y dark, for clouds obscured the
stars, and the air was laden with the saline odour of the wrack below
high-water mark. The tide was out. What he had expected was to see Mungo
and his master, but behind the castle where they should have been there
was no one, and the voices he heard had come from the side next the
shore. He listened a little and took alarm, for it was not one voice but
the voices of several people he heard, and in the muffled whispers of
men upon some dishonest adventure. At once he recalled the Macfarlanes
and the surmise of Baron Doom that in two nights they might be crying
their slogan round the walls that harboured their enemy. He ran hastily
back to the house, quickly resumed the sword that had proved little use
to him before, took up the more businesslike pistol that had spoiled the
features of the robber with the bladder-like head, and rushed downstairs
again.

"_Qui est la?_" he demanded as he passed round the end of the house and
saw dimly on the rock a group of men who had crossed upon the ebb. His
appearance was apparently unexpected, for he seemed to cause surprise
and a momentary confusion. Then a voice cried "Loch Sloy!" and the
company made a rush to bear him down.

He withdrew hastily behind the wall of the garden where he had them at
advantage. As he faced round, the assailants, by common consent, left
one man to do his business. He was a large, well-built man, so far
as might be judged in the gloom of the night, and he was attired in
Highland clothes. The first of his acts was to throw off a plaid that
muffled his shoulders; then he snapped a futile pistol, and fell back
upon his sword, with which he laid out lustily.

In the dark it was impossible to make pretty fighting of the encounter.
The Frenchman saw the odds too much against him, and realised the
weakness of his flank; he lunged hurriedly through a poor guard of his
opponent's, and pierced the fleshiness of the sword-arm. The man growled
an oath, and Count Victor retreated.

Mungo, with a blanched face, was trembling in the entrance, and a woman
was shrieking upstairs. The hall, lit by a flambeau that Mungo held
in one hand, while the other held a huge horse-pistol, looked like the
entrance to a dungeon,--something altogether sinister and ugly to the
foreigner, who had the uneasy notion that he fought for his life in
a prison. And the shrieks aloft rang wildly through the night like
something in a story he had once read, wit