range," repeated the priest. "Where was your boyhood passed,
may I ask?" said the priest.

Ronald told him, "Chiefly in the castle of Lunnasting, in Shetland."

Again the priest gave a piercing glance at him.

"May I inquire your name?"

"I am called Ronald Morton."

"You say you are called so. Will it appear impertinent if I ask if you
believe that you have the right to bear another?" said the priest.

"Why do you put the question?" was Ronald's very natural demand.

"You said that you were called Morton. I fancied, from your tone, that
you insinuated that you have a right to some other name," said the
priest.

"I may have some such idea; but at the same time I am perfectly
contented with the one I bear."

The priest appeared lost in thought.

"Do you remember your father!" he asked, abruptly.

"Certainly; he is, I trust, alive still. I hope to meet him shortly;"
surprised at the way in which the priest continued to cross-question
him. Some men would have been much annoyed, and refused to reply; but
Ronald saw that his interrogator had some good reasons for putting the
questions, and felt no inclination to disappoint him.

"May I ask if you were ever considered like the lady of Lunnasting
Castle? Donna Hilda, I think you called her," inquired the priest.

"I have not, that I am aware of, mentioned her name," answered Morton,
looking in his turn hard at the priest. "I will reply to your question,
though, before I ask one in return. I have heard that I was like her,
and that is not surprising; my mother was very like her--they were
cousins. Now I must inquire how comes it that you know anything of the
family of Lunnasting? Were you ever in Shetland?"

"There are few parts of the world where I have not been. The members of
my order go everywhere, and should know everything that takes place on
its surface," answered the priest, evasively.

"I do not recollect you in Shetland," said Ronald, "May I ask your
name?"

"I am called Father John," replied the priest, humbly. "I would yet
further ask you, what you know respecting the Marquis de Medea?"

Ronald considered whether he should reply.

"There can be no harm in speaking the truth, surely," he said to
himself. "I will tell you," he answered frankly. "The marquis is
believed, at Lunnasting, at all events, to have inherited the estates
which should rightly have belonged to the son of Don Hernan Escalante,
the husband of the Lady Hilda of L