pleased?"

"I will speak to him, and find out. He hates what he calls superstition, and I fancy has curiosity enough not to object to a search. I do not think he would consent to pulling down, but short of that, I don't think he will mind. I should not wonder if he even joined in the search."

Donal thought with himself it was strange then he had never undertaken one. Something told him the earl would not like the proposal.

"But tell me, Mr. Grant—how would you set about it?" said Arctura, as they went towards the tower.

"If the question were merely whether or not there was such a room, and not the finding of it,—"

"Excuse me—but how could you tell whether there was or was not such a room except by searching for it?"

"By determining whether there was or was not some space in the castle unaccounted for."

"I do not see."

"Would you mind coming to my room? It will be a lesson for Davie too!"

She assented, and Donal gave them a lesson in cubic measure and content. He showed them how to reckon the space that must lie within given boundaries: if then within those boundaries they could not find so much, part of it must be hidden. If they measured the walls of the castle, allowing of course for their thickness and every irregularity, and from that calculated the space they must hold; then measured all the rooms and open places within the walls, allowing for all partitions; and having again calculated, found the space fall short of what they had from the outside measurements to expect; they must conclude either that they had measured or calculated wrong, or that there was space in the castle to which they had no access.

"But," continued Donal, when they had in a degree mastered the idea, "if the thing was, to discover the room itself, I should set about it in a different way; I should not care about the measuring. I would begin and go all over the castle, first getting the outside shape right in my head, and then fitting everything inside it into that shape of it in my brain. If I came to a part I could not so fit at once, I would examine that according to the rules I have given you, take exact measurements of the angles and sides of the different rooms and passages, and find whether these enclosed more space than I could at once discover inside them.—But I need not follow the process farther: pulling down might be the next thing, and we must not talk of that!"

"But the thing is worth doing, is it not, even if we do not go so far as to pull down?"

"I think so."

"And I think my uncle will not object.—Say nothing about it though, Davie, till we give you leave."

That we was pleasant in Donal's ears.

Lady Arctura rose, and they all went down together. When they reached the hall, Davie ran to get his kite.

"But you have not told me why you would not have him speak of the music," said Arctura, stopping at the foot of the great stair.

"Partly because, if we were to go on to make search for the room, it ought to be kept as quiet as possible, and the talk about the one would draw notice to the other; and partly because I have a hope that the one may even guide us to the other."

"You will tell me about that afterwards," said Arctura, and went up the stair.

That night the earl had another of his wandering fits; also all night the wind blew from the south-east.

In the morning Arctura went to him with her proposal. The instant he understood what she wished, his countenance grew black as thunder.

"What!" he cried, "you would go pulling the grand old bulk to pieces for the sake of a foolish tale about the devil and a set of cardplayers! By my soul, I'll be damned if you do!—Not while I'm above ground at least! That's what comes of putting such a place in the power of a woman! It's sacrilege! By heaven, I'll throw my brother's will into chancery rather!"

His rage was such as to compel her to think there must be more in it than appeared. The wilderness of the temper she had roused made her tremble, but it also woke the spirit of her race, and she repented of the courtesy she had shown him: she had the right to make what investigations she pleased! Her father would not have left her the property without good reasons for doing so; and of those reasons some might well have lain in the character of the man before her!

Through all this rage the earl read something of what had sent the blood of the Graemes to her cheek and brow.

"I beg your pardon, my love," he said, "but if he was your father, he was my brother!"

"He is my father!" said Arctura coldly.

"Dead and gone and all but forgotten!"

"No, my lord; not for one day forgotten! not for one moment unloved!"

"Ah, well, as you please! but because you love his memory must I regard him as a Solon? 'T is surely no great treason to reflect upon the wisdom of a dead man!"

"I wish you good day, my lord!" said Arctura, very angry, and left him.

But when presently she found that she could not lift up her heart to her father in heaven, gladly would she have sent her anger from her. Was it not plainly other than good, when it came thus between her and the living God! All day at intervals she had to struggle and pray against it; a great part of the night she lay awake because of it; but at length she pitied her uncle too much to be very angry with him any more, and so fell asleep.

In the morning she found that all sense of his having authority over her had vanished, and with it her anger. She saw also that it was quite time she took upon herself the duties of a landowner. What could Mr. Grant think of her—doing nothing for her people! But she could do little while her uncle received the rents and gave orders to Mr. Graeme! She would take the thing into her own hands! In the meantime, Mr. Grant should, if he pleased, go on quietly with his examination of the house.

But she could not get her interview with her uncle out of her head, and was haunted with vague suspicions of some dreadful secret about the house belonging to the present as well as the past. Her uncle seemed to have receded to a distance incalculable, and to have grown awful as he receded. She was of a nature almost too delicately impressionable; she not only felt things keenly, but retained the sting of them after the things were nearly forgotten. But then the swift and rare response of her faculties arose in no small measure from this impressionableness. At the same time, but for instincts and impulses derived from her race, her sensitiveness might have degenerated into weakness.



CHAPTER LI.

A DREAM.

One evening, as Donal was walking in the little avenue below the terraces, Davie, who was now advanced to doing a little work without his master's immediate supervision, came running to him to say that Arkie was in the schoolroom and wanted to see him.

He hastened to her.

"A word with you, please, Mr. Grant," she said.

Donal sent the boy away.

"I have debated with myself all day whether I should tell you," she began—and her voice trembled not a little; "but I think I shall not be so much afraid to go to bed if I do tell you what I dreamt last night."

Her face was very pale, and there was a quiver about her mouth: she seemed ready to burst into tears.

"Do tell me," said Donal sympathetically.

"Do you think it very silly to mind one's dreams?" she asked.

"Silly or not," answered Donal, "as regards the general run of dreams, it is plain you have had one that must be minded. What we must mind, it cannot be silly to mind."

"I am in no mood, I fear, for philosophy," she rejoined, trying to smile. "It has taken such a hold of me that I cannot get rid of it, and there is no one I could tell it to but you; any one else would laugh at me; but you never laugh at anybody!

"I went to bed as well as usual, only a little troubled about my uncle's strangeness, and soon fell asleep, to find myself presently in a most miserable place. It was like a brick-field—but a deserted brick-field. Heaps of broken and half-burnt bricks were all about. For miles and miles they stretched around me. I walked fast to get out of it. Nobody was near or in sight; there was not a sign of human habitation from horizon to horizon.

"All at once I saw before me a dreary church. It was old, tumble-down, and dirty—not in the least venerable—very ugly—a huge building without shape, like most of our churches. I shrank from the look of it: it was more horrible to me than I could account for; I feared it. But I must go in—why, I did not know, but I must: the dream itself compelled me.

