peered into the
dark.

"I'll have ye arrestit!" he called down.

"Whist, Huey!" I cried. "It's I, the laird himself. There're burglars
in the house!"

"Ye've no been drinkin'?" he shouted back, questioningly.

"Didn't ye hear the shots?" I asked.

"I heard nothing," he answered in an unconvinced manner.

"Do you want to be murdered in your bed?" I called up to him, "rather
than come down to see what's going about?"

"There's just naething the matter at all," he returned. "Ye've been
drinkin'. Is Rab Burns with ye?" he asked, resting his elbows
imperturbably on the window-ledge.

His conduct, in my excited state, enraged me to the extent of using
language which acquainted him with my wishes if not with my sobriety,
and I noted him withdraw his head hastily, and the light grow bright
and dim, and bright again, in his turning of the stairs, before the
bars were let down and the door opened to me.

"There's just naething the matter at all," was his greeting. "Aye, ye
will have been drinkin'!"

Although he carried such a brave front I saw that he had taken the
precaution to bring an old blunderbuss with him, and two of the
serving-men, who appeared from a rear stairway in a sleep-befuddled
condition.

As we stood in the silence of the great dark hall a fear came over me
that I had up-turned the house to no purpose, but underneath it lay the
premonition of a great trouble, a feeling so strong that I was unable
to put it by. The doors on both sides of the hall were closed, and
there was no light save one small gleam which trickled from the keyhole
of Nancy's writing-room. Advancing to the door I rapped boldly upon it,
and waited for the duke to bid me enter; no voice answered, nor was any
sound to be heard save the tick, tick, tick of a great clock that stood
near. Again I beat upon the door, and called Montrose loudly by name,
and with baited breath listened to the tick-ticking of the clock, and
nothing else.

"He's fell asleep," Huey suggested, and upon this, thinking the door
locked, I threw my weight against it, precipitating myself into the
room with unnecessary violence, to find the duke sitting at the desk,
his head thrown back upon the cushions, and one hand on the arm of the
great chair in an attitude of peaceful slumber. But there came to me a
dread of the sleep which could keep a man of his temperament
unconscious while the house was being pulled about his ears. As I drew
nearer to him the wind from