"Perhaps old Herries will give me a week or two's work at something or other about the estate," he communed with himself. "But, then,—that bloated lawyer would probably interfere; and, while I lie low, Herries will be under his thumb to a great extent. He's under the weather too, poor old chap!"
He was still shaking his head disconsolately when his cogitations were cut short by the sound of clattering hoofs and the hurried arrival of one on horseback, who galloped up to the Jura Arms and slipped like a sack from his saddle, and swayed and staggered while his blown steed looked inquiringly round at him, till Justin Carthew slipped an arm about him and would have led him indoors.
"What areyoudoing here, Mr. Herries?" Carthew demanded, amazed. "You should be at home in bed, and—"
"The beacon?" gasped the new-comer, a haggard, sick-looking old man with a long white beard, almost spent, but none the less resolute not to enter the inn.
"It seems that Lady Josceline Justice has just arrived at the castle," Carthew informed him concisely, after a moment of hesitation.
"Lady—Josceline—Justice!" the other repeated dazedly, but with evident disbelief. "Did you say—Lady Josceline Justice! You're surely joking, Mr. Carthew—although it would be no joke for you if her ladyship had come back to life."
"I'm not joking," Carthew assured him.
"But—how can it be!" the other demanded. "I can't conceive—Have you seen her yourself?"
"Yes, I've seen her," declared Carthew. He could not have answered otherwise without betraying Sallie.
"But come away in. You must get between the blankets again at once," he insisted firmly. "A five-mile gallop on a night like this is quite enough to finish you. And there will be time enough in the morning—to pay her ladyship a call."
"I've been factor of Loquhariot these five and thirty years—and it would ill become me to be abed at such a moment. I'm going up now," the sick man asserted stubbornly. "I'm responsible for all that goes on here, as you know very well, Mr. Carthew—and I've had no news at all of this. I can't understand—And yet—it must indeed be her ladyship, as you say, since Janet M'Kissock—"
He caught at his horse's bridle again and tried to clamber into the saddle.
A group of whispering villagers had gathered about the inn door, and they joined Carthew in his well-meant remonstrances. But the anxious steward of the estate was not to be gainsaid by anyone.
"If the Lady Josceline Justice has come back to her own at last," he declared, shivering, "it is my undoubted duty to be on hand. And what matters else? Get the pipes out, lads, and gather together. Shall it be said of us that her ladyship lacked a true Highland welcome home?"
Carthew, seeing him so set in his purpose and not knowing how to prevent him except, perhaps, at Sallie's expense, saw nothing for it but to let events shape themselves. He brought the old man a little brandy, which served to steady him somewhat, so that he sat in his saddle none so limp at the head of the muster formed at his bidding. And Carthew walked up the hill by his side, partly to help him, and partly in hope of another glimpse of the girl who had surely bewitched himself.
At his heels tramped three stalwart pipers, and the still, star-lit night rang again to the shrill strains of the march they struck up; while close behind, keeping step to its lilt, came a couple of hundred or so of the villagers and their visitors from mountain and glen and shore. Blazing pine-knots served for torches and lighted the way well, until they at length reached the landward front of the castle, where the sick man marshalled them in a wide, crimson half-moon about the drawbridge, while Carthew held his horse for him at one side.
The postern-door opened noiselessly and Janet M'Kissock looked out from within. Herries crossed the drawbridge toward her, and, "Eh, Janet, woman!" said he, "what's all this I hear so late? They tell me that the Lady Josceline Justice has come to Loquhariot, and—"
"It was because you were so ill that I didn't send word at once, Mr. Herries," the housekeeper put in defensively as he paused. "The beacon was fired without her ladyship's knowledge by one of her friends. I don't—"
"Itisher ladyship, then?" the factor demanded, searching her face with his keen, anxious, fevered eyes. "Whence came she so suddenly, Janet?"
"It is indeed her ladyship," the old woman answered solemnly. "But—more than that I do not know. I have had all to see to since the sun set, and—"
The other checked her plaint with an uplifted hand.
"I'll hear about everything else by and by. And meantime—I've brought some of her own folk up to offer her welcome—since itisshe," he said, all his doubts evidently dispelled by Janet M'Kissock's emphatic assurance. "Will she come out to us for a few minutes, think ye?"
"That will she, I'm sure," answered Mrs. M'Kissock. "Her ladyship has a heart of gold, as it were, and a very kindly way with her. I'll send in word that her folk are here—she'll have finished dinner by now."
She turned and left him, closing the postern behind her so that only the red torch-light illumined the high portcullis and level drawbridge until, presently, the massive main-doors of the castle swung slowly back on their well-oiled hinges and in the heart of the glow from within appeared Sallie, with that young-old man whom Justin Carthew so disliked at her side in very correct evening clothes. But he stayed a little behind as she stepped forward and stopped under the portcullis, the flare of the torches full on her face, a very dazzling vision indeed. For she also was dressed for the evening, and in a creation from Paris.
Carthew's heart was thumping as he drew farther aside into the shadows. She had not noticed him in his plaid, holding the old man's horse.
Even during the bewildering whirl of those days which had passed so swiftly since she had escaped from theOlive Branch, Sallie had thought very often of Justin Carthew and the strange situation in which circumstances had all conspired to place them toward each other.
Since she had found out what her rehabilitation, as Lady Josceline Justice, was going to cost him, she had been very anxious to see him again and make everything clear between him and her. But she could scarcely disclose to the others that she had met him before. Neither Captain Dove nor Jasper Slyne knew anything about him beyond what they had heard from Mr. Jobling. And Mr. Jobling could or would tell her nothing, in reply to a timid question or two she had put to him, beyond the bare fact that she had nothing to fear from the young American's ill-founded claim to her rightful place in the world.
She had been very anxious to see him again. But it had startled and confused her at first to find him, so evidently at home, on the Warder's Tower of Loquhariot. For she could not then, before the others, say anything at all of what was in her mind; and she was afraid that he might unguardedly, on the spur of the moment, reveal their unavoidable joint secret.
She could see that he had recognised her at last and that he was no less at a loss than herself. Mr. Jobling's gratuitous rudeness to him vexed her very much. The old housekeeper's half-hysterical outbreak surprised her beyond expression. And then he was gone, before she could make up her mind that it was her own proper part to have bidden him stay till something could have been settled.
But when she suggested that to Slyne he pooh-poohed the idea as absurd, and told her she ought to be very glad to have got rid of her rival so easily.
He himself was in high glee over that unexpected outcome of Mr. Jobling's brusquely peremptory method with the interloper, and Captain Dove's face wore a triumphant grin. Mr. Jobling himself seemed inclined to be sulky with her, but the other two only laughed at his petulance.
"We've got possession!" said Slyne exultantly, "and that's nine points of the law, asyouought to know. If she hadn't taken the fellow's part he might have been more inclined to stand his ground. But now—up drawbridge and down portcullis! We'll hold the fort here, till that old Chancery Court of yours comes away with its final decision."