"I went in. It looked as if nobody had crossed its threshold for a hundred years. The pews were mouldering away; the canopy over the pulpit had half fallen, and rested its edge on the book-board; the great galleries had in parts tumbled into the body of the church, in other parts they hung sloping from the walls. The centre of the floor had fallen in, and there was a great, descending slope of earth, soft-looking, mixed with bits of broken and decayed wood, from the pews above and the coffins below. I stood gazing down in horror unutterable. How far the gulf went I could not see. I was fascinated by its slow depth, and the thought of its possible contents—when suddenly I knew rather than perceived that something was moving in its darkness: it was something dead—something yellow-white. It came nearer; it was slowly climbing; like one dead and stiff it was labouring up the slope. I could neither cry out nor move. It was about three yards below me, when it raised its head: it was my uncle, dead, and dressed for the grave. He beckoned me—and I knew I must go; I had to go, nor once thought of resisting. My heart became like lead, but immediately I began the descent. My feet sank in the mould of the ancient dead, soft as if thousands of graveyard moles were for ever burrowing in it, as down and down I went, settling and sliding with the black plane. Then I began to see the sides and ends of coffins in the walls of the gulf; and the walls came closer and closer as I descended, until they scarcely left me room to get through. I comforted myself with the thought that those in these coffins had long been dead, and must by this time be at rest, nor was there any danger of seeing mouldy hands come out to seize me. At last I saw that my uncle had stopped, and I stood still, a few yards above him, more composed than I can understand."

"The wonder is we are so believing, yet not more terrified, in our dreams," said Donal.

"He began to heave and pull at a coffin that seemed to stop the way. Just as he got it dragged on one side, I saw on the bright silver handle of it the Morven crest. The same instant the lid rose, and my father came out of the coffin, looking alive and bright; my uncle stood beside him like a corpse beside a soul. 'What do you want with my child?' he said; and my uncle cowered before him. He took my hand and said, 'Come with me, my child.' And I went with him—oh, so gladly! My fear was gone, and so was my uncle. He led me up the way we had come down, but when we came out of the hole, instead of finding myself in the horrible church, I was in my own room. I looked round—no one was near! I was sorry my father was gone, but glad to be in my own room. Then I woke—and here was the terrible thing—not in my bed—but standing in the middle of the floor, just where my dream had left me! I cannot get rid of the thought that I really went somewhere. I have been haunted with it the whole day. It is a terror to me—for if I did, where is my help against going again!"

"In God our saviour," said Donal. "—But had your uncle given you anything?"

"I wish I could think so; but I do not see how he could."

"You must change your room, and get mistress Brookes to sleep near you."

"I will."

Gladly would Donal have offered to sleep, like one of his colleys, outside her door, but Mrs. Brookes was the only one to help her.

He began at once to make observations towards determining the existence or non-existence of a hidden room, but in the quietest way, so as to attract no attention, and had soon satisfied himself concerning some parts that it could not be there. Without free scope and some one to help him, the thing was difficult. To gauge a building which had grown through centuries, to fit the varying tastes and changing needs of the generations, was in itself not easy, and he judged it all but impossible without drawing observation and rousing speculation. Great was the chaotic element in the congeries of erections and additions, brought together by various contrivances, and with daringly enforced communication. Open spaces within the walls, different heights in the stories of contiguous buildings, breaks in the continuity of floors, and various other irregularities, he found confusingly obstructive.



CHAPTER LII.

INVESTIGATION.

The autumn brought terrible storms. Many fishing boats came to grief. Of some, the crews lost everything: of others, the loss of their lives delivered their crews from smaller losses. There were many bereaved in the village, and Donal went about among them, doing what he could, and getting help for them where his own ability would not reach their necessity. Lady Arctura wanted no persuasion to go with him in some of his visits; and the intercourse she thus gained with humanity in its simpler forms, of which she had not had enough for the health of her own nature, was of high service to her. Perhaps nothing helps so much to believe in the Father, as the active practical love of the brother. If he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, can ill love God whom he hath not seen, then he who loves his brother must surely find it the easier to love God! Arctura found that to visit the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions; to look on and know them as her kind; to enter into their sorrows, and share the elevating influence of grief genuine and simple, the same in every human soul, was to draw near to God. She met him in his children. For to honour, love, and be just to our neighbour, is religion; and he who does these things will soon find that he cannot live without the higher part of religion, the love of God. If that do not follow, the other will sooner or later die away, leaving the man the worse for having had it. She found her way to God easier through the crowd of her fellows; while their troubles took her off her own, set them at a little distance from her, and so put it in her power to understand them better.

One day after the fishing boats had gone out, rose a terrible storm. Some of them made for the harbour again—such as it was; others kept out to sea; Stephen Kennedy's boat came ashore bottom upward. His body was cast on the sands close to the spot where Donal dragged the net from the waves. There was sorrow afresh through the village: Kennedy was a favourite; and his mother was left childless. No son would any more come sauntering in with his long slouch in the gloamin'; and whether she would ever see him again—to know him—who could tell! For the common belief does not go much farther than paganism in yielding comfort to those whose living loves have disappeared—the fault not of Christianity, but of Christians.

The effect of the news upon Forgue I have some around for conjecturing: I believe it made him care a little less about marrying the girl, now that he knew no rival ready to take her; and feel also that he had one enemy the less, one danger the less, in the path he would like to take. Within a week after, he left the castle, and if his father knew where he went, he was the only one who did. He had been pressing him to show some appearance of interest in his cousin; Forgue had professed himself unequal to the task at present: if he might go away for a while, he said, he would doubtless find it easier when he returned.

The storms were over, the edges and hidden roots had begun to dream of spring, and Arctura had returned to her own room to sleep, when one afternoon she came to the schoolroom and told Donal she had had the terrible dream again.

"This time," she said, "I came out, in my dream, on the great stair, and went up to my room, and into bed, before I waked. But I dare not ask mistress Brookes whether she saw me—"

"You do not imagine you were out of the room?" said Donal.

"I cannot tell. I hope not. If I were to find I had been, it would drive me out of my senses! I was thinking all day about the lost room: I fancy it had something to do with that."

"We must find the room, and have done with it!" said Donal.

"Are you so sure we can?" she asked, her face brightening.

"If there be one, and you will help me, I think we can," he answered.

"I will help you."

