e picked it up without a word, to keep
it as a souvenir. Doom preceded him into the room, lit some candles
hurriedly at the smouldering fire, and turned to offer him a chair.

"Our--our friends are gone," said he. "You seem to have badly wounded
one of them, for the others carried him bleeding to the water-side, as
we have seen from his blood-marks on the rock: they have gone, as they
apparently must have come, by boat. Sit down, Olivia."

His daughter had entered. She had hurriedly coiled her hair up, and the
happy carelessness of it pleased Montaiglon's eye like a picture.

Still he said nothing; he could not trust himself to speak, facing, as
he fancied yet he did, a traitor.

"I see from your face you must still be dubious of me," said Doom.
He waited for no reply, but paced up and down the room excitedly,
the pleats of his kilt and the thongs of his purse swinging to his
movements: a handsome figure, as Mont-aiglon could not but confess. "I
am still shattered at the nerve to think that I had almost taken your
life there in a fool's blunder. You must wonder to see me in this--in
this costume."

He could not even yet come to his explanation, and Olivia must help him.

"What my father would tell you, if he was not in such a trouble, Count
Victor, is what I did my best to let you know last night. It is just
that he breaks the laws of George the king in this small affair of our
Highland tartan. It is a fancy of his to be wearing it in an evening,
and the bats in the chapel upstairs are too blind to know what a rebel
it is that must be play-acting old days and old styles among them."

A faint light came suddenly to Count Victor.

"Ah!" said he, "it is not, mademoiselle, that the bats alone are blind;
here is a very blind Montaiglon. I implore your pardon, M. le Baron. It
is good to be frank, though it is sometimes unpleasant, and I must plead
guilty to an imbecile misapprehension."

Doom flushed, and took the proffered hand.

"My good Montaiglon," said he, "I'm the most shamefaced man this day
in the shire of Argyll. Need I be telling you that I have all Olivia's
sentiment and none of her honest courage?"

"My dear father!" cried Olivia fondly, looking with melting eyes at
her parent; and Count Victor, too, thought this mummer no inadmirable
figure.

"It is nothing more than my indulgence in the tartan that makes your
host look sometimes scarcely trustworthy; and my secret got its right
punishment this nigh