Captain Dove poked the portly lawyer in the short ribs. "Buck up, old rarebit!" he begged. "Don't look so glum. This is home, sweet home now. Come on down below and I'll get you some sort of a bracer from that sour-faced old Scotch hag with the keys. My mouth feels just as if it were made of blotting-paper, too."
"But you must go very slow yet, Dove," Slyne cautioned the elated seaman as he turned toward the stairway. "Don't go too fast. We aren't safely enough settled yet to—"
Captain Dove paused to look him between the eyes with a mirthless, meaning laugh.
"This is my adopted daughter's castle now, Mister Slyne," said he. "When we want any advice from you about how we're to behave in it—or anything else—we'll let you know. D'ye see?"
Slyne's lips parted and closed again. He had evidently thought better of giving voice to any retort, however effective.
"After you," he remarked politely, since Captain Dove still stood blocking the stairway and grinning fixedly back at him. "I must send down to the inn for Ambrizette and our baggage at once. It will soon be quite dark."
Sallie followed them slowly, like one in a dream, and Mr. Jobling came last. As they reached the circular hall below, Mrs. M'Kissock, still much perturbed, came hurrying in from the corridor.
"Mr. Carthew has gone, my lady," she said, dropping Sallie another deep curtsey, "and if your ladyship will be pleased to rest here for a little, it will not be long till the West Wing is all in order. I have only two maids to help me, with the castle empty so long, but I have sent down to the village for more, and maybe your ladyship will excuse—"
Sallie went up to her and took hold of the two trembling hands clasped tightly together against a jingling silver chatelaine.
"Janet," she said softly, and the agitated old woman looked gratefully up into her grave, wistful eyes, "I think you and I are going to be good friends, Janet," she said, "because—we have both been so lonely. And I want you not to worry yourself about anything. There's no hurry, and we'll be quite content here till you have everything arranged as you wish."
"I thank you kindly, my lady," answered Mrs. M'Kissock, and curtsied again, and was going off about her business, when Slyne signed to her to wait a moment and drew Sallie toward the door.
"I'll have to go into a number of matters with you," said he condescendingly to the old housekeeper. "To save Lady Josceline trouble, you'll get all your instructions from me."
Mrs. M'Kissock looked mutely to her new mistress for refutation or confirmation of his right to claim her services so; and Sallie could not but nod as she recalled with a strange, new pang the promise she had made in Genoa, and the lengthy document she had signed in the Hôtel de Paris.
"This is Mr. Jasper Slyne, Janet," said she, "and—"
"Her ladyship's future—" Slyne was about to explain the importance of his position there when Captain Dove interposed.
"Slyne!" he called across the hall. "If there's nothing to drink in the house, whoever goes down to the inn for our baggage had better bring up—"
But Slyne had already got Mrs. M'Kissock out into the corridor.
"I'll send something in at once. Try to keep him quiet for a little," he said to Sallie, and she, having carefully closed the door, went back toward the fireplace to pacify the old man.
A few minutes later a pink-complexioned, flaxen-haired maid came tripping demurely in, with a great silver salver on which was set such an array of decanters that Captain Dove at once became most amiable again.
"And I will bring tea for your ladyship now," said the maid in her quaint Highland accent. "It was the other gentleman that told me to bring this first."
"That was quite right," Sallie reassured her, and asked her name.
"It is Mairi, my lady," the girl answered with a shy, gratified smile, and was very soon back with a beautiful service of Sèvres and a steaming urn.
Mr. Jobling virtuously declined Captain Dove's cordial invitation to help himself to a decanter, and asked Sallie for a cup of weak tea. At which the old man was still cackling discordantly when Slyne came in again a few minutes later.
"That's an obstinate old baggage!" said he, obviously incensed. "You must tell her, Sal—Lady Josceline, that she's to attend to my orders without any more back-talk."
Captain Dove turned in his armchair before the fire.
"That woman's my adopted daughter's housekeeper now, Mister Slyne," said he, frowning darkly. "And I'll trouble you not to interfere in what's no concern of yours. You're only a visitor here, you know."
Slyne darted a black glance at him, but did not answer him otherwise. "I told her to get your mother's rooms ready for you," he mentioned to Sallie. "And Ambrizette will be there by the time you'll want her.
"That fellow Carthew has gone off to the inn," he remarked to Mr. Jobling. "I expect he'll be busy by now wiring Bolder & Bolder the news."
"That won't do him any good," Mr. Jobling returned. "And, even if he had any case to go on with, there's nothing more they could do for him until the Hilary Sittings come on—very nearly a fortnight yet. As it is, he hasn't a leg left to stand on. You heard what old Gaunt said to her ladyship."
"There's no fear of anything getting into the newspapers prematurely, is there?" asked Slyne.
"I told Spettigrew to keep everything quiet," the lawyer answered complacently. "And, besides, they're all full to overflowing about the election that's coming on."
"I wonder if anyone ever wades through all the lurid twaddle they print at such times?" said Slyne, apparently pleased. And they two maintained a desultory conversation, to which Sallie only listened when it now and then veered back to matters which might affect Carthew or herself, until a sonorous gong began to sound in the corridor.
As its increasing thunder suddenly disturbed the cloistral quiet, Captain Dove, comfortably settled in his armchair beside the fire with a black clay pipe, started up in alarm and spilled the contents of the glass in his hand.
"What the devil are they about out there!" he ejaculated irascibly. "I'll blow a hole through that infernal tom-tom if they don't drop it."
"Time to dress for dinner," Slyne explained with a tolerant smile, and, rising, rang the bell. "Our rooms will be ready by now, I expect. But there's no hurry. All you need to change is your waistcoat."
"Damn nonsense!" snorted Captain Dove, and reaching for a decanter, was liberally refilling his glass when the girl Mairi answered the bell.
"Show her ladyship to her own rooms," Slyne directed. And Sallie followed the demure, flaxen-haired maid very eagerly.
On her way to the West Wing she could not but notice the change which had come over the place. A pleasant atmosphere of ordered activity seemed to pervade the vast building. There were men as well as women-servants busy everywhere. Light and warmth and life had put to flight the darkness and desolation which had come down with the dusk on its emptiness. She gave herself up for the moment to a delicious, childish sensation of snugness and safety there. And when she at length reached the open door of the splendid suite which, Mrs. M'Kissock had told her, had once been her mother's, she felt that she could not, after all, grudge the price she must pay by and by for her glimpse of home.
Ambrizette, with rolling eyes and open mouth, had everything in readiness for her in her dressing-room, for the hideous dwarf was indeed a very efficientfemme de chambre. Within half an hour Sallie had had her bath and was dressed again, in the same frock that she had worn at the Savoy. She patted the dumb black creature on the head before turning away from the glass, and paused on the threshold to glance back into the cosy, fire-lit room with eyes which had grown unaccountably dim.
