iving rain lashed the
windows. The ancient building was filled with strange rumblings and
the wailing of the blast when the old man concluded: "Mr. Geoffrey was
too proud to turn a swindler, and that was why he shook off his
sweetheart, who tried to persuade him, though he knew old Anthony
Thurston would have left him his money, if they married."

"Some said it was the opposite," interposed his wife; but Musker
answered angrily, "Then they didn't tell it right. No woman born could
twist Geoffrey Thurston from his path, and when she gave him bad
counsel he turned his back on her. A fool these dolts called him. He
was a leal, hard man, and what was a light woman's greediness to him?"

"And what became of the lady?" asked Helen, with a curious flash in her
eyes.

"She married a London man, who came here shooting, married him out of
spite, and has rued it many times if the tales are true. She was down
with him fishing, looking sour and pale, and the Hall maids were
say----"

"Just gossip and lies!" broke in his spouse; and Helen, who apparently
had lapsed into a disdainful indifference, asked no further questions.
Mrs. Savine, however, made many inquiries, and Musker, who became
unusually communicative, presently offered to show the strangers what
he called the armory.

They followed him down a draughty corridor to the black-wainscoted
gun-room at the base of the crumbling tower, and when he had lighted a
lamp its glow revealed a modern collection of costly guns. There were
also trout-rods hung upon the wall, and a few good sporting etchings,
at all of which Musker glanced somewhat contemptuously. "These are Mr.
Forsyth's, and I take care of them, but he only belongs to the place by
purchase and marriage. Those belonged to the Thurstons--the old, dead
Thurstons--and they hunted men," he said.

He ran the lamp up higher by a tarnished brass chain, and pointed first
to a big moldering bow. "A Thurston drew that in France long ago, and
it has splitted many an Annandale cattle thief in the Solway mosses
since. Red Geoffrey carried this long spear, and, so the story goes,
won his wife with it, and brought her home on the crupper from beside
the Nith. She pined away and died just above where we stand now in
this very tower. That was another Geoffrey's sword; they hanged him
high outside Lancaster jail. He was for Prince Charlie, and cut down
single-handed two of King George's dragoons carrying a warrant for a