to me. He might
have made a more proper calculation."

The prospect was now gloomy indeed. An hour of candle-light had been
bad, but an hour of pitch darkness or of mist wreaths would be many
times worse.

"A wee tastie more, my lord?" Mr. Gallosh suggested, in a voice whose
vibrations he made an effort to conceal.

"Jost a vee," said his lordship, hardly more firmly.

With a dismal disregard for their suspense the minutes dragged
infinitely slowly. The flask was finished; the candle guttered and
flickered ominously; the very shadows grew restless.

"There's a lot of secret doors and such like in this part of the
house--let's hope there'll be nothing coming through one of them," said
Mr. Gallosh in a breaking voice.

The Baron muttered an inaudible reply, and then with a start their
shoulders bumped together.

"Damn it, what's yon!" whispered Mr. Gallosh.

"Ze pipes! Gallosh, how beastly he does play!"

In point of fact the air seemed to consist of only one wailing note.

"Bong!"--they heard the first stroke of midnight on the big clock on
the Castle Tower; and so unfortunately had Count Bunker timed the candle
that on the instant its flame expired.

"Vithdraw ze curtains!" gasped the Baron.

"I canna, my lord! Oh, I canna!" wailed Mr. Gallosh, breaking out into
his broadest native Scotch.

This time the Baron made no movement, and in the palpitating silence
the two sat through one long dark minute after another, till some ten of
them had passed.

"I shall stand it no more!" muttered the Baron. "Ve vill creep for ze
door."

"My lord, my lord! For maircy's sake gie's a hold of you!" stammered Mr.
Gallosh, falling on his hands and knees and feeling for the skirt of his
lordship's kilt.

But their flight was arrested by a portent so remarkable that had there
been only a single witness one would suppose it to be a figment of his
imagination. Fortunately, however, both the Baron and Mr. Gallosh can
corroborate each detail. About the middle, apparently, of the wall
opposite, an oblong of light appeared in the thickest of the gloom.

"Mein Gott!" cried the Baron.

"It's filled wi' reek!" gasped Mr. Gallosh.

And indeed the space seemed filled with a slowly rising cloud of pungent
blue smoke. Then their horrified eyes beheld the figure of an undoubted
Being hazily outlined behind the cloud, and at the same time the piper,
as if sympathetically aware of the crisis, burst into his most dreadful
discords.