She found Mairi in the main hall, demurely flirting with one of the footmen whom Mrs. M'Kissock had conjured up, and Mairi showed her into a luxurious drawing-room where Slyne was standing, hands in pockets, before a cavernous, marble-faced fireplace in which a veritable bonfire of logs was cheerily crackling.
His eyes lighted up as she entered. The mirrors about the walls seemed to frame innumerable pictures of her as she crossed the slippery, age-blackened floor toward the big bearskin rug which made an oasis before the fire. He held out his hands to her, dumbly. And just at that moment Mr. Jobling appeared in the doorway, trumpeting into his handkerchief.
Captain Dove arrived shortly after him, under convoy of a scared housemaid who, it seemed, had found him astray in some far corner of the castle and whom he had impressed into his service as guide. The gongs resounded again, just in time to drown his added denunciation of the oak floor, on which he had all but come to grief as soon as he set foot on it. The folding-doors at one end of the long room were pulled apart and a resonant voice announced ceremoniously that dinner was served. Slyne offered Sallie an arm a second or two in advance of the slower Jobling, and, as she laid a light hand on his sleeve, led her into the banquet-hall.
"I told them we'd dine here to-night, although there are lots of more modern rooms," he mentioned to her, and frowned in helpless annoyance as Captain Dove, following, gave vent to a very audible whistle.
A butler and four tall footmen, all in tartan kilts and full-dress doublets, were at their places about a table resplendent with silver displayed with old-fashioned profusion. Rare crystal and fine foreign glassware flashed and sparkled under the shaded lights standing on damask like snow, to which hot-house fruit and flowers added an exquisite note of colour. In the dim background, barely visible in the faint firelight, hung faded tapestries with, here and there, some portrait or pair of horns. There seemed to be a small gallery at the farther end of the hall. The unceiled rafters overhead were also almost in darkness.
Sallie, glancing about her with eager, delighted eyes, paused on the way to the table to peer through a pane of plate-glass let into the panelling over one mantel.
"That's the famous Fairy Horn, Lady Josceline," said Mr. Jobling officiously. "But—you haven't heard the old Jura legend yet, I suppose?" He coughed in his most important manner.
"Well,—the Fairy Horn is said to have been presented to one of your ancestors a very long time ago by the White Lady—the family ghost; every real old Scots family, you know, has a private ghost of its own. And the horn carried with it the privilege, to him or any succeeding chief of the clan, of summoning the White Lady, on three occasions, to fulfil any wish so urgent as to be worth the price of her help. For, every time she does show up, the head of the family dies. So that—the Fairy Horn has only been sounded twice, I've been told, during the centuries which have passed since then; and—on each occasion the wish expressed has been duly fulfilled, at the price of the chieftain's life."
Captain Dove turned restlessly in the chair on which he had scarcely sat down. Sallie knew that he was intensely superstitious, as so many seamen are, and that that shadowed hall would be the last place in which he would be willing to hear ghost-stories.
"Huh!" said he, irritably. "I don't believe a word of it, anyhow. What are we waiting for now? Gimme some soup, or something, you!"
He was still scowling over his shoulder at a surprised servant when, in an instant, there rose from behind the tapestry in a dark corner a low, moaning wail which swelled and sank and swelled again to a bitter, blood-curdling shriek. Captain Dove's face blanched as he pushed his chair from under him and sprang to his feet, armed with the nearest available weapon, a table-knife. The servant behind him had stepped back, in obvious alarm.
A man came striding out of the dusk in the distant corner, and, as he marched proudly up the room, the blare of the bagpipes over his shoulder seemed to make the very rafters ring. Twice he encircled the table, and then passed out of sight by the farther door.
Captain Dove had sat down again, grinding his teeth audibly. To cover his confusion, Sallie turned to the butler behind her chair, and, "What tune was that?" she asked, pleasantly.
Her face flushed as the Highlandman answered, in careful English, "It will be none other than theWelcome to Jurathat your ladyship's head-piper would play this night."
She would have been even happier in her wonderful new home if she had not thought of Justin Carthew again at that moment, and of the difference her coming had made to him. She wished that she had been able to tell him at once, on the Warder's Tower, what was once more in her mind as she looked lovingly round the banquet-hall of Loquhariot—from which she had ousted him. She could not forget how gallantly he had faced fate at every turn, always making little of his own share in the tragic happenings which had involved them both.
She felt that she could not rest until she had set herself right with him, and made up her mind that as soon as dinner was over, she would ask Mairi or Mrs. M'Kissock to send a message down to the inn for her.
But dinner, under such conditions, was a long business. And, although both Mr. Jobling and Jasper Slyne did their best to make the time pass pleasantly for her, she was very glad when a message the butler brought her gave her an excuse for leaving the table a little before she would otherwise have got away.
She had hoped to escape alone, but Slyne had overheard what the man had said and accompanied her to the hall, where the old housekeeper was awaiting her.
"What's all this, Mrs. M'Kissock?" he asked, somewhat sharply. "And—who's Mr. Herries?"
"Mr. Herries is the factor in charge of the estates, sir," she answered, "and some of her ladyship's tenantry have come up from the village with him to offer her welcome. It was not my place to turn them away from the door without word from her ladyship's self."
"Oh, no," said Sallie, her eyes aglow and a sudden lump in her throat to think that her own folk were making her welcome. "I must see them, Janet. I must thank them—"
Slyne frowned, but made no further demur as Mrs. M'Kissock gave orders to open the doors.
The glare of the torches half-blinded Sallie as she stepped out; and she halted beneath the portcullis. But she saw an old man alone on the drawbridge and went on alone toward him. He doffed his Highland bonnet to her and bowed with old-fashioned deference. Then he looked her in the face for a moment or two, very keenly, while she returned his searching glance with happily smiling eyes which had nothing to hide from him. And all the time the pipers in the background were blowing their best.
He held up a trembling hand to them, and the shrill music ceased. The sputter of the torches was the only sound that broke the stillness until he spoke.
"Lady Josceline Justice?" he asked, and, as Sallie nodded, still smiling, "I am Ian Herries," he told her, "factor of Loquhariot and your ladyship's humble servant. I had no news of your ladyship's coming or I would have been here in time to say welcome home on behalf of your ladyship's tenantry and myself."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Herries," said Sallie, in a shy and very tremulous voice whose tone changed suddenly to one of urgent alarm. "But—you're ill. You must come in and rest.
"Oh, Jasper—"
The old man had almost collapsed, but Slyne hurried forward in time to save him from falling.
"I'll see to Mr. Herries," said he, with a great air of sympathy, and helped the sick man indoors.
Sallie looked a little uncertainly after him, and then faced the flickering torches alone again. The silent scrutiny of all the eyes regarding her was something of an ordeal, but she went bravely on across the drawbridge.
She did not notice the nip in the air, but some one among the assemblage had wrapped her about in a heavy plaid and drawn back before she could see who it was.