"Then first we will try the shaft of the music-chimney. That it has never smoked, at least since those wires were put there, makes it something to question—though the draught across it might doubtless have prevented it from being used. It may be the chimney to the very room. But we will first try to find out whether it belongs to any room we know. I will get a weight and a cord: the wires will be a plague, but I think we can pass them. Then we shall see how far the weight goes down, and shall know on what floor it is arrested. That will be something gained: the plane of inquiry will be determined. Only there may be a turn in the chimney, preventing the weight from going to the bottom."

"When shall we set about it?" said Arctura, almost eagerly.

"At once," replied Donal.

She went to get a shawl.

Donal went to the gardener's tool-house, and found a suitable cord. There was a seven-pound weight, but that would not pass the wires! He remembered an old eight-day clock on a back stair, which was never going. He got out its heavier weight, and carried it, with the cord and the ladder, to his own stair—at the foot of which was lady Arctura—waiting for him.

There was that in being thus associated with the lovely lady; in knowing that peace had began to visit her through him, that she trusted him implicitly, looking to him for help and even protection; in knowing that nothing but wrong to her could be looked for from uncle or cousin, and that he held what might be a means of protecting her, should undue influence be brought to bear upon her—there was that in all this, I say, that stirred to its depth the devotion of Donal's nature. With the help of God he would foil her enemies, and leave her a free woman—a thing well worth a man's life! Many an angel has been sent on a smaller errand!

Such were his thoughts as he followed Arctura up the stair, she carrying the weight and the cord, he the ladder, which it was not easy to get round the screw of the stair. Arctura trembled with excitement as she ascended, grew frightened as often as she found she had outstripped him, waited till the end of the ladder came poking round, and started again before the bearer appeared.

Her dreams had disquieted her more than she had yet confessed: had she been taking a way of her own, and choosing a guide instead of receiving instruction in the way of understanding? Were these things sent for her warning, to show her into what an abyss of death her conduct was leading her?—But the moment she found herself in the open air of Donal's company, her doubts and fears vanished for the time. Such a one as he must surely know better than those others the way of the Spirit! Was he not more childlike, more straightforward, more simple, and, she could not but think, more obedient than those? Mr. Carmichael was older, and might be more experienced; but did his light shine clearer than Donal's? He might be a priest in the temple; but was there not a Samuel in the temple as well as an Eli? It the young, strong, ruddy shepherd, the defender of his flock, who was sent by God to kill the giant! He was too little to wear Saul's armour; but he could kill a man too big to wear it! Thus meditated Arctura as she climbed the stair, and her hope and courage grew.

A delicate conscience, sensitive feelings, and keen faculties, subjected to the rough rasping of coarse, self-satisfied, unspiritual natures, had almost lost their equilibrium. As to natural condition no one was sounder than she; yet even now when she had more than begun to see its falsehood, a headache would suffice to bring her afresh under the influence of the hideous system she had been taught, and wake in her all kinds of deranging doubts and consciousnesses. Subjugated so long to the untrue, she required to be for a time, until her spiritual being should be somewhat individualized, under the genial influences of one who was not afraid to believe, one who knew the master. Nor was there danger to either so long as he sought no end of his own, so long as he desired only His will, so long as he could say, "Whom is there in heaven but thee! and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee!"

By the time she reached the top she was radiantly joyous in the prospect of a quiet hour with him whose presence and words always gave her strength, who made the world look less mournful, and the will of God altogether beautiful; who taught her that the glory of the Father's love lay in the inexorability of its demands, that it is of his deep mercy that no one can get out until he has paid the uttermost farthing.

They stepped upon the roof and into the gorgeous afterglow of an autumn sunset. The whole country, like another sea, was flowing from that that well of colour, in tidal waves of an ever advancing creation. Its more etherial part, rushing on above, broke on the old roofs and chimneys and splashed its many tinted foam all over them; while through it and folded in it came a cold thin wind that told of coming death. Arctura breathed a deep breath, and her joy grew. It is wonderful how small a physical elevation, lifting us into a slightly thinner air, serves to raise the human spirits! We are like barometers, only work the other way; the higher we go, the higher goes our mercury.

They stood for a moment in deep enjoyment, then simultaneously turned to each other.

"My lady," said Donal, "with such a sky as that out there, it hardly seems as if there could be such a thing as our search to-night! Hollow places, hidden away for evil cause, do not go with it at all! There is the story of gracious invention and glorious gift; here the story of greedy gathering and self-seeking, which all concealment involves!"

"But there may be nothing, you know, Mr. Grant!" said Arctura, troubled for the house.

"There may be nothing. But if there is such a room, you may be sure it has some relation with terrible wrong—what, we may never find out, or even the traces of it."

"I shall not be afraid," she said, as if speaking with herself. "It is the terrible dreaming that makes me weak. In the morning I tremble as if I had been in the hands of some evil power."

Donal turned his eyes upon her. How thin she looked in the last of the sunlight! A pang went through him at the thought that one day he might be alone with Davie in the huge castle, untended by the consciousness that a living light and loveliness flitted somewhere about its gloomy and ungenial walls. But he would not think the thought! How that dismal Miss Carmichael must have worried her! When the very hope of the creature in his creator is attacked in the name of religion; when his longing after a living God is met with the offer of a paltry escape from hell, how is the creature to live! It is God we want, not heaven; his righteousness, not an imputed one, for our own possession; remission, not letting off; love, not endurance for the sake of another, even if that other be the one loveliest of all.

They turned from the sunset and made their way to the chimney-stack. There once more Donal set up his ladder. He tied the clock-weight to the end of his cord, dropped it in, and with a little management got it through the wires. It went down and down, gently lowered, till the cord was all out, and still it would go.

"Do run and get some more," said Arctura.

"You do not mind being left alone?"

"No—if you will not be long."

"I will run," he said—and run he did, for she had scarcely begun to feel the loneliness when he returned panting.

He took the end she had been holding, tied on the fresh cord he had brought, and again lowered away. As he was beginning to fear that after all he had not brought enough, the weight stopped, resting, and drew no more.

"If only we had eyes in that weight," said Arctura, "like the snails at the end of their horns!"

"We might have greased the bottom of the weight," said Donal, "as they do the lead when they want to know what kind of bottom there is to the sea: it might have brought up ashes. If it will not go any farther, I will mark the string at the mouth, and draw it up."

He moved the weight up and down a little; it rested still, and he drew it up.

