. I picked up my sword, which
always stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gently
towards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close up
to the Castle walls.

"Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding beside
me, and without another word we made for the Dower House. When I felt
myself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:

"What's happened--what's wrong?"

"I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men hae
been surroundin' the place, as if to attack it. They wakened me, bein'
a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary.
It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doon
for you."

"What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expected
any answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House without
alarming anybody, if that could be done.

We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogs
sleeping inside set up an alarm. This quickly awoke everybody, and the
confusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemed
familiarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:

"Lie close, lie close!"

Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to
the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath.
Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene
looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and
wondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to study
it.

"Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice,
and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew. Quick in thought
and action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get her
cloak. She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back again
asking, "How can I be of service?"

She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came down
the stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following. "Yes,"
she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has been
through troubles and wars and is in the presence of more. Shall we say
that the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?" She
laughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew she
was thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by this
strange incursion of ill-disposed men.

Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order,