"Your ladyship will find the Jura tartan as warm as the welcome we all wish your ladyship," said a stalwart, bearded mountaineer, who had stepped to the front to speak for his fellows; and, as she smiled shy but very contentedly up into his scarlet face, he bent his head above the hand she had held out to him.
One after another the hill-men and fisherfolk of the village filed past her then, each with some stammered salutation, in difficult English or guttural Gaelic. And for each she had a shy, grateful smile and a word of thanks, until at the last came Justin Carthew and had also stooped and kissed her hand before she could prevent him.
He would have passed on like the others but that she, blushing hotly, begged him to wait. For Janet M'Kissock had come to her shoulder to say that at the Jura Arms in the village would be provided a loving-cup in which all might drink her ladyship's health, as was proper on such an occasion, and had brought out the big, silver-mounted hunting-quaich in which every new Earl of Jura had pledged his people on his accession.
The butts of the torches had been flung in a heap on the ground before the girl, and formed a fiery pyramid between her and the waiting throng.
She lifted up the drinking-horn, her eyes very bright, and cried at the pitch of her clear, sweet voice a single, strangely-sounding word in the Gaelic, that Janet M'Kissock had whispered to her once or twice. And the sudden, thunderous roar of response that rang out in answer, as if from a single throat, awoke wild echoes among the surrounding hills.
"Your ladyship will come inbye now," begged Mrs. M'Kissock, as the pipes struck up again at the head of the gathering on its way back to the village.
But, "Just in a minute, Janet," said Sallie, "I'm quite warm. And—you needn't wait."
The bonfire before her was burning low in spite of the wind which had just begun to blow and promised to freshen. She stayed beside it, watching, until all but Carthew were gone. And then she turned to him, the tears very near her eyes and her starved heart almost satisfied.
"Oh, Mr. Carthew," she said timidly, "I wanted to tell you at once how sorry I am about—everything. I had no idea at all, when you told me on theOlive Branch—"
"Of course not," said Justin Carthew concisely.
"And Mr. Jobling was so—abrupt; and—I didn't know what to do. Won't you please forgive me; I had no idea—"
"I was pretty much taken aback myself," said Justin Carthew, and laughed a little, though not very merrily. "But—I'm all right again now. And you mustn't worry about me, please. I'm all right, again, and—"
"You'll wait for a little?" she interrupted, she was so eager to reassure him. "I can't help being who I am, but—if you will only wait for a little, everything will turn out all right for you, too."
She could see that he was puzzled.
"I can't explain," she went on hurriedly, afraid that he would demand explanation. "But I want you to give me a little time, if you will. I want you not to go away. If you will just wait—for only three months—everything will turn out all right for you in the end."
"But—how—" he was beginning, when she cut him short again.
"I can't explain," she repeated. "Only—you once promised that I might ask you to do anything I wanted. Will you not just wait here, and trust me—for only three months? And then you'll understand."
He looked helplessly about him.
"I'll wait here—and trust you—all the rest of my life," he said, "if you say so. And then I'll still be in your debt."
"All I ask is my three months," she told him gravely. "And then—"
He looked his utter perplexity.
"You don't mean that you're Lady Josceline Justice only for the time being?" he asked, his forehead wrinkled.
"Oh, no," she answered assuredly. "I'll be Lady Josceline Justice all my life. And—you'll keep your promise?"
"I'll keep my promise," he affirmed. "I'll wait here and trust you for three months—and for the rest of my life, if you say so."
She smiled at him, very contentedly. "I'm going to be very happy here now," she said, and looked round. She had heard Slyne's voice, calling her. She could see him beyond the drawbridge gazing blindly out into the darkness.
"Good night," she said to Carthew. But she did not go in until he had swung himself into the saddle and ridden away, always looking back.
The wind that rose during the night brought with it a change in the weather. When the day broke and a round red sun rose from among the mountains, it showed the whole world white—the land deep under snow and the sea all foam.
Slyne's first sensation when he woke and saw the storm, from behind the double windows of his comfortable rooms in the Warder's Tower, was one of relief, since it would surely serve to stave off inconvenient visitors. He had been afraid that the news the beacon had blazoned the night before would travel altogether too fast and too far to suit his plans; it would have been awkward in the extreme to be inundated with curious callers in a position practically carried by assault, only tenable by stealth and while no one in active authority should challenge it.
The coming of Herries, the factor, had opened his eyes to that. For the old fellow, ill as he was, had shown a most annoying inclination to cross-question Slyne about various dry legal details; and Slyne had only been able to put him off temporarily by promising that her ladyship's own man of law would go into all such matters with him in the morning.
Now, fortunately for Slyne and his friends, the factor need not be further considered for some little time to come, if indeed at all. The fever in him had refused to yield to any of Mrs. M'Kissock's simple medicaments, and he was delirious. He seemed very likely, indeed, to die unless he were very lucky. Slyne did not fail to congratulate himself on that score also, as he sat up in bed to reach for a cigarette after his late breakfast and contemplate the cuffs of his expensive pink silk pajamas.
The rest of the company in the castle he thought he could find means to control, for the present, at any rate, although he did not under-estimate the chances of trouble with his two disaffected associates, who had already displayed such a lamentable tendency toward open mutiny. But, on the whole, he felt satisfied that, if he could only keep matters running smoothly during the days that must still elapse before the Court of Chancery should resume its usual routine and finally settle the Jura succession on Sallie, he would by then have managed to make his own footing there absolutely secure.
He snuggled back between the blankets again, with an inexpressible sensation of comfort, and, watching the blue spirals of smoke curl upwards from under his moustache, forgot all the anxious uncertainties and the ever more painful pinch of the present in contemplative anticipations of that fair future which he had so carefully planned for himself. Not even the fact that he had almost exhausted his cash resources could worry him when he thought of the wealth that was to be his as soon as he should be safely married to Sallie; and until then he could command unlimited local credit, on her behalf.
She was Lady Josceline Justice already. She would be Countess of Jura in her own right as soon as the Court of Chancery should admit her identity. She would have ten millions of dollars in ready money for him to spend and a quarter of a million for annual income. He had been a poor man all his life, but now—he looked luxuriously out at the snow and the storm.
"Mr. Jasper Slyne and the Countess of Jura," he said aloud, and smiled and curled his moustache.
He rose by and by and betook himself to his dressing-room, whistling a cheery tune. "And although I don't want to rush things," said he to himself as he stepped briskly into his bath, "if either Dove or that fat suicide makes any more fuss, I'll have to show 'em my teeth. They must both keep to the bargains we struck. And I think I've made things pretty safe for myself by now."
When he at length strolled downstairs, infinitely refreshed after his long rest, he found Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove in close conclave in the library. And he did not like their looks in the least or their sudden silence at sight of him. He felt certain that they had been conspiring against him, and did not delay in commencing a counter-attack.
"'Morning, Dove. 'Morning, Jobling," said he casually, as he stopped to select a cigar from the box on the table. "Change of weather, eh! You'll have a cold journey back to London, Jobling."
