hour. He awoke cold
and stiff, and his sensitive stomach, used to the tenderest indulgence,
was clamouring angrily. He was learning what the cold and hunger,
which, by a skilful manipulation of the laws of his adopted country, he
had been able to mete out to many foolish innocents with no grudging
hand, really were. He went to the top of the tower, and shouted
fruitlessly; he warmed himself by stamping up and down; then he came
and slept again. This was his round all the night through: snatches of
uneasy sleep, cold and hungry awakenings, shoutings, and stampings
round the top of the tower.

Meanwhile Tinker had ridden joyously home, and shown himself in such
cheerful spirits during dinner that Sir Tancred had observed him with
no little suspicion, wondering if it could really be that he had found
opportunities of mischief even in a deer-forest. After dinner Tinker
went into the kitchen, where he found Hamish Beg supping. He talked to
him for a while, on matters of sport; then he said, "I say, you told me
about the headless woman and the red-headed man with his throat cut, at
the Deil's Den, but you never told me about the man in brown who shouts
and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come to it, it's
empty."

Hamish, the cook, and the two maids burst into a torrent of
exclamations in their strange language. "Yes," said Tinker, "a man in
brown who shouts and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come
to it, no one's there."

He kept his story to this, and presently came back to his father,
assured that the more loudly Mr. Lambert yelled, and the more wildly he
waved, the further would any inhabitant of Ardrochan fly from the
Deil's Den. He went to bed in a gloating joy, which kept him awake a
while; and it was during those wakeful moments that a memory of "Monte
Cristo" suggested that he should gain a practical advantage from what
had so far been merely an act of abstract justice.

It was past eleven when Tinker came riding over the hills at the head
of his merry, but imaginary men. Horribly hungry, but warmed by the
sun to a quite passable malignity, the money-lender watched his coming
from the top of the tower, pondering how to catch him and thrash him
within an inch of his life. He did not know that far more active men
than he had cherished vainly that arrogant ambition, but Tinker's
cheerful and confident air afforded little encouragement to his purpose.

"Halt!" cried the robber