ge," said Doom coldly, resenting
the irony. "I'll explain afterwards."

"Positively, there is no necessity," replied Count Victor, with a
profound bow, and he re-entered and shut the door.

There was no longer any debate between punctilio and precaution. He had
seen the bulge of the dagger below Macnaughton's plaid, and the plaid
itself had not been drawn too closely round the wearer to conceal wholly
the unaccountable fact that he had a Highland dress beneath it. A score
of reasons for this eccentric affair came to Montaiglon, but all
of them were disquieting, not the least so the notion that his host
conspired perhaps with the Macfarlanes, who sought their revenge for
their injured clansman. He armed himself with his sword, blew out his
candles, and, throwing himself upon his bed, lay waiting for the signal
he expected. In spite of himself, sleep stole on him twice, and he
awakened each time to find an hour was gone.

It was a night of pouring rain. Great drops beat on the little window,
a gargoyle poured a noisy stream of water, and a loud sea cried off the
land and broke upon the outer edge of the rock of Doom. A loud sea and
ominous, and it was hard for Count Victor, in that welter of midnight
voices, to hear the call of an owl, yet it came to him by and by, as he
expected, with its repetition. And then the flageolet, with its familiar
and baffling melody, floating on a current of the wind that piped about
the castle vents and sobbed upon the stairs. He opened his door, looked
into the depths that fell with mouldering steps into the basement and
upwards to the flight where the Baron had been going. Whether he should
carry his inquiry further or retire and shut his door again with a
forced indifference to these perplexing events was but the toss of a
coin. As he listened a slight sound at the foot of the stair--the sound
of a door softly closed and a bar run in deep channels--decided him, and
he waited to confound the master of Doom.

In the darkness the stern walls about him seemed to weigh upon his
heart, and so imbued with vague terrors that he unsheathed his sword.
A light revealed itself upon the stair; he drew back into his room, but
left the door open, and when the bearer of the light came in front of
his door he could have cried out loudly in astonishment, for it was not
the Baron but a woman, and no woman that he had seen before, or had any
reason to suspect the presence of in Doom Castle. They discovere