Mr. Jobling looked very coldly across at him. "I do not propose to return to London at present, Mr. Slyne," he replied. "Mr. Spettigrew will look after everything there."
"You're no more use to me here," said Slyne bluntly, "and youmaybe of some service in London."
"You are no longer a client of mine, Mr. Slyne," the lawyer retorted, no doubt emboldened by the promise of Captain Dove's unswerving support. "I can no longer act for you with any feeling of confidence—since I have found out how unfairly you have attempted to treat Captain Dove."
Slyne understood that open war was declared. "I won't be a client of yours for long, if you're going to be troublesome," he affirmed. "I think you've got a little out of your depth again, my friend. I don't think you'll find it will pay you to take that tone."
Mr. Jobling began to splutter, and Captain Dove evidently felt impelled to come to his aid.
"You take too much on yourself, Slyne," said he, eyeing that gentleman with extreme disfavour. "You seem to think you're the whole show here, though you're nothing but a hanger-on, as I've told you before. Let's have a good deal less of it, or—We can get on just as well, or even better—without you, you know."
Slyne turned a contemptuous stare on him. "So that's the idea now, is it!" he remarked, without any sign of heat. "You two think it's a case of dog eat dog now, do you! And—after you've got rid of me, who picked you both up out of the gutter, you'll be at each other's throats. You're a great pair!"
His nonchalance incensed the old man, as he had intended it should.
"I want none of your damned lip," declared Captain Dove, glaring at him, "you precious upstart! You're nothing but a beggar on horseback yourself, for all your grand airs. Me and this other gentleman are both sick-tired of them. You're one too many—"
"I'm one too many for you two, at any rate; and you may both stake your last cent on that," Slyne told him with a composure admirable under the circumstances. "You surely don't imagine, do you, that I'm here on any such unsafe footing as you are! I thought you knew me well enough, Dove, to be sure that I'd leave you no opportunity to go back on your bargain with me."
"To hell with you and your bargains!" cried Captain Dove: and then, restraining his rage, lowered his voice again. "The mistake you've always made with me, Slyne, has been to take me for an old fool—as you've very often called me to my face. You think I'm in my dotage. But—I'm not too old to showyoua trick or two yet, if you and I come to grips. And, as for being such a fool as you seem to think me—you wait and see! I've a card or two up my sleeve, Mr. Slyne, that'll maybe euchre your game for you, if you try to bluff too high!"
Slyne sat back and studied the old man's face. Captain Dove had made that same mysterious threat on board theOlive Branchin Genoa, before they had started out on their present adventure. It had disconcerted Slyne then. It disconcerted him still more now.
"Don't you think that you're a little inclined to overrate your importance and—er—capacity, Mr. Slyne?" put in Mr. Jobling acidly during the pause, involuntary on Slyne's part. "All your ideas are no doubt based on the documents we mutually signed in Monte Carlo; and you are probably not aware, as I am—now that I have a clearer insight into your motives—that they amount to neither more nor less than a conspiracy to defraud. You would be well advised, believe me, to put them all in the fire."
Slyne turned on him in an instant. "Now, see here, my friend! I want you to understand, once and for all, that I've gotyousafe where I want you, and that, if I hear much more from you, you'll find yourself in a very unpleasant fix. You wouldn't look well at all in a striped suit—or I believe it's the broad-arrow pattern they supply in the prisons here. And that's what you'll come to, believe me, unless you walk the line I've laid down for you. You can't embezzle trust funds, you know, and pay the interest with promises to be met as soon as you lay your hands on some of the plunder here, without running a very dangerous risk indeed. Why, even the car you sold me in Genoa was another man's property—and I hold your receipt for the price I paid you for it.
"So shut up," he concluded sharply, and proceeded to deal with Captain Dove as if the lawyer had not been there.
Mr. Jobling's flaccid face had become of the colour of mottled clay. He was respiring stertorously, through his mouth. His eyes had grown blood-shot. His back-bone seemed to have given way. He sat huddled up, silent, staring at Slyne with eyes full of impotent fear.
"You talk to me about bluffing!" Slyne was saying to Captain Dove, who also seemed to have grown suddenly apprehensive of some unforeseen mischance. "You talk to me about bluffing, although I've played a straight game with you from the start and stuck to our bargain even against my own interests. Wait a minute. Listen to me—and then you can talk till you're tired.
"Do you want to keep your clever new friend there company in his cell? How long do you think you'd be left at liberty if I mentioned to the authorities that you're the same man who—"
"Stop, now, curse you!" roared Captain Dove and so drowned the disclosures which Slyne seemed minded to make. "And don't go too far with me, or—"
Slyne looked without winking into the muzzle of the revolver which the old man had produced in an instant and levelled at him. "You talk to me about bluffing!" he said again, and laughed, without mirth. "You'd be better occupied, Dove, in making sure that your own bluff isn't called. You've done your best for a week past to give yourself away to the police, and—if you manage that in the end, you won't have me to blame, remember.I'mnot the sort of yellow dog you seem to want to make yourself out."
He paused, to let that vitriolic criticism sink in, and to consider just how far he might safely go. Captain Dove had laid his revolver down but kept a hand on its butt. He was watching Slyne intently.
"I wish you could get it into your head," the latter resumed a little more peaceably, "that beggar-my-neighbour isn't the easiest game to play with me. And that I've got brains enough to take care of myself.
"If you and your cute new friend there were to be put away to-morrow, I'd stay here safe and sound. I've nothing to fear.
"I've kept my bargain with you both so far, and I'm quite willing to complete it. I'm going to see, at the same time, that you keep yours with me. You'll each get your promised share of the profits here, no more and no less; and then—I'll be done with you. Till then—don't gotoofar with me," he finished warningly.
"To hear you talk, any one would think you owned Loquhariot already!" remarked Captain Dove. "I'd like to hear what Sallie has to say about it all now."
"I'll get her to tell you at once, if you like," Slyne answered evenly and, rising, rang the bell.
"Ask her ladyship to favour us with her company for a few minutes," he instructed the footman who answered that summons, "or if she'd prefer to receive us in her own room." Then he lay back in his chair again, his wits busily at work. He could not feel quite sure himself what Sallie would have to say about it all now; but—he meant to master her also.
The servant, however, came back with word that her ladyship had gone out. And at that Slyne scowled. It was at a most inopportune moment for him that Sallie had taken a liberty of which she would not have dreamed a few days before; and, furthermore, it did not fit in with his plans at all to have her making such use of her new-found freedom; there was no telling whom she might meet—there was that fellow Carthew, for instance!
"Which way did her ladyship go, do you know?" he called after the footman, as casually as he could.
"To the village, I think, sir," the man replied, and he rose, yawning, to look discontentedly out at the wintry landscape. It was very beautiful in the brisk morning sunshine, but also very wet underfoot.
"I'll stroll down the road after her," he announced, "and fetch her back. You can be packing up in the meantime, Jobling. The steamer south sails early in the afternoon."
