extricated. Two of them stood steaming in the lamplight, with their
sides going at twenty bellows' speed. The guard would not let him have
one of the coach lamps, but gave him a small lantern of his own. When he
returned with it, he found Ericson and Miss St. John talking together.

Ericson led the way, and the others followed.

'Whaur are ye gaein', gentlemen?' asked the guard, as they passed the
coach.

'To the auld hoose,' answered Robert.

'Ye canna do better. I maun bide wi' the coch till the lave gang back
to Drumheid wi' the horses, on' fess anither pole. Faith, it'll be weel
into the mornin' or we win oot o' this. Tak care hoo ye gang. There's
holes i' the auld hoose, I doobt.'

'We'll tak gude care, ye may be sure, Hector,' said Robert, as they left
the bridge.

The house to which Ericson was leading them was in the midst of a field.
There was just light enough to show a huge mass standing in the dark,
without a tree or shelter of any sort. When they reached it, all that
Miss St. John could distinguish was a wide broken stair leading up
to the door, with glimpses of a large, plain, ugly, square front. The
stones of the stair sloped and hung in several directions; but it was
plain to a glance that the place was dilapidated through extraordinary
neglect, rather than by the usual wear of time. In fact, it belonged
only to the beginning of the preceding century, somewhere in Queen
Anne's time. There was a heavy door to it, but fortunately for Miss
St. John, who would not quite have relished getting in at the window of
which Ericson had spoken, it stood a little ajar. The wind roared in the
gap and echoed in the empty hall into which they now entered. Certainly
Robert was right: there was wood enough to keep them warm; for that
hall, and every room into which they went, from top to bottom of the
huge house, was lined with pine. No paint-brush had ever passed upon it.
Neither was there a spot to be seen upon the grain of the wood: it was
clean as the day when the house was finished, only it had grown much
browner. A close gallery, with window-frames which had never been
glazed, at one story's height, leading across from the one side of the
first floor to the other, looked down into the great echoing hall, which
rose in the centre of the building to the height of two stories; but
this was unrecognizable in the poor light of the guard's lantern. All
the rooms on every floor opened each into the other;--but why s