n
neighbourly terms with Argyll, and would thus be in a position to put
him in touch with the castle of the Duke and the retinue there without
creating any suspicion as to the nature of his mission. It was that he
had depended on, and to no other quarter could he turn with a hope of
being put into communication with the person he sought. But Doom was
apparently quite unqualified to be an aid to him. He was, it seemed, at
variance with his Grace on account of one of those interminable lawsuits
with which the Gaelic chiefs, debarred from fighting in the wholesome
old manner with the sword, indulged their contestful passions, and
he presented first of all a difficulty that Count Victor in his most
hopeless moments had never allowed for--he did not know the identity of
the man sought for, and he questioned if it could easily be established.
All these considerations determined Count Victor upon an immediate
removal from this starven castle and this suspicious host. But when
he joined Doom in the _salle_ he constrained his features to a calm
reserve, showing none of his emotions.

He found the Baron seated by the fire, and ready to take a suspiciously
loud but abstracted interest in his ramble.

"Well, Count," said he, "ye've seen the castle of the King o' the
Hielan's, as we call him, have you? And what think ye of MacCailen's
quarters?"

Montaiglon lounged to a chair, threw a careless glance at his
interrogator, pulled the ever upright moustache, and calmly confessed
them charming.

A bitter smile came on the face of his host. "They might well be that,"
said he. "There's many a picking there." And then he became garrulous
upon the tale of his house and family, that seemed to have been dogged
by misfortune for a century and a half; that had owned once many of
these lush glens, the shoulders of these steep bens, the shores of that
curving coast. Bit by bit that ancient patrimony had sloughed off
in successive generations, lost to lust, to the gambler's folly, the
spendthrift's weakness.

"Hard, is it not?" questioned his host. "I'm the man that should have
Doom at its very best, for I could bide among my people here, and like
them, and make them like me, without a thought of rambling about the
world. 'Mildewing with a ditch between you and life' my grandfather used
to call it, when old age took him back from his gaieties abroad. Faith!
I wish I had the chance to do it better than I may. All's here I ever
wanted of life