He did not hesitate to leave the two conspirators alone together again; he judged that he had succeeded in cowing them both. He even smiled to himself on his way outdoors.
"I thought I was done for when I met Dubois," he reflected, perfectly self-satisfied, "but—I was really in luck. And that was a most opportune chat I had with Mullins in London, too. I've got Jobling fairly fixed. If I can't manage the old man—I'm a bigger fool than I take myself for. And I've made things all right for myself with Sallie, or I'm mistaken."
He paused in the main hall to look appreciatively about him while a servant was fetching his coat and cap from the cloak-room. The sun was streaming in through the stained glass of a lofty, mullioned window, the heart of each of whose panels showed in vivid scarlet against the light a clenched hand holding a dagger, the Jura crest.
"Theywon it all that way," said Slyne to himself, and drew a deep breath of contentment as he looked round the noble hall again. He felt very proud of the place already, and only wished that some of his former friends could have seen him there.
Outside, beyond the drawbridge, he halted to look admiringly up at the massive, ivy-clad frontage of the Main Keep, with its crenellated ramparts and narrow fighting-windows and bartizan. Then he turned with a high heart toward the road that runs between hazel thickets and clumps of alder or silver birch down the long hill to the village and the seashore. He was humming a contented tune to himself as he tramped through the melting snow.
He had not far to seek Sallie. Within the open doorway of the first cottage he came to, he caught sight of her beside the peat-fire with a laughing child on her lap and its proud mother smiling beside her.
He walked in on them, and she looked up at him very happily as he entered. The mother curtsied, which pleased him. So that he made himself most agreeable to them both, and did not take Sallie away at once as he had intended. He was quite gratified to see how graciously she filled the part of Lady Bountiful. He wanted her to be popular among the villagers, and meant to make himself popular as well. He was only afraid that her ignorance of the conventions might lead her into making herself too cheap.
She was only a young girl yet, and he knew that her innate purity of mind had never been sullied nor her sweet, loyal, lovable nature in any way warped amid the strange surroundings and circumstances in which she had lived till then. She was as happy playing with the cottager's child as she would have been in a palace. But—the daughter of Torquil Fitz-J. Justice, Earl of Jura and Baron St. Just of Justicehall and Loquhariot, must not make herself too cheap, thought Slyne. And presently he suggested to her that it was time to be going.
She rose, a little reluctantly, and followed him; while he bowed patronisingly to the fisherman's wife—just as he imagined a grand gentleman would do.
He did not demur when Sallie turned down the village street instead of up-hill again. He was quite pleased to show himself there at her side—and touch his cap condescendingly in response to the salutations of all who passed. He only omitted that very casual courtesy to Justin Carthew, standing at the door of the Inn.
"I suppose there's no doubt that Mr. Carthew was wrongly informed by his lawyers, Jasper?" Sallie asked him a few minutes later.
"No doubt in the world," Slyne answered her. "He's of no account at all now. The best thing he can do now for himself is to clear off back to America, where he belongs.
"And—there's another thing, my dear. Captain Dove and that fat ass Jobling have got to go too. We'll never have any peace while they're hanging about. But they're both inclined to be troublesome, and I want you to back me up against them.
"It was Captain Dove who ordered the beacon to be lighted last night. And—Lord only knows how much annoyance that may cause us yet! In fact, they're a pretty difficult pair to handle. So, when we get back to the castle, I want you to tell them that you intend to keep your promise to me; I'll be better able to manage them then, you see.
"You haven't forgotten just what you promised me, have you?"
"No, Jasper," answered the girl, and gazed across the wind-swept loch with fond, despairing eyes, "I haven't forgotten. And—I'll keep my promise, if—when the time comes."
Captain Dove, sucking at his black cutty-pipe in the library of Loquhariot, looked very contemptuously at Mr. Jobling. It was self-evident that Mr. Jobling was afraid of Slyne and feeling very sorry for himself.
But Captain Dove was in no such disconsolate mood. Glancing at the despondent lawyer out of his little red-rimmed eyes, he even grinned, still more contemptuously.Hewas not afraid of Slyne, he told himself, and it made no material difference to him that his recent attempt to brow-beat that grasping scoundrel had failed, even with the London lawyer for ally. For Captain Dove did not intend that either of the other two should eventually get the better of him. He was playing a waiting game, in which he meant to come out winner at any cost.
So far as Captain Dove was concerned there were only two persons really concerned in the question of the Jura succession. One was Sallie, the other himself—her adopted father!
He looked upon Mr. Jobling as a mere mechanical instrument, such as could be replaced at a moment's notice if that were needful, now that the legal details of the case had been carried so far toward final success. Slyne was absolutely superfluous there and had outlived his usefulness, in so far, at least, as Captain Dove was concerned. More than that, he was in Captain Dove's way. So, to some extent, was Justin Carthew, since it seemed that Sallie felt called upon to make a fool of herself for his benefit; but Captain Dove did not anticipate any great difficulty in dealing with him. And so was Herries, the factor, who had so many inconvenient questions to ask—although he need scarcely be taken into account at present while he was abed and likely to be there for some time to come.
With all of these, in any case, he felt quite capable of coping—except with Jasper Slyne, who had threatened, a few moments before and in the hearing of an attentive witness ... Slyne was undoubtedly dangerous now; and it must be his first care to free himself for all time from the risk of Slyne's telling....
"I have it," said Captain Dove, his furrowed forehead suddenly cleared and his face contorted into a smile at sight of which Mr. Jobling was seized with a sickly, sinking sensation. "I have it. We must keep quiet of course, until theOlive Branchturns up, but she shouldn't be very long now, and then—
"I'll send for Brasse. I warned that fool Slyne to play fair with me—but he won't. And so—since it's beggar-my-neighbour we're at,hewon't be my neighbour for long."
Mr. Jobling rose, coughing irritably. The reek from Captain Dove's foul pipe was too much for him.
"I'll go and pack now," he announced. "I'd never have come here at all if I had thought—"
"You leave things here to me, old cock," Captain Dove encouraged him. "And go and jag your friend Spettigrew along till he gets judgment for us. That's the most important part of the game at present. Leave things here to me, and you'll find, when the time comes, that Slyne will have to take a back seat."
But the stout solicitor did not seem grateful at all for that crumb of comfort. He merely looked at Captain Dove with equal dislike and disbelief as he left the room.
He left the castle immediately after lunch, to catch the steamer south, a little less depressed, perhaps, after a few further words with Captain Dove, who thought it only politic to inspirit him in his efforts on Sallie's behalf. And he had not been gone very long before Captain Dove began to miss him—as a boon-companion, a part which Slyne refused to play any longer. So that the old man soon began to find the time hang very heavy on his hands, and his grudge against Slyne always grew.
Under any circumstances, he could not have been happy for long on land. Nor could he feel altogether safe there, even in the distasteful disguise he had adopted at Slyne's advice; and for discrediting which he had been so repeatedly called to account by Slyne. He could scarcely but repent having sacrificed his undisputed autocracy on theOlive Branchin order to figure as a mere puppet in Slyne's company, as he had undoubtedly become since he had left his ship. He grew very angry indeed with Slyne when he thought of that, as he often did during those endless days of waiting.