"Now we must mark off it the height of the chimney above the parapet wall," he said; "and then I will lower the weight towards the court below, until this last knot comes to the wall: the weight will then show us on the outside how far down the house it went inside.—Ah, I thought so!" he went on, looking over after the weight; "—only to the first floor, or thereabouts!—No, I think it is lower!—But anyhow, my lady, as you can see, the place with which the chimney, if chimney it be, communicates, must be somewhere about the middle of the house, and perhaps is on the first floor; we can't judge very well looking down from here, and against a spot where are no windows. Can you imagine what place it might be?"

"I cannot," answered Arctura; "but I could go into every room on that floor without anyone seeing me."

"Then I will let the weight down the chimney again, and leave it for you to see, if you can, below. If you find it, we must do something else."

It was done, and they descended together. Donal went back to the schoolroom, not expecting to see her again till the next day. But in half an hour she came to him, saying she had been into every room on that floor, both where she thought it might be, and where she knew it could not be, and had not seen the weight.

"The probability then is," replied Donal, "that thereabout somewhere—there, or farther down in that neighbourhood—lies the secret; but we cannot be sure, for the weight may not have reached the bottom of the shaft. Let us think what we shall do next.

He placed a chair for her by the fire. They had the room to themselves.



CHAPTER LIII.

MISTRESS BROOKES UPON THE EARL.

They were hardly seated when Simmons appeared, saying he had been looking everywhere for her ladyship, for his lordship was taken as he had never seen him before: he had fainted right out in the half-way room, and he could not get him to.

Having given orders to send at once to Auchars for the doctor, lady Arctura hastened with Donal to the room on the stair. The earl was stretched motionless and pale on the floor. But for a slight twitching in one muscle of the face, they might have concluded him dead. They tried to get something down his throat, but without success. The men carried him up to his chamber.

He began to come to himself, and lady Arctura left him, telling Simmons to come to the library when he could, and let them know how he was.

In about an hour he came: the doctor had been, and his master was better.

"Do you know any cause for the attack?" asked her ladyship.

"I'll tell you all about it, my lady, so far as I know," answered the butler. "—I was there in that room with him—I had taken him some accounts, and was answering some questions about them, when all at once there came a curious noise in the wall. I can't think what it was—an inward rumbling it was, that seemed to go up and down the wall with a sort of groaning, then stopped a while, and came again. It sounded nothing very dreadful to me; perhaps if it had been in the middle of the night, I mightn't have liked it. His lordship started at the first sound of it, turned pale and gasped, then cried out, laid his hand on his heart, and rolled off his chair. I did what I could for him, but it wasn't like one of his ordinary attacks, and so I came to your ladyship. He's such a ticklish subject, you see, my lady! It's quite alarming to be left alone with him. It's his heart; and you know, my lady—I should be sorry to frighten you, but you know, Mr. Grant, a gentleman with that complaint may go off any moment. I must go back to him now, my lady, if you please."

Arctura turned and looked at Donal.

"We must be careful," he said.

"We must," she answered. "Just thereabout is one of the few places in the house where you hear the music."

"And thereabout the music-chimney goes down! That is settled! But why should my lord be frightened so?"

"I cannot tell. He is not like other people, you know."

"Where else is the music heard? You and your uncle seem to hear it oftener than anyone else."

"In my own room. But we will talk to-morrow. Good night."

"I will remain here the rest of the evening," said Donal, "in case Simmons might want me to help with his lordship."

It was well into the night, and he still sat reading in the library, when Mrs. Brookes came to him. She had had to get his lordship "what he ca'd a cat—something or ither, but was naething but mustard to the soles o' 's feet to draw awa' the bluid."

"He's better the noo," she said. "He's taen a doze o' ane o' thae drogues he's aye potterin' wi'—fain to learn the trade o' livin' for ever, I reckon! But that's a thing the Lord has keepit in 's ain han's. The tree o' life was never aten o', an' never wull be noo i' this warl'; it's lang transplantit. But eh, as to livin' for ever, or I wud be his lordship, I wud gie up the ghost at ance!"

"What makes you say that, mistress Brookes?" asked Donal.

"It's no ilk ane I wud answer sic a queston til," she replied; "but I'm weel assured ye hae sense an' hert eneuch baith, no to hurt a cratur'; an' I'll jist gang sae far as say to yersel', an' 'atween the twa o' 's, 'at I hae h'ard frae them 'at's awa'—them 'at weel kent, bein' aboot the place an' trustit—that whan the fit was upon him, he was fell cruel to the bonnie wife he merriet abro'd an' broucht hame wi' him—til a cauld-hertit country, puir thing, she maun hae thoucht it!"

"How could he have been cruel to her in the house of his brother? Even if he was the wretch to be guilty of it, his brother would never have connived at the ill-treatment of any woman under his roof!"

"Hoo ken ye the auld yerl sae weel?" asked Mrs. Brookes, with a sly glance.

"I ken," answered Donal, direct as was his wont, but finding somehow a little shelter in the dialect, "'at sic a dauchter could ill hae been born to ony but a man 'at—weel, 'at wad at least behave til a wuman like a man."

"Ye're i' the richt! He was the ten'erest-heartit man! But he was far frae stoot, an' was a heap by himsel', nearhan' as mickle as his lordship the present yerl. An' the lady was that prood, an' that dewotit to the man she ca'd her ain, that never a word o' what gaed on cam to the ears o' his brither, I daur to say, or I s' warran' ye there wud hae been a fine steer! It cam, she said—my auld auntie said—o' some kin' o' madness they haena a name for yet. I think mysel' there's a madness o' the hert as weel 's o' the heid; an' i' that madness men tak their women for a property o' their ain, to be han'led ony gait the deevil puts intil them. Cries i' the deid o' the nicht, an' never a shaw i' the mornin' but white cheeks an' reid een, tells its ain tale. I' the en', the puir leddy dee'd, 'at micht hae lived but for him; an' her bairnie dee'd afore her; an' the wrangs o' bairns an' women stick lang to the wa's o' the universe! It was said she cam efter him again;—I kenna; but I hae seen an' h'ard i' this hoose what—I s' haud my tongue aboot!—Sure I am he wasna a guid man to the puir wuman!—whan it comes to that, maister Grant, it's no my leddy an' mem, but we're a' women thegither! She dee'dna i' this hoose, I un'erstan'; but i' the hoose doon i' the toon—though that's neither here nor there. I wadna won'er but the conscience micht be waukin' up intil him! Some day it maun wauk up. He'll be sorry, maybe, whan he kens himsel' upo' the border whaur respec' o' persons is ower, an' a woman s' a guid 's a man—maybe a wheen better! The Lord 'll set a' thing richt, or han' 't ower til anither!"



