s the confounded thing too! So unceremonious a manner
of introducing myself to a country where I desire me above all to be
circumspect; is it not so?"

As he spoke he revealed the agitation that his flippant words had tried
to cloak--by a scarcely perceptible tremour of the hand that drummed the
table, a harder note in his voice, and the biting of his moustache. He
saw that Doom guessed his perturbation, and he compelled himself to a
careless laugh, got lazily to his feet, twisted his moustache points,
drew forth his rapier with a flourish, and somewhat theatrically saluted
and lunged in space as if the action gave his tension ease.

The Baron for a moment forgot the importance of what he had been told
as he watched the graceful beauty of the movement that revealed not only
some eccentricity but personal vanity of a harmless kind and wholesome
tastes and talents.

"Still I'm a little in the dark," he said when the point dropped and
Count Victor recovered.

"Pardon," said his guest. "I am vexed at what you may perhaps look on as
a trifle. The ruffians attacked me a mile or two farther up the coast,
shot my horse below me, and chased me to the very edge of your moat. I
made a feint to shoot one with my pistol, and came closer on the gold
than I had intended."

"The Macfarlanes!" cried Doom, with every sign of uneasiness. "It's a
pity, it's a pity; not that a man more or less of that crew makes any
difference, but the affair might call for more attention to this place
and your presence here than might be altogether wholesome for you or
me."

He heard the story in more detail, and when Count Victor had finished,
ran into an adjoining room to survey the coast from a window there. He
came back with a less troubled vision.

"At least they're gone now," said he in a voice that still had some
perplexity. "I wish I knew who it was you struck. Would it be Black Andy
of Arroquhar now? If it's Andy, the gang will be crying 'Loch Sloy!'
about the house in a couple of nights; if it was a common man of the
tribe, there might be no more about it, for we're too close on the
Duke's gallows to be meddled with noisily; that's the first advantage I
ever found in my neighbourhood."

"He was a man of a long habit of body," said Count Victor, "and he fell
with a grunt."

"Then it was not Andy. Andy is like a hogshead--a blob of creesh with a
turnip on the top--and he would fall with a curse."

"Name of a pipe! I know him; he debate