ll that's left of what we
burned in fiery living and hot law-pleas. We have the ash and the others
have warm hands."

Count Victor, who had been warming his chilled fingers at the fire,
moved to the curtain and drew it back, the better again to see that
doleful cinerary urn.

His host rose hurriedly from his chair.

"Trash! trash! Only trash, and dear bought at that," said he, seeing his
guest's boot-toe push the papers in with a dainty man's fastidiousness.

But the deed was done before the implied protest was attended. The
Count's movements revealed a Highland dagger concealed beneath one
of the parchments! It was a discovery of no importance in a Highland
castle, where, in spite of the proscription of weapons, there might
innocently be something so common as a dagger left; but a half-checked
cry from the Baron stirred up again all Count Victor's worst suspicions.

He looked at Doom, and saw his face was hot with some confusion, and
that his tongue stammered upon an excuse his wits were not alert enough
to make.

He stooped and picked up the weapon--an elegant instrument well adorned
with silver on the hilt and sheath; caught it at the point, and, leaning
the hilt upon his left wrist in the manner of the courtier slightly
exaggerated, and true to the delicacies of the _salle-d'armes_,
proffered it to the owner.

Doom laughed in some confusion. "Ah!" said he, lamely, "Mungo's been
at his dusting again," and he tried to restore the easiness of the
conversation that the incident had so strangely marred.

But Montaiglon could not so speedily restore his equanimity. For the
unknown who had so unceremoniously brushed against him on the dark stair
had been attired in tartan clothes. It had been a bare knee that had
touched him on the leg; it had been a plaid-fringe that had brushed
across his face; and his knuckles had been rapped lightly by the
protuberances upon the sheath and hilt of a mountain dagger. M. le
Baron's proscription of arms seemed to have some strange exceptions,
he told himself. They were not only treated with contempt by the
Macfarlanes, but even in Doom Castle, whose owner affected to look upon
the garb of his ancestors as something well got rid of. For the life of
him, Count Victor could not disassociate the thought of that mysterious
figure on the stair, full clad in all Highland panoply against the
law, and the men--the broken men--who had shot his pony in the wood and
attempted to rob him. Al