t is held to the ear. And Count Victor, finding all his pleasant
anticipations of the character of this baronial dwelling utterly
erroneous, mentally condemned Bethune to perdition as he stumbled behind
the little grotesque aping the soldier's pompous manner.

The door that lent what illumination there was to his entrance was
held half open by a man who cast at the visitor a glance wherein were
surprise and curiosity.

"The Monsher de Montaiglon frae France," announced Mungo, stepping aside
still with the soldier's mechanical precision, and standing by the door
to give dignity to the introduction and the entrance.

The Baron may have flushed for the overdone formality of his servant
when he saw the style of his visitor, standing with a Kevenhuller cocked
hat in one hand and fondling the upturned moustache with the other;
something of annoyance at least was in his tone as he curtly dismissed
the man and gave admission to the stranger, on whom he turned a
questioning and slightly embarrassed countenance, handing him one of the
few chairs in the most sparsely furnished of rooms.

"You are welcome, sir," he said simply in a literal rendering of his
native Gaelic phrase; "take your breath. And you will have refreshment?"

Count Victor protested no, but his host paid no heed. "It is the custom
of the country," said he, making for a cupboard and fumbling among
glasses, giving, as by a good host's design, the stranger an opportunity
of settling down to his new surroundings--a room ill-furnished as a
monk's cell, lit by narrow windows, two of them looking to the sea and
one along the coast, though not directly on it, windows sunk deep in
massive walls built for a more bickering age than this. Count Victor
took all in at a glance and found revealed to him in a flash the
colossal mendacity of all the Camerons, Macgregors, and Macdonalds who
had implied, if they had not deliberately stated, over many games
of piquet or lansquenet at Cammercy, the magnificence of the typical
Highland stronghold.

The Baron had been reading; at least beside the chair drawn up to a fire
of peat that perfumed the apartment lay a book upon a table, and it
was characteristic of the Count, who loved books as he loved sport, and
Villon above all, that he should strain his eyes a little and tilt his
head slightly to see what manner of literature prevailed in these wilds.
And the book gave him great cheer, for it was an old French folio
of arms, "_Les