CHAPTER LIV.

LADY ARCTURA'S ROOM.

The next day, when he saw lady Arctura, Donal was glad to learn that, for all the excitement of the day before, she had passed a good night, and never dreamed at all.

"I've been thinking it all over, my lady," he said, "and it seems to me that, if your uncle heard the noise of our plummet so near, the chimney can hardly rise from the floor you searched; for that room, you know, is half-way between the ground-floor and first floor. Still, sound does travel so! We must betake ourselves to measurement, I fear.—But another thing came into my head last night which may serve to give us a sort of parallax. You said you heard the music in your own room: would you let me look about in it a little? something might suggest itself!—Is it the room I saw you in once?"

"Not that," answered Arctura, "but the bedroom beyond it. I hear it sometimes in either room, but louder in the bedroom. You can examine it when you please.—If only you could find my bad dream, and drive it out!—Will you come now?"

"It is near the earl's room: is there no danger of his hearing anything?"

"Not the least. The room is not far from his, it is true, but it is not in the same block; there are thick walls between. Besides he is too ill to be up."

She led the way, and Donal followed her up the main staircase to the second floor, and into the small, curious, ancient room, evidently one of the oldest in the castle, which she had chosen for her sitting-room. Perhaps if she had lived less in the shadow, she might have chosen a less gloomy one: the sky was visible only through a little lane of walls and gables and battlements. But it was very charming, with its odd nooks and corners, recesses and projections. It looked an afterthought, the utilization of a space accidentally defined by rejection, as if every one of its sides were the wall of a distinct building.

"I do wish, my lady," said Donal, "you would not sit so much where is so little sunlight! Outer and inner things are in their origin one; the light of the sun is the natural world-clothing of the truth, and whoever sits much in the physical dark misses a great help to understanding the things of the light. If I were your director," he went on, "I would counsel you to change this room for one with a broad, fair outlook; so that, when gloomy thoughts hid God from you, they might have his eternal contradiction in the face of his heaven and earth."

"It is but fair to tell you," replied Arctura, "that Sophia would have had me do so; but while I felt about God as she taught me, what could the fairest sunlight be to me?"

"Yes, what indeed!" returned Donal. "Do you know," he added presently, his eyes straying about the room, "I feel almost as if I were trying to understand a human creature. A house is so like a human mind, which gradually disentangles and explains itself as you go on to know it! It is no accidental resemblance, for, as an unavoidable necessity, every house must be like those that built it."

"But in a very old house," said Arctura, "so many hands of so many generations have been employed in the building, and so many fancied as well as real necessities have been at work, that it must be a conflict of many natures."

"But where the house continues in the same family, the builders have more or less transmitted their nature, as well as their house, to those who come after them."

"Do you think then," said Arctura, almost with a shudder, "that I inherit a nature like the house left me—that the house is an outside to me—fits my very self as the shell fits the snail?"

"The relation of outer and inner is there, but there is given with it an infinite power to modify. Everyone is born nearer to God than to any ancestor, and it rests with him to cultivate either the godness or the selfness in him, his original or his mere ancestral nature. The fight between the natural and the spiritual man is the history of the world. The man who sets his faults inherited, makes atonement for the sins of those who went before him; he is baptized for the dead, not with water but with fire."

"That seems to me strange doctrine," said Arctura, with tremulous objection.

"If you do not like it, do not believe it. We inherit from our ancestors vices no more than virtues, but tendencies to both. Vice in my great-great-grandfather may in me be an impulse."

"How horrible!" cried Arctura.

"To say that we inherit sin from Adam, horrifies nobody: the source is so far back from us, that we let the stream fill our cisterns unheeded; but to say we inherit it from this or that nearer ancestor, causes the fact to assume its definite and individual reality, and make a correspondent impression."

"Then you allow that it is horrible to think oneself under the influence of the vices of certain wicked people, through whom we come where we are?"

"I would allow it, were it not that God is nearer to us than any vices, even were they our own; he is between us and those vices. But in us they are not vices—only possibilities, which become vices when they are yielded to. Then there are at the same time all sorts of counteracting and redeeming influences. It may be that wherein a certain ancestor was most wicked, his wife was especially lovely. He may have been cruel, and she tender as the hen that gathers her chickens under her wing. The main danger is perhaps, of being caught in some sudden gust of unsuspected impulse, and carried away of the one tendency before the other has time to assert and the will to rouse itself. But those who doubt themselves and try to do right may hope for warning. Such will not, I think, be allowed to go far out of the way for want of that. Self-confidence is the worst traitor."

"You comfort me a little."

"And then you must remember," continued Donal, "that nothing in its immediate root is evil; that from best human roots worst things spring. No one, for instance, will be so full of indignation, of fierceness, of revenge, as the selfish man born with a strong sense of justice.—But you say this is not the room in which you hear the music best?"

"No, it is here."



CHAPTER LV.

HER BED-CHAMBER.

Lady Arctura opened the door of her bedroom. Donal glanced round it. It was as old-fashioned as the other.

"What is behind that press there—wardrobe, I think you call it?" he asked.

"Only a recess," answered lady Arctura. "The press, I am sorry to say, is too high to get into it."

Possibly had the press stood in the recess, the latter would have suggested nothing; but having caught sight of the opening behind the press, Donal was attracted by it. It was in the same wall with the fireplace, but did not seem formed by the projection of the chimney, for it did not go to the ceiling.

"Would you mind if I moved the wardrobe a little on one side?" he asked.

"Do what you like," she answered.

Donal moved it, and found the recess rather deep for its size. The walls of the room were wainscotted to the height of four feet or so, but the recess was bare. There were signs of hinges on one, and of a bolt on the other of the front edges: it had seemingly been once a closet, whose door continued the wainscot. There were no signs of shelves in it; the plaster was smooth.

But Donal was not satisfied. He took a big knife from his pocket, and began tapping all round. The moment he came to the right-hand side, there was a change in the sound.

"You don't mind if I make a little dust, my lady?" he said.

"Do anything you please," answered Arctura.

He sought in several places to drive the point of his knife into the plaster; it would nowhere enter it more than a quarter of an inch: here was no built wall, he believed, but one smooth stone. He found nothing like a joint till he came near the edge of the recess: there was a limit of the stone, and he began at once to clear it. It gave him a straight line from the bottom to the top of the recess, where it met another at right angles.

"There does seem, my lady," he said, "to be some kind of closing up here, though it may of course turn out of no interest to us! Shall I go on, and see what it is?"

"By all means," she answered, but turned pale as she spoke.

Donal looked at her anxiously. She understood his look.

"You must not mind my feeling a little silly," she said. "I am not silly enough to give way to it."

He went on again with his knife, and had presently cleared the outlines of a stone that filled nearly all the side of the recess. He paused.

"Go on! go on!" said Arctura.

"I must first get a better tool or two," answered Donal. "Will you mind being left?"

"I can bear it. But do not be long. A few minutes may evaporate my courage."

Donal hurried away to get a hammer and chisel, and a pail to put the broken plaster in. Lady Arctura stood and waited. The silence closed in upon her. She began to feel eerie. She felt as if she had but to will and see through the wall to what lay beyond it. To keep herself from so willing, she had all but reduced herself to mental inaction, when she started to her feet with a smothered cry: a knock not over gentle sounded on the door of the outer room. She darted to the bedroom-door and flung it to—next to the press, and with one push had it nearly in its place. Then she opened again the door, thinking to wait for a second knock on the other before she answered. But as she opened the inner, the outer door also opened—slowly—and a face looked in. She would rather have had a visitor from behind the press! It was her uncle; his face cadaverous; his eyes dull, but with a kind of glitter in them; his look like that of a housebreaker. In terror of himself, in terror lest he should discover what they had been about, in terror lest Donal should appear, wishing to warn the latter, and certain that, early as it was, her uncle was not himself, with intuitive impulse, the moment she saw him, she cried out,

"Uncle! what is that behind you?"

She felt afterwards, and was very sorry, that it was both a deceitful and cruel thing to do; but she did it, as I have said, by a swift, unreflecting instinct—which she concluded, in thinking about it, came from the ready craft of some ancestor, and illustrated what Donal had been saying.

The earl turned like one struck on the back, imagined something of which Arctura knew nothing, cowered to two-thirds of his height, and crept away. Though herself trembling from head to foot, Arctura was seized with such a pity, that she followed him to his room; but she dared not go in. She stood a moment in the passage within sight of his door, and thought she heard his bell ring. Now Simmons might meet Donal! In a moment or two, however, she was relieved. Donal came round a turn, carrying his implements. She signed to him to make haste, and he was just safe inside her room when Simmons came along on his way to his master's. She drew the door to, as if she had been just coming out, and said,

"Knock at my door as you return, and tell me how your master is: I heard his bell."

She then begged Donal to go on with his work, but stop it the moment she made a noise with the handle of the door, and resumed her place outside till Simmons should re-appear. Full ten minutes she stood waiting: it seemed an hour. Though she heard Donal at work within, and knew Simmons must soon come, though the room behind her was her own, and familiar to her from childhood, the long empty passage in front of her appeared frightful. What might not come pacing along towards her! At last she heard her uncle's door—steps—and the butler approached. She shook the handle of the door, and Donal's blows ceased.

"I can't make him out, my lady!" said Simmons. "It is nothing very bad, I think, this time; but he gets worse and worse—always taking more and more o' them horrid drugs. It's no use trying to hide it: he'll drop off sudden one o' these days! I've heard say laudanum don't shorten life; but it's not one nor two, nor half a dozen sorts o' laudanums he keeps mixing in that poor inside o' his! The end must come, and what will it be? It's better you should be prepared for it when it do come, my lady. I've just been a giving of him some into his skin—with a little sharp-pointed thing, a syringe, you know, my lady: he says it's the only way to take some medicines. He's just a slave to his medicines, my lady!"

As soon as he was gone, Arctura returned to Donal. He had knocked the plaster away, and uncovered a slab, very like one of the great stones on some of the roofs. The next thing was to prize it from the mortar, and that was not difficult. The instant he drew the stone away, a dank chill assailed them, accompanied by a humid smell, as from a long-closed cellar. They stood and looked, now at each other, now at the opening in the wall, where was nothing but darkness. The room grew cold and colder. Donal was anxious as to how Arctura might stand what discovery lay before them, and she was anxious to read his sensations. For her sake he tried to hide all expression of the awe that was creeping over him, and it gave him enough to do.

"We are not far from something, my lady!" he said. "It makes one think of what He said who carries the light everywhere—that there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Shall we leave it for the present?"

"Anything but that!" said Arctura with a shiver; "—anything but an unknown terrible something!"

"But what can you do with it?"

"Let the daylight in upon it."

Her colour returned as she spoke, and a look of determination came into her eyes.

"You will not be afraid to be left then when I go down?"

"I am cowardly enough to be afraid, but not cowardly enough to let you go alone. I will share with you. I shall not be afraid—not much—not too much, I mean—if I am with you."

Donal hesitated.

"See!" she went on, "I am going to light a candle, and ask you to come down with me—if down it be: it may be up!"

"I am ready, my lady," said Donal.

She lighted the candle.

"Had we not better lock the door, my lady?"

"That might set them wondering," she answered. "We should have to lock both the doors of this room, or else both the passage-doors! The better way will be to pull the press after us when we are behind it."

"You are right, my lady. Please take some matches with you."

"To be sure."

"You will carry the candle, please. I must have my hands free. Try to let the light shine past me as much as you can, that I may see where I am going. But I shall depend most on my hands and feet."



CHAPTER LVI.

THE LOST ROOM.

Donal then took the light from her hand, and looked in. The opening went into the further wall and turned immediately to the left. He gave her back the candle, and went in. Arctura followed close.

There was a stair in the thickness of the wall, going down steep and straight. It was not wide enough to let them go abreast. "Put your hand on my shoulder, my lady," said Donal. "That will keep us together. If I fall, you must stand stock-still."

She put her hand on his shoulder, and they began their descent. The steps were narrow and high, therefore the stair was steep They had gone down from thirty to thirty-five steps, when they came to a level passage, turning again at right angles to the left. It was twice the width of the stair. Its sides, like those of the stair, were of roughly dressed stones, and unplastered. It led them straight to a strong door. It was locked, and in the rusty lock they could see the key from within. To the right was another door, a smaller one, which stood wide open. They went through, and by a short passage entered an opener space. Here on one side there seemed to be no wall, and they stood for a moment afraid to move lest they should tumble into darkness. But sending the light about, and feeling with hands and feet, they soon came to an idea of the place they were in. It was a little gallery, with arches on one side opening into a larger place, the character of which they could only conjecture, for nearly all they could determine was, that it went below and rose above where they stood. On the other side was a plain wall, such as they had had on both sides of them.

They had been speaking in awe-filled whispers, and were now in silence endeavouring to send their sight through the darkness beyond the arches.

"Listen, my lady," said Donal.

>From above their heads came a chord of the aerial music, soft and faint and wild! A strange effect it had! it was like news of the still airy night and the keen stars, come down through secret ways into the dark places of the earth, from spaces so wide that they seem the most awful of prisons! It sweetly fostered Arctura's courage.

"That must be how the songs of angels sounded, with news of high heaven, to the people of old!" she said.

Donal was not in so high a mood. He was occupied at the moment with the material side of things.

"We can't be far," he said, "from the place where our plummet came down! But let us try a little further."

The next moment they came against a cord, and at their feet was the weight of the clock.

At the other end of the little gallery they came again to a door and again to a stair, turning to the right; and again they went down. Arctura kept up bravely. The air was not so bad as might have been feared, though it was cold and damp. This time they descended but a little way, and came to a landing place, on the right of which was a door. Donal raised a rusty latch and pushed; the door swung open against the wall, dropping from one hinge with the slight shock. Two steps more they descended, and stood on a stone floor.

Donal thought at first they must be in one of the dungeons, but soon bethought himself that they had not descended far enough for that.

A halo of damp surrounded their candle; its weak light seemed scarcely to spread beyond it; for some moments they took in nothing of what was around them. The floor first began to reveal itself to Donal's eye: in the circle of the light he saw, covered with dust as it was, its squares of black and white marble. Then came to him a gleam of white from the wall; it was a tablet; and at the other end was something like an altar, or a tomb.

"We are in the old chapel of the castle!" he said. "—But what is that?" he added instantly with an involuntary change of voice, and a shudder through his whole nervous being.

Arctura turned; her hand sought his and clasped it convulsively. They stood close to something which the light itself had concealed from them. Ere they were conscious of an idea concerning it, each felt the muscles of neck and face drawn, as if another power than their own invaded their persons. But they were live wills, and would not be overcome. They forced their gaze; perception cleared itself; and slowly they saw and understood.

With strangest dream-like incongruity and unfitness, the thing beside them was a dark bedstead, with carved posts and low wooden tester, richly carved!—This in the middle of a chapel!—But there was no speculation in them; they could only see, not think. Donal took the candle. From the tester hung large pieces of stuff that had once made heavy curtains, but seemed hardly now to have as much cohesion as the dust on a cobweb; it held together only in virtue of the lightness to which decay had reduced it. On the bed lay a dark mass, like bed clothes and bedding not quite turned to dust—they could yet see something like embroidery in one or two places—dark like burnt paper or half-burnt flaky rags, horrid as a dream of dead love!

Heavens! what was that shape in the middle?—what was that on the black pillow?—what was that thick line stretching towards one of the head-posts? They stared speechless. Arctura pressed close to Donal. His arm went round her to protect her from what threatened almost to overwhelm himself—the inroad of an unearthly horror. Plain to the eyes of both, the form in the middle of the bed was that of a human body, slowly crumbling where it lay. Bed and blankets and quilt, sheets and pillows had crumbled with it through the long wasting years, but something of its old shape yet lingered with the dust: that was a head that lay on the pillow; that was the line of a long arm that pointed across the pillow to the post.—What was that hanging from the bedpost and meeting the arm? God in heaven! there was a staple in the post, and from the staple came a chain!—and there at its other end a ring, lying on the pillow!—and through it—yes through it, the dust-arm passed!—This was no mere death-bed; it was a torture bed—most likely a murder-bed; and on it yet lay the body that died on it—had lain for hundreds of years, unlifted for kindly burial: the place of its decease had been made its tomb—closed up and hidden away!

A bed in a chapel, and one dead thereon!—how could it be? Had the woman—for Donal imagined the form yet showed it the body of a woman—been carried thither of her own desire, to die in a holy place? That could not be: there was the chain! Had she sought refuge there from some persecutor? If so, he has found her! She was a captive—mad perhaps, more likely hated and the victim of a terrible revenge; left, probably enough, to die of hunger, or disease—neglected or tended, who could tell? One thing, only was clear—that there she died, and there she was buried!

Arctura was trembling. Donal drew her closer, and would have taken her away. But she said in his ear, as if in dread of disturbing the dust,

"I am not frightened—not very. It is only the cold, I think."

They went softly to the other end of the chapel, almost clinging together as they went. They saw three narrow lancet windows on their right, but no glimmer came through them.

They came to what had seemed an altar, and such it still seemed. But on its marble-top lay the dust plainly of an infant—sight sad as fearful, and full of agonizing suggestion! They turned away, nor either looked at the other. The awful silence of the place seemed settling on them like a weight. Donal made haste, nor did Arctura seem less anxious to leave it.

When they reached the stair, he made her go first: he must be between her and the terror! As they passed the door on the other side of the little gallery—down whose spiracle had come no second breath—Donal said to himself he must question that door, but to Arctura he said nothing: she had had enough of inquiry for the moment!

Slowly they ascended to Arctura's chamber. Donal replaced the slab, and propped it in its position; gathered the plaster into the pail; replaced the press, and put a screw through the bottom of it into the floor. Arctura stood and watched him all the time.

"You must leave your room again, my lady!" said Donal.

"I will. I shall speak to mistress Brookes at once."

"Will you tell her all about it?"

"We must talk about that!"

"How will she bear it," thought Donal; "how after such an experience, can she spend the rest of the day alone? There is all the long afternoon and evening to be met!"

He gave the last turn to the screw in the floor, and rose. Then first he saw that Arctura had turned very white.

"Do sit down, my lady!" he said. "I would run for mistress Brookes, but I dare not leave you."

"No, no; we will go down together! Give me that bottle of eau de Cologne, please."

Donal did not know either eau de Cologne or its bottle, but he darted to the dressing-table and guessed correctly. It revived her, and she began to take deep breaths. Then with a strong effort she rose to go down.

The time for speech concerning what they had seen, was not come!

"Would you not like, my lady," said Donal, "to come to the schoolroom this afternoon? You could sit beside while I give Davie his lessons!"

"Yes," she answered at once; "I should like it much!—Is there not something you could give me to do?—Will you not teach me something?"

"I should like to begin you with Greek, and teach you a little mathematics—geometry first of all."

"You frighten me!"

"Your fright wouldn't outlast the beginning," said Donal. "Anyhow, you will have Davie and me for company! You must be lonely sometimes! You see little of Miss Carmichael now, I fancy."

"She has not been near me since that day in the avenue! We salute now and then coming out of church. She will not come again except I ask her; and I shall be in no haste: she would only assume I was sorry, and could not do without her!"

"I should let her wait, my lady!" said Donal. "She sorely wants humbling!"

"You do not know her, Mr. Grant, if you think anything I could do would have that effect on her."

"Pardon me, my lady; I did not imagine it your task to humble her! But you need not let her ride over you as she used to do; she knows nothing really, and a great many things unreally. Unreal knowledge is worse than ignorance.—Would not Miss Graeme be a better friend?"

"She is much more lovable; but she does not trouble her head about the things I care for.—I mean religion," she added hesitatingly.

"So much the better,—"

"Mr. Grant!"

"You did not let me finish, my lady!—So much the better, I was going to say, till she begins to trouble her heart about it—or rather to untrouble her heart with it! The pharisee troubled his head, and no doubt his conscience too, and did not go away justified; but the poor publican, as we with our stupid pity would call him, troubled his heart about it; and that trouble once set a going, there is no fear. Head and all must soon follow.—But how am I to get rid of this plaster without being seen?"

"I will show you the way to your own stair without going down—the way we came once, you may remember. You can take it to the top of the house till it is dark.—But I do not feel comfortable about my uncle's visit. Can it be that he suspects something? Perhaps he knows all about the chapel—and that stair too!"

"He is a man to enjoy having a secret!—But our discovery bears out what we were saying as to the likeness of house and man—does it not?"

"You don't mean there is anything like that in me?" rejoined Arctura, looking frightened.

"You!" he exclaimed. "—But I mean no individual application," he added, "except as reflected from the general truth. This house is like every human soul, and so, like me and you and all of us. We have found the chapel of the house, the place they used to pray to God in, built up, lost, forgotten, filled with dust and damp—and the mouldering dead lying there before the Lord, waiting to be made live again and praise him!"

"I said you meant me!" murmured Arctura, with a faint, sad smile.

"No; the time is past for that. It is long since first you were aware of the dead self in the lost chapel; a hungry soul soon misses both, and knows, without being sure of it, that they are somewhere. You have kept searching for them in spite of all persuasion that the quest was foolish."

Arctura's eyes shone in her pale face; but they shone with gathering tears. Donal turned away, and took up the pail. She rose, and guided him to his tower-stair, where he went up and she went down.



CHAPTER LVII.

THE HOUSEKEEPER'S ROOM.

As the clock upon the schoolroom chimney-piece struck the hour, Arctura entered, and at once took her seat at the table with Davie—much to the boy's wonder and pleasure. Donal gave her a Euclid, and set her a task: she began at once to learn it—and after a while so brief that Davie stared incredulous, said,

"If you please, Mr. Grant, I think I could be questioned upon it now."

Less than a minute sufficed to show Donal that she thoroughly understood what she had been learning, and he set her then a little more. By the time their work was over he had not a doubt left that suchlike intellectual occupation would greatly subserve all phases of her health. With entireness she gave herself to the thing she had to do; and Donal thought how strong must be her nature, to work so calmly, and think so clearly, after what she had gone through that morning.

School over, and Davie gone to his rabbits.

"Mistress Brookes invites us to supper with her," said lady Arctura. "I asked her to ask us. I don't want to go to bed till I am quite sleepy. You don't mind, do you?"

"I am very glad, my lady," responded Donal.

"Don't you think we had better tell her all about it?"

"As you think fit. The secret is in no sense mine; it is only yours; and the sooner it ceases to be a secret the better for all of us!"

"I have but one reason for keeping it," she returned.

"Your uncle?"

"Yes; I know he will be annoyed. But there may be other reasons why I should reveal the thing."

"There may indeed!" said Donal.

"Still, I should be sorry to offend him more than I cannot help. If he were a man like my father, I should never dream of going against him; I should in fact leave everything to him he cared to attend to. But seeing he is the man he is, it would be absurd. I dare not let him manage my affairs for me much longer. I must understand for myself how things are going."

"You will not, I hope, arrange anything without the presence of a lawyer! I fear I have less confidence in your uncle than you have!"

Arctura made no reply, and Donal was afraid he had hurt her; but the next moment she looked up with a sad smile, and said,

"Well, poor man! we will not compare our opinions of him: he is my father's brother, and I shall be glad not to offend him. But my father would have reason to be dissatisfied if I left everything to my uncle as if he had not left everything to me. If he had been another sort of man, my father would surely have left the estate to him!"

At nine o'clock they met in the housekeeper's room—low-ceiled, large, lined almost round with oak presses, which were mistress Brookes's delight. She welcomed them as to her own house, and made an excellent hostess.

But Donal would not mix the tumbler of toddy she would have had him take. For one thing he did not like his higher to be operated upon from his lower: it made him feel as if possessed by a not altogether real self. But the root of his objection lay in the teaching of his mother. The things he had learned of his parents were to him his patent of nobility, vouchers that he was honourably descended: of his birth he was as proud as any man. And hence this night he was led to talk of his father and mother, and the things of his childhood. He told Arctura all about the life he had led; how at one time he kept cattle in the fields, at another sheep on the mountains; how it came that he was sent to college, and all the story of sir Gibbie. The night wore on. Arctura listened—did nothing but listen; she was enchanted. And it surprised Donal himself to find how calmly he could now look back upon what had seemed to threaten an everlasting winter of the soul. It was indeed the better thing that Ginevra should be Gibbie's wife!

A pause had come, and he had fallen into a brooding memory of things gone by, when a sudden succession of quick knocks fell on his ear. He started—strangely affected. Neither of his companions took notice of it, though it was now past one o'clock. It was like a knocking with knuckles against the other side of the wall of the room.

"What can that be?" he said, listening for more.

"H'ard ye never that 'afore, maister Grant?" said the housekeeper. "I hae grown sae used til't my ears hardly tak notice o' 't!"

"What is it?" asked Donal.

"Ay, what is't? Tell ye me that gien ye can!" she returned "It's jist a chappin', an' God's trowth it's a' I ken aboot the same! It comes, I believe I'm safe to say, ilka nicht; but I couldna tak my aith upo' 't, I hae sae entirely drappit peyin' ony attention til't. There's things aboot mony an auld hoose, maister Grant, 'at'll tak the day o' judgment to explain them. But sae lang as they keep to their ain side o' the wa', I dinna see I need trible my heid aboot them. Efter the experrience I had as a yoong lass, awa' doon in Englan' yon'er, at a place my auntie got me intil—for she kenned a heap o' gran' fowk throuw bein' hersel' sae near conneckit wi' them as hoosekeeper i' the castel here—efter that, I'm sayin,' I wadna need to be that easy scaret?"