re trapdoor hole whence the
moldering ladder had fallen away, was in the middle of the old barrack
room floor over the four embrasured gun room below. "I'll just draw
up my ladder, have a pipe, and take a nap. It may clear off. If so the
observation goes, and then the highest tide of the year, I can get the
register in the morning."

He had brought down his light instrument from the battlemented parapet
for safety, and now, pulling up his rope ladder, he coiled it on the
floor. "I can drop down below if I wish to if the rain should drive me
out of here," he cried as he curled up like a sleeping coyote.

Below him the heavy door of the tower swung on its massive hinges,
banging and creaking mournfully when a swirling gust set it swinging.
The man who had slept out on the Lolo trail and bivouacked alone in the
canyon of the Colorado, laughed the howling storm to scorn. "Better than
being out in a blizzard in the Bad Lands!" he gayly cried, as he dozed
away, having finished a good meal and lowered the level of the "Lone
Wolf" cocktails. From sheer frontier habit, he laid his heavy revolver
near at hand, and his old-time hunting knife. "You see, you don't
know what emergencies may arise," often sagely observed Alaric Hobbes.
"Thrice is he armed that hath two six shooters and a knife!"

When half-past ten rang out from the old French hall clock at the
Banker's Folly, Janet Fairbarn, a gray ghastly figure, made her last
timid rounds of the lower part of the mansion. Her maids were all snugly
nested for the night. Simpson, the erring one, she believed to be in
close attendance upon that foreign heathen, Prince Djiddin, in their
second-story wing. Miss Nadine and her maid had locked their apartments
on departure, the Professor's study was the only room open and vacant,
and so with a last timid glance at the darkened halls and great salons
of the main floor, the Scotch spinster retired to her rooms adjoining
the Master's study and bedrooms on the ground floor.

Minded to "read a chapter" and to "compose herself for the night," the
housekeeper sat late rocking alone in her rooms, while the hollow tick
of the hall clock sounded doubly lonely in the cheerless night. The
modern castle's walls were proof against the wildest rain and even the
blows of a catapult, and so the dashing storm never even stirred the
heavy leaded diamonded panes. "Thanks be to God, auld Andrew never
ventured to cross on this raging sea! He'll no be here t