e
got it first by raiding in some Appin stye, as Petullo my doer down-by
says. He is like most men of his trade, Petullo; he is ready to make his
treasonable joke even against the people who pay him wages, and I know
he gets the wages of the Duke as well as my fees. I'm going down to
transact some of the weary old business with him just now, and I'll hint
at your coming. A Bordeaux wine merchant--it will seem more like the
thing than the fish dealer."

"And I know a good deal more about wine than about fish," laughed Count
Victor, "so it will be safer."

"I think you would be best to have been coming to the town when the
Macfarlanes attacked you, killed your horse, and chased you into my
place. That's the most plausible story we can tell, and it has the
virtue of being true in every particular, without betraying that Bethune
or friendship for myself was in any part of it."

"I can leave it all to your astuteness," said Montaiglon.

The Baron was absent, as he had suggested was possible, all day. The
afternoon was spent by Count Victor in a dull enough fashion, for even
Mungo seemed morose in his master's absence, perhaps overweighted by the
mysteries now left to his charge, disinclined to talk of anything except
the vast wars in which his ancestors had shone with blinding splendour,
and of the world beyond the confines of Doom. But even his store of
reminiscence became exhausted, and Count Victor was left to his own
resources. Back again to his seat on the rock he went, and again to the
survey of the mainland that seemed so strangely different a clime from
this where nothing dwelt but secrecy and decay.

In the afternoon the traffic on the highway had ceased, for the burgh
now held all of that wide neighbourhood that had leisure, or any excuse
of business to transact in the place where a great event was happening.
The few that moved in the sun of the day were, with but one exception,
bound for the streets; the exception naturally created some wonder on
the part of Count Victor.

For it was a man in the dress (to judge at a distance) of a gentleman,
and his action was singular. He was riding a jet-black horse of larger
stature than any that the rustics and farmers who had passed earlier
in the day bestrode, and he stood for a time half-hidden among trees
opposite the place where Count Victor reclined on a patch of grass among
whin-bushes. Obviously he did not see Montaiglon, to judge from the
calmness of his scrut