iny, and assuredly it was not to the Frenchman
that, after a little, he waved a hand. Count Victor turned suddenly
and saw a responsive hand withdrawn from the window that had so far
monopolised all his interest in Doom's exterior.

Annapla had decidedly an industrious wooer, more constant than the sun
itself, for he seemed to shine in her heavens night and day.

There was, in a sense, but little in the incident, which was open to a
score of innocent or prosaic explanations, and the cavalier was spurring
back a few minutes later to the south, but it confirmed Count Victor's
determination to have done with Doom at the earliest, and off to where
the happenings of the day were more lucid.

At supper-time the Baron had not returned. Mungo came up to discover
Count Victor dozing over a stupid English book and wakened him to tell
him so, and that supper was on the table. He toyed with the food, having
no appetite, turned to his book again, and fell asleep in his chair.
Mungo again came in and removed the dishes silently, and looked
curiously at him--so much the foreigner in that place, so perjink in
his attire, so incongruous in his lace with this solitary keep of the
mountains. It was a strange face the servant turned upon him there at
the door as he retired to his kitchen quarters. And he was not gone long
when he came back with a woman who walked tiptoe into the doorway.

"That's the puir cratur," said he; "seekin' for whit he'll never find,
like the man with the lantern playin' ki-hoi wi' honesty."

She looked with interest at the stranger, said no word, but disappeared.

The peats sunk upon the hearth, crumbling in hearts of fire: on the
outer edges the ashes grew grey. The candles of coarse mould, stuck in a
rude sconce upon the wall above the mantelshelf, guttered to their end,
set aslant by wafts of errant wind that came in through the half-open
door and crevices of the window. It grew cold, and Montaiglon shook
himself into wakefulness. He sat up in his chair and looked about him
with some sense of apprehension, with the undescribable instinct of a
man who feels himself observed by eyes unseen, who has slept through an
imminently dangerous moment.

He heard a voice outside.

"M. le Baron," he concluded. "Late, but still in time to say good-night
to the guest he rather cavalierly treats." And he rose and went
downstairs to meet his host. The great door was ajar. He went into the
open air. The garden was utterl