Arts de l'Homme d'Epee; ou, Le Dictionnaire du
Gentilhomme_," by one Sieur de Guille. Doom Castle was a curious place,
but apparently Hugh Bethune was in the right when he described its
master as "ane o' the auld gentry, wi' a tattie and herrin' to his
dejeune, but a scholar's book open against the ale-jug." A poor Baron
(of a vastly different state from the Baron of France), English spoken
too, with not much of the tang of the heather in his utterance though
droll of his idiom, hospitable (to judge from the proffered glass still
being fumbled for in the cupboard), a man who had been in France on the
right side, a reader of the _beau langage_, and a student of the lore of
_arme blanche_--come, here was luck!

And the man himself? He brought forward his spirits in a bottle of
quaint Dutch cut, with hollow pillars at each of its four corners and
two glasses extravagantly tall of stem, and he filled out the drams upon
the table, removing with some embarrassment before he did so the book
of arms. It surprised Count Victor that he should not be in the native
tartan of the Scots Highlander. Instead he wore a demure coat and
breeches of some dark fabric, and a wig conferred on him all the more of
the look of a lowland merchant than of a chief of clan. He was a man
at least twenty years the senior of his visitor--a handsome man of his
kind, dark, deliberate of his movements, bred in the courtesies, but
seemingly, to the acuter intuitions of Montaiglon, possessed of one
unpardonable weakness in a gentleman--a shame of his obvious penury.

"I have permitted myself, M. le Baron, to interrupt you on the counsel
of a common friend," said Count Victor, anxious to put an end to a
situation somewhat droll.

"After the goblet, after the goblet," said Lamond softly, himself but
sipping at the rim of his glass. "It is the custom of the country--one
of the few that's like to be left to us before long."

"_A la sante de la bonne cause!_" said the Count politely, choking upon
the fiery liquor and putting down the glass with an apology.

"I am come from France--from Saint Germains," he said. "You may have
heard of my uncle; I am the Count de Montaiglon."

The Baron betrayed a moment's confusion.

"Do you tell me, now?" said he. "Then you are the more welcome. I wish
I could say so in your own language--that is, so far as ease goes, known
to me only in letters. From Saint Germains--" making a step or two up
and down the room, with a shr