The comfort of the place, by contrast with our situation, seemed, as I
looked hungrily on it through the thick glass of the lozen, more great
and tempting than anything ever I saw abroad in the domains of princes.
Its air was charged with peace and order; the little puffs and coils and
wisps of silver-grey smoke, coming out of the fireplace into the room,
took long to swoon into nothingness in that tranquil interior.

But the most wonderful thing of all was, that though the supper seemed
ready waiting for a company, and could not have been long left, I waited
five or ten minutes with my face fast to the pane and no living footstep
entered the room. I watched the larger door near the far-off end
eagerly; it lay ajar, smiling a welcome to the parts of the house
beyond, but no one came in.

"Surely they are throng in some other wing," I thought, "and not so
hungry as we, or their viands did not lie so long untouched in that
dainty room."

I went round the house at its rear, feeling my way slowly among the
bushes. I looked upon parlours and bed-closets, kitchens and corridors;
they were lighted with the extravagance of a marriage-night, and
as tenantless and silent as the cells of Kilchrist The beds were
straightened out, the hearths were swept, the floors were scrubbed,
on every hand was the evidence of recent business, but the place was
relinquished to the ghosts.

How it was I cannot say, but The mystery of the house made me giddy at
the head. Yet I was bound to push my searching further, so round with a
swithering heart went Elrigmore to the very front door of the mansion
of Dalness--open, as I have said, with the light gushing lemon-yellow on
the lawn. I tapped softly, my heart this time even higher than my bosom,
with a foot back ready to retreat if answer came. Then I rasped an alarm
on the side of the yett with a noise that rang fiercely through the
place and brought the sweat to my body, but there was even then no
answer.

So in I went, the soft soles of my brogues making no sound on the
boards, but leaving the impress of my footsteps in a damp blot.

Now, to me, brought up in a Highland farm-steading (for the house of
Elrigmore is without great spaciousness or pretence), large and rambling
castles and mansions ever seem eerie. I must in them be thinking, like
any boy, of the whisperings of wraiths in their remote upper rooms;
I feel strange airs come whipping up their long or crooked lobbies at
night; the