shoulders with a momentary
comprehension of how laughable must that sacrament be in the eyes of
the worldly Sim MacTaggart. He splashed the water on his lips, drew on a
cloak, blew out the light, and went softly downstairs and out at a side
door for which he had a pass-key. The night was still, except for the
melancholy sound of the river running over its cascades and echoing
under the two bridges; odours of decaying leaves surrounded him, and the
air of the night touched him on his hot face like a benediction. A heavy
dew clogged the grass of Cairnbaan as he made for the stables, where a
man stood out in the yard waiting with a black horse saddled. Without a
word he mounted and rode, the hoofs thudding dull on the grass. He left
behind him the castle, quite dark and looming in its nest below the
sentinel hill; he turned the bay; the town revealed a light or two;
a bird screamed on the ebb shore. Something of all he saw and heard
touched a fine man in his cloak, touched a decent love in him; his heart
was full with wholesome joyous ichor; and he sang softly to the creaking
saddle, sang an air of good and clean old Gaelic sentiment that haunted
his lips until he came opposite the very walls of Doom.

He fastened his horse to a young hazel and crossed the sandy interval
between the mainland and the rock, sea-wrack bladders bursting under his
feet, and the smells of seaweed dominant over the odours of the winter
wood. The tower was pitch dark. He went into the bower, sat on the
rotten seat among the damp bedraggled strands of climbing flowers, and
took his flageolet from his pocket.

He played softly, breathing in the instrument the very pang of love.
It might have been a psalm and this forsaken dew-drenched bower a great
cathedral, so rapt, so devoted, his spirit as he sought to utter the
very deepest ecstasy. Into the reed he poured remembrance and regret;
the gathered nights of riot and folly lived and sorrowed for; the ideals
cherished and surrendered; the remorseful sinner, the awakened soul.

No one paid any heed in Castle Doom.

That struck him suddenly with wonder, as he ceased his playing for a
moment and looked through the broken trellis to see the building black
below the starry sky. There ought, at least, to be a light in the window
of Olivia's room. She had made the tryst herself, and never before had
she failed to keep it. Perhaps she had not heard him. And so to his
flageolet again, finding a consolation