sae terrible lang to cook a hare," said the unabashed
retainer.

"But was it a hare after a', Mungo?" asked his master. "Are ye sure it
wasna a rabbit?"

"A rabbit!" cried he in astonishment; then more cautiously, "Weel, if it
was a rabbit, it was a gey big ane, that's a' I can say," and he covered
his perturbation by a retreat from the room to resume his office of
musician, which, it appeared, demanded a tune after dinner as well as
before it.

What had seemed to Montaiglon a harsh, discordant torturing of reeds
when heard on the stair outside his chamber, seemed somehow more
mellowed and appropriate--pleasing even--when it came from the garden
outside the castle, on whose grass-grown walk the little lowlander
strutted as he played the evening melody of the house of Doom--a pibroch
all imbued with passion and with melancholy. This distance lulled it
into something more than human music, into a harmony with the monotone
of the wave that thundered against the rock; it seemed the voice of
choiring mermen; it had the bitterness, the agonised remembrance, of the
sea's profound; it was full of hints of stormy nights and old wars. For
a little Doom and his visitor sat silent listening to it, the former,
with a strain upon his countenance, tapping nervously with his fingers
upon the arm of his chair.

"An old custom in the Highlands," he explained. "I set, perhaps, too
little store by it myself, but Mungo likes to maintain it, though he
plays the pipe but indifferently, and at this distance you might think
the performance not altogether without merit.

"I love all music," replied Count Victor with polite ambiguity, and he
marvelled at the signs of some deep feeling in his host.

Till a late hour they sat together while Count Victor explained his
mission to the Highlands. He told much, but, to be sure, he did not
at first tell all. He recounted the evidences of the spy's guilt as
a correspondent with the British Government, whose pay he drew while
sharing the poor fortunes and the secrets of the exiled Jacobites.
"Iscariot, my dear Baron," he protested, "was a Bayard compared with
this wretch. His presence in your locality should pollute the air; have
you not felt a malaise?"

"It's dooms hard," admitted the Baron, throwing up distressed hands,
"but, man, I'm feared he's not the only one. Do you know, I could
mention well-kent names far ben in the Cause--men not of hereabouts at
all, but of Lochaber no less, though you