It was all Slyne's fault, he assured himself, that he was thus stranded there; that he had not fifty cents left to bless himself with, since one expensive evening in Paris; and that, even if he had had such a sum in his pockets, it might have worn a hole in them before he could spend it, in such a forsaken spot!
Of what use to him, he inquired of himself, going off at another tangent, could a huge, ghost-haunted pile like the Castle of Loquhariot be? Or a great empty barrack like Justicehall?—which reminded him unpleasantly of the Law Courts in London. How could he ever hope to spend such an excess of wealth as was soon to be Sallie's, and, therefore, at his disposal? A perfect nausea of money possessed Captain Dove at such moments. He would almost have preferred the prospect of poverty again, if only for the sake of the interest in life the struggle to live might restore to him.
"Enough is as good as a feast!" said he to himself every now and then while he gazed, with gloom in his soul, at the cut-crystal decanters on a salver of solid silver which was never far from his elbow; and, with that wise saw on his lips, he would continue to drown his contradictory sorrows as deeply as possible.
But there was luckily room and to spare in the castle for all its inmates. Slyne and he kept as much as possible out of each other's way, although they had resumed a spasmodic outward semblance of amity, a steadfast inward determination to get the better of one another, whether by fair means or foul. He could scarcely seek Sallie's company now that she knew his treacherous intentions toward her. The sick man, Herries, was still in bed, in a sufficiently precarious state. So that he lived very much alone with his various grievances, since his walks abroad, as far as the Jura Arms,—where he soon became almost popular among the occasional profligates of the village,—were not so frequent as they would probably have been in better weather.
A bitter east wind, bringing always more snow, had blown almost ceaselessly for the best part of a fortnight before any change came in the wildest weather that had befallen Loquhariot in long years.
The mountain roads for miles in all directions were quite impassable. The mail-cart, with its driver and horses, and also the hastily improvised snow-plough which had attempted their rescue, lay buried deep below the ever deepening drift into which it had plunged on its last outward journey. The single telegraph-line that served the locality had broken down at a dozen points which were quite unapproachable. Stress of weather had prevented the weekly steamer from making its usual call. Loquhariot was absolutely cut off from the outer world.
And then, with a wet westerly wind which soon grew into a gale, the snow on the mountains began to melt and floods made matters still worse, swelling every unconsidered stream into a destructive torrent, cutting wide chasms across the precipitous main-road over the Pass, under-mining its bridges and even washing some of them away bodily. In several of the more outlying districts sheer famine began to grow imminent. The flocks and herds of the countryside were in still worse case than the wild deer which had escaped from their forest sanctuaries before the first of the snow and had been huddling about the village while it endured.
No word had come through from Mr. Jobling in all that time. And Captain Dove was almost beyond the end of his outworn patience before, scowling blackly out of the library window one day when the westerly gale had all but blown itself out, he caught sight of a shabby, sea-going, cargo-tramp, flying the Norwegian flag, which seemed to be seeking an anchorage behind the Small Isles at the mouth of the loch.
It was theOlive Branch. He would have known her in the dark, disguise or no disguise.
"Uh-hum!" he exclaimed, in an ecstasy of relief. "NowI can make things move a little at last. Now we'll soon see who's who here."
He dashed off a peremptory note to his chief engineer, put that in his pocket, clapped his smoked spectacles on his nose and his soft felt hat on his head, and made for the village, where he hoped to find, in the Jura Arms, a local poacher who would undertake an errand out to the steamer.
He found his man at the inn, and his credit there enabled him to drive a speedy bargain. It also helped him to pass the time contentedly enough till the fishing-boat returned from its wet trip with word for the public that the strange steamer had put into the loch on account of an accident in her engine-room which would delay her there for a little, although she would need no help from the village; and with a hasty private note from the chief engineer for Captain Dove—to the effect that Mr. Brasse refused to come ashore.
"Curse him!" snarled Captain Dove as his messenger retired to the bar again. "I suppose he's afraid of the police—though there isn't a policeman within thirty miles, and, even if there were, it wouldn't matter very much." And he sat down to compose another and still more peremptory note, bidding Brasse obey his lawful commands or take the consequences of disobedience.
He would have put off to the steamer himself but for the obvious reasons against that course. And, to induce his messenger to make the trip again after dark, he had to promise the man twice as much as for the first run, still outstanding.
When he finally emerged from the inn, in no very pleasant temper, he caught sight, first, of the weekly steamer already half way up the loch, inward bound, and then of Sallie at a bend of the road in the distance, on her way back to the castle from the village. There was some one with her. It was Carthew.
Captain Dove became still more incensed, and, his mind a good deal inflamed by his recent potations, set off up the hill in pursuit of them, breathing noisily, not even pausing to scowl at the children who scurried indoors as he passed with the skirts of his long black coat streaming out behind him.
He had heard from Slyne that Herries, the factor, had formally appointed the young American his deputy until he should be able to undertake his own duties again. And, in spite of all Slyne and he could say to Sallie, she had obstinately refused to assist in getting rid of Carthew. He had heard from Slyne that Carthew was making far too many occasions for seeing her, and when he had cautioned Sallie on that score she had shown no disposition at all to take his advice.
"I've warned her often enough," he muttered with steadily rising wrath, "to quit monkeying with that fellow. And she'll get right out of hand now, unless I let her see, once and for all, who's going to be master here. Where would I come in ifhemanaged to get married to her! He's got to go. That's all there is to it. I can't afford to have him hanging about here any longer."
The couple in front seemed to be in no hurry, however. He had almost overtaken them before he paused at a hazel-clump to cut himself a stout cudgel. By the time he had got that trimmed to his taste, they had almost reached the castle.
"I'll wait till she's gone in," said Captain Dove to himself. He had noticed that Carthew was carrying what looked like a woodman's axe. But that did not daunt him at all in his purpose. He lingered along the edge of an alder-thicket until at length Sallie shook hands in very friendly fashion with the young American and went her own way, while Carthew took to a trail through the woods and made off at a round pace, notwithstanding his limp, axe on shoulder, whistling blithely.
The path he was following wound in and out among plantations of pine and great groves of grey, leafless birches, until, at a distance of half a mile, it found the clear edge of the cliffs overlooking the circular inlet which forms the head of the loch, and finally faded away at the marge of a smooth plateau of bare rock enclosed on three sides by a thick tangle of woodland and rank undergrowth.
Captain Dove stalked him with all precaution, stepping from stone to stone among the wet snow which was rapidly melting, so that he might leave no traceable footprints on the soft, spongy soil or damp, dead leaves. And once, when Carthew halted to light a pipe, the old man, with murder in his mind, dropped into cover behind a moss-grown boulder at one side of the path—because that would have been a most unadvisable spot at which to attack a man armed with an axe. Then, as Carthew moved on, he once more took up the pursuit, through the clumps of bramble and bracken between the dark trunks of the firs about him.
Carthew stepped unconcernedly out of the dusk of the woods into the open space at the end of the path, and stopped there, axe on shoulder, to look about him. But Captain Dove did not immediately spring upon him as he had been minded to do, for he had just observed, at a corner of the convenient plateau, a round hut, stone-built and roofed with heather, which might or might not be inhabited. Captain Dove wormed his way round toward it, within the thicket.
The windows of the hut were shuttered and its door pad-locked on the outside. Captain Dove was delighted. He turned to squint across at Carthew from behind a bush and judge his distance, but still delayed his attack.
Carthew seemed to have seen something of interest in the dark wood behind Captain Dove, and Captain Dove looked round in instant alarm. It would have been most unpleasant to find that he himself was being spied upon. There was some one or some thing, a tall white shadow, very dimly discernible, moving among the gloom.
A sudden and most unusual sensation of panic seized Captain Dove. The inexplicable shape was flitting soundlessly toward him. He felt thankful that Carthew was there behind him, alive and well, for company. But when he rose upright and glanced swiftly over one shoulder the plateau was empty. Carthew had gone.
The evening was drawing in, and even the pathway by which they had come there was growing dim as the light slowly failed. Captain Dove made a blind dash for it across the open space, and so fled headlong, in fear.
He only once looked back, and then he saw the shadow again. It was following him. And he did not stop running till he reached the drawbridge of the castle. But there he halted, panting, to swear at himself for a superstitious old fool, and stare back into the woods with eyes in which terror was mingled with rage.
"Some stray cow—or maybe a stag!" he declared to himself. "If I had had a shot-gun handy—or even my revolver—"
But, stare as he would, he could see nothing more of the creature. And he went in through the postern, still swearing under his breath.
He had never felt quite at his ease in the great main hall of the castle, which, with its empty suits of mail in all sorts of unexpected corners, the flags overhead flapping soundlessly in every draught, the pale faces peering down from their dark frames in the gallery, possessed an uncanny atmosphere of its own, especially in the dusk.
However, the two big fires blazing on their cavernous hearths at either side of its wide expanse made it a good deal more homelike, less eerie than it had seemed when he had first seen it. And he crossed it almost without concern on his way toward his own quarters in the North Keep.
But by the way some obscure movement among the shadows beyond the nearer fire brought his heart to his mouth again in an instant, and a hand slipped mechanically toward the empty hip-pocket beneath the skirt of his coat. He had halted. He moved on, into the dim recess whence some one was watching him, and presently emerged again, dragging after him into the firelight a shock-headed, pasty-faced lad, whose long neck was writhing in anguish as Captain Dove gave the long ear between his finger and thumb another fierce tweak.
"What the devil areyoudoing here!" the old man demanded, peering into the features of Mr. Jobling's managing clerk.
"Nothing," answered Mullins with legal exactitude. But he quickly became more discursive under Captain Dove's threatening glance. "Mr. Jobling brought me here with him," he explained. "We arrived by the steamer an hour ago, after a most terrible passage. I never saw such—"
Captain Dove silenced him with a scowl. "Where's your master?" he demanded.
"In there," replied Mullins promptly, pointing to the door of the gun-room, which opened off the main hall; and Captain Dove, casting him loose without more words, marched in upon Mr. Jobling and Slyne in excited conference.
They looked round as the door opened, and the lawyer, seeing who the unceremonious intruder was, waved a fat hand in gleeful welcome. "We're safe now," he vociferated. "The Jura succession is settled at last. Where's Lady Josceline? She'll be Countess of Jura in her own right as soon as—"
"Not so much of your noise," Captain Dove commanded, and, suddenly, reopening the door, all but overset himself in accomplishing a hasty kick, which elicited a loud yelp from without.
"Was that Mullins!" Mr. Jobling exclaimed. "I don't knowwhatI'm to do with him. He's really becoming a dangerous nuisance. I had to bring him away from London with me to prevent him—"
"He'll keep clear of keyholes for a while," Captain Dove put in confidently. "Now let's hear your news."
Mr. Jobling's clouded face cleared again. "You've heard it already," he said. "I've won our case. The Chancery Court has admitted my proofs. We are to attend again, all of us, the day after to-morrow if possible, when Mr. Justice Gaunt will give us decree. And Lady Josceline will be the Countess of Jura as soon as—"
"When will she get any money?" asked Captain Dove bluntly, and Mr. Jobling looked pained.
"By Friday, I should think," he stated, "I'll have everything in such shape that she can draw a cheque for a mill—"
"She'll draw no cheques," Slyne interrupted decisively. "You know very well that I have her formal authority to attend to all such matters for her. Whatever small sums she may requireI'llprocure for her, and any payments to be made on her behalfI'llmake."
He met with perfect tranquillity the glances of his associates. "I'll go and tell her the news now," he remarked, and left the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind him, the lawyer turned toward Captain Dove, and, "Well?" he asked eagerly. "Was that your ship I saw at the mouth of the loch? How are you going to get rid of that domineering upstart? There isn't much time left to—"
Captain Dove held up a protesting hand, but Mr. Jobling would not be put down in that manner. He was evidently determined now to stand up for himself and those hard-earned rights out of which Slyne had undoubtedly jockeyed him in the most bare-faced, contemptuous manner.
"I really must insist on knowing what you mean to do," he declared irascibly. "I have far too much at stake to leave anything to chance at this late moment. Once Mr. Slyne reaches London, it will be too late to—"
"Hold your row!" ordered Captain Dove, so fiercely that Mr. Jobling jumped. "And—don't interfere in what doesn't concern you. All you need to know is that—Slyne will never see London again. Does that satisfy you?"
"It would—if I could believe it," observed Mr. Jobling, valiantly. "But—"
"And neither will you, if you worry me," added Captain Dove in a voice which seemed to affect his neighbour's nerve very adversely. "So help yourself to another peg and pass the bottle. I can scarcely hear myself think for your chatter, and I've got a good deal to think about."
Mr. Jobling did his very best to meet the old man's irate glance resolutely, but his own irresolute, blinking eyes soon fell before the cold menace in Captain Dove's. He replenished his glass, and having sulkily shoved the decanter across the table, lay back in his chair.
"You said that she could draw her money on Friday, didn't you?" asked Captain Dove, and he nodded, with very ill grace.
"And Slyne has her power of attorney to sign any cheques he likes to write," the old man went on musingly. "But—that doesn't matter. Brasse will be ashore to-night. And we'll be off to London to-morrow, me an' you, Jobling, d'ye hear?"
Mr. Jobling could not deny that he heard, and did not seem inclined to ask any more questions. But Captain Dove had a great many more to ask him, and when Slyne looked into the room, some time later, he found the two of them chatting quite amicably. They both fell silent, however, at sight of him.
"Lady Josceline is entertaining visitