heltered below its hilly ramparts. As he had walked to
this place he had noticed that where yesterday had been an empty sea was
now a fleet of fishing-boats scurrying in a breeze off land, setting out
upon their evening travail--a heartening spectacle; and that on either
side of him--once the squalid huts of Doom were behind--was a more
dainty country with cultivated fields well-fenced, and so he was not
wholly unprepared for the noble view revealed when he turned the point
of land that hid the policies of MacCailen Mor.

But yet the sight somewhat stunned. In all his notions of Drimdarroch's
habitation, since he had seen the poverty of Doom, he had taken his idea
from the baron's faded splendour, and had ludicrously underestimated
the importance of Argyll's court and the difficulty of finding his man.
Instead of a bleak bare country-side, with the ducal seat a mean
tower in the midst of it, he saw a wide expanse of thickly-wooded and
inhabitable country speckled for miles with comfortable dwellings, the
castle itself a high embattled structure, clustered round by a town of
some dimensions, and at its foot a harbour, where masts were numerous
and smoke rose up in clouds.

Here was, plainly, a different society from Doom; here was something
of what the exiled chiefs had bragged of in their cups. The Baron had
suggested no more than a dozen of cadets about the place. _Grand Dieu!_
there must be a regiment in and about this haughty palace, with its
black and yellow banner streaming in the wind, and to seek Drimdarroch
there and round that busy neighbourhood seemed a task quite hopeless.

For long he stood on the nose of land, gazing with a thousand
speculations at where probably lay his prey; and when he returned to
the castle of Doom it looked all the more savage and inhospitable in
contrast with the lordly domicile he had seen. What befell him there on
his return was so odd and unexpected that it clean swept his mind again
of every interest in the spy.

CHAPTER VIII -- AN APPARITION

The tide in his absence had come in around the rock of Doom, and he must
signal for Mungo's ferry. Long and loud he piped, but there was at first
no answer; and when at last the little servitor appeared, it was to
look who called, and then run back with a haste no way restrained by any
sense of garrison punctilio. He was not long gone, but when he came
down again to the boat his preparations for crossing took up an
unconscionable