e east a
sullen sky was all blotched with crimson, some pine-trees on the heights
were struck against it, intensely black, intensely melancholy, perhaps
because they led the mind to dwell on wild, remote, and solitary places,
the savagery of old forests, the cruel destiny of man, who has come
after and must go before the dead things of the wood. There was no wind;
the landscape swooned in frost.

"My faith! 'tis an odd and dolorous world at six o'clock in the
morning," thought Count Victor; "I wish I were asleep in Cammercy and
all well."

A young fallow-deer stood under an oak-tree, lifting its head to gaze
without dismay, almost a phantom; every moment the dawn spread wider; at
last the sea showed, leaden in the bay, mists revealed themselves upon
Ben Ime. Of sound there was only the wearying plunge of the cascades and
the roll of the shallows like tumbril-wheels on causeway as the river
ran below the arches.

"Far yet, monsieur?" cried Count Victor to the figure striding ahead,
and his answer came in curt accents.

"We'll be there in ten minutes. You want a little patience."

"We shall be there, _par dieu!_ in time enough," cried out Count Victor.
"'Tis all one to me, but the march is pestilent dull."

"What! would ye have fiddlin' at a funeral?" asked the Chamberlain,
still without turning or slowing his step; and then, as though he had
been inspired, he drew out the flageolet that was ever his bosom friend,
and the astounded Frenchman heard the strains of a bagpipe march. It was
so incongruous in the circumstances that he must laugh.

"It were a thousand pities to kill so rare a personage," thought he,
"and yet--and yet--'tis a villainous early morning."

They passed along the river-bank; they came upon the sea-beach; the
Chamberlain put his instrument into his pocket and still led the way
upon the sand that lay exposed far out by the low tide. He stopped at a
spot clear of weed, flat and dry and firm almost as a table. It was
the ideal floor for an engagement, but from the uncomfortable sense
of espionage from the neighbourhood of a town that looked with all its
windows upon the place as it were upon a scene in a play-house. The
whole front of the town was not two hundred yards away.

"We shall be disturbed here, monsieur," said Count Victor, hesitating as
the other put off his plaid and coat.

"No!" said Sim MacTaggart shortly, tugging at a belt, and yet Count
Victor had his doubts. He made his prepar