ry now and then made darts out to the fire on which
the precious "het supper" was cooking--roast fowl, bacon, and
potatoes--traditional on occasions when the men had been "working late
at the mill and had brought home company."

It was a bright and cheerful sight. The high dresser, the kitchen pride
of Galloway, was in a state of absolute perfection. Aunt Jen despised
men, but she had a way of reproving their congenital untidiness by the
shine of her plates and the mirror-like polish of her candlesticks. She
had spent a couple of hours over the dresser that afternoon, answering
all the taunts of her mother as to her occupation, "It's true, mither,
_they_ will never ken the difference; but, then, I will!"

"Go up, Irma, and tell your brother that we are waiting," said my
grandmother. But as Irma was busy with Duncan the Second, I offered
myself instead. I remember still the long corridor, and I wondered at
the moment why no ray of light penetrated through the keyhole of Sir
Louis's door. He must be sitting in the dark, and I smiled to myself as
I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother's best
candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being
spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the
door. But this I only knew later.

I stood a moment in the passage, keeping very still. I could hear his
voice. He seemed in some way indignant. But the sound was dulled by the
thickness of the walls and the care with which the chinks of the door
had been "made up." Then I also heard--what sent the blood chill to my
heart--another voice, shorter, harsher, older. For a moment I was struck
dumb, and then--I laughed at myself. Of course the lad was simply
stage-struck. For some time he had been reading and declaiming Hamlet,
Julius Caesar, and anything he could lay his hands upon, as well as
scraps of the Greek tragedies he had learnt at school.

But as I leaned nearer, there pierced sharp as a pang to my heart the
certainty that the other voice which I heard was not that of any of the
characters of _Julius Caesar_. A trembling horror of what I had once seen
in that very room, and a memory of the great hearty Richard Poole
entering there in all his amplitude of vivid life, quickly arrested me.

I rapped and called vehemently, trying the latch and feeling that the
door resisted. I could hear a trampling beneath me. Men were on the way
to my assistance. At the door I sprang. T