turnal
flageolet. Before he could comment upon so unexpected and surprising a
phenomenon, Mungo had dropped his gutting-knife and made with suspicious
rapidity for the entrance of the castle, without a word of explanation
or leave-taking.

"I become decidedly interested in Annapla," said Montaiglon to himself,
witnessing this odd retreat, "and my host gives me no opportunity
of paying my homages. Malediction! It cannot be a wife; Bethune said
nothing of a wife, and then M. le Baron spoke of himself as a widower.
A domestic, doubtless; that will more naturally account for the ancient
fishmonger's fleet retirement. He goes to chide the erring Abigail.
Or--or--or the cunning wretch!" continued Montaiglon with new meaning in
his eyes, "he is perhaps the essential lover. Let the Baron at breakfast
elucidate the mystery."

But the Baron at breakfast said never a word of the domestic economy
of his fortalice. As they sat over a frugal meal of oat porridge, the
poached fish, and a smoky, high-flavoured mutton ham, whose history the
Count was happy not to know, his host's conversation was either upon
Paris, where he had spent some months of sad expatriation, yawning at
its gaiety (it seemed) and longing for the woods of Doom; or upon the
plan of the search for the spy and double traitor.

Montaiglon's plans were simple to crudeness. He had, though he did not
say so, anticipated some assistance from Doom in identifying the object
of his search; but now that this was out of the question, he meant, it
appeared, to seek the earliest and most plausible excuse for removal
into the immediate vicinity of Argyll's castle, and on some pretext to
make the acquaintance of as many of the people there as he could, then
to select his man from among them, and push his affair to a conclusion.

"A plausible scheme," said Doom when he heard it, "but contrived without
any knowledge of the situation. It's not Doom, M. le Count---oh no, it's
not Doom down by there; it's a far more kittle place to learn the outs
and ins of. The army and the law are about it, the one about as numerous
as the other, and if your Drimdarroch, as I take it, is a traitor on
either hand--to Duke Archie as well as to the king across the water,
taking the money of both as has happened before now, he'll be no
Drimdarroch you may wager, and not kent as such down there. Indeed, how
could he? for Petullo the writer body is the only Drimdarroch there
is to the fore, and he has