uld scarcely
be withheld from seeking out the manager and airing his assurance upon
him. Or, at least, he declared he would have done this had he been sure
that the manager was not already in bed himself.

Unfortunately at this juncture the Count committed one of those
indiscretions to which a gay spirit is always prone, but which, to do
him justice, seldom sullied his own record as a successful adventurer.
At an hour considerably past midnight, hearing an excited summons from
the Baron's bedroom, he laid down his toothbrush and hastened across the
passage, to find the new peer in a crimson dressing-gown of quilted silk
gazing enthusiastically at a lithograph that hung upon the wall.

"See!" he cried gleefully, "here is my own ancestor. Bonker, I feel I am
Tollyvoddle indeed."

The print which had inspired this enthusiasm depicted a historical but
treasonable Lord Tulliwuddle preparing to have his head removed.

Giving it a droll look, the Count observed--

"Well, if it inspires you, my dear Baron, that's all right. The omen
would have struck me differently."

"Ze omen!" murmured the Baron with a start.

It required all Bunker's tact to revive his ally's damped enthusiasm,
and even at breakfast next morning he referred in a gloomy voice to
various premonitions recorded in the history of his family, and the
horrible consequences of disregarding them.

But by the time they had started upon their journey north, his spirits
rose a trifle; and when at length all lowland landscapes were left
far behind them, and they had come into a province of peat streams and
granite pinnacles, with the gloom of pines and the freshness of the
birch blended like a May and December marriage, all appearance, at
least, of disquietude had passed away.

Yet the Count kept an anxious eye upon him. He was becoming decidedly
restless. At one moment he would rave about the glorious scenery; the
next, plunge into a brown study of the Tulliwuddle rent-roll; and then
in an instant start humming an air and smoking so fast that both their
cases were empty while they were yet half an hour from Torrydhulish
Station. Now the Baron took to biting his nails, looking at his watch,
and answering questions at random--a very different spectacle from the
enthusiastic traveller of yesterday.

"Only ten minutes more," observed Bunker in his most cheering manner.

The Baron made no reply.

They were now running along the brink of a glimmering loch, the p