lomatist and had huge interest in your delightful
stories."

A movement of Mungo's made him turn to see the Baron standing behind him
a little bewildered at this apparition.

"_Failte!_" said the Baron, "and I fancy you would be none the waur, as
we say, of the fireside."

He went before him into the _salle_, taking Mungo's candle. Mungo was
despatched for Annapla, and speedily the silent abigail of visions was
engaged upon that truly Gaelic courtesy, the bathing of the traveller's
feet. The Baron considerately made no inquiries; if it was a caprice of
Count Victor's to venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket through
dark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so much
interested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so saturnine and
melancholy) that he left his own affairs unmentioned for a while as the
woman worked. It was quite a light-hearted recluse this, compared with
that he had left a week ago.

"I am not surprised you found yon place dull," at the last hazarded the
Baron.

"_Comment?_"

"Down-by, I mean. I'm glad myself always to get home out of it at this
season. When the fishers are there it's all my fancy, but when it does
not smell of herring, the stench of lawyers' sheepskins gets on the top
and is mighty offensive to any man that has had muckle to do with them."

"Dull!" repeated Count Victor, now comprehending; "I have crowded more
experience into the past four-and-twenty hours than I might meet in a
month anywhere east of Calais. I have danced with a duchess, fought a
stupid duel, with a town looking on for all the world as if it were a
performance in a circus with lathen weapons, moped in a dungeon, broken
through the same, stolen a coat, tramped through miles of snow in a pair
of pantoufles, forgotten to pay the bill at the inn, and lost my baggage
and my reputation--which latter I swear no one in these parts will be
glad to pick up for his own use. Baron, I'll be shot if your country is
not bewitched. My faith! what happenings since I came here expecting to
be killed with _ennui!_ I protest I shall buy a Scots estate and ask
all my friends over here to see real life. Only they must have good
constitutions; I shall insist on them having good constitutions. And
there's another thing--it necessitates that they must have so kind a
friend as Monsieur le Baron and so hospitable a house as Doom to fall
back on when their sport comes to a laughable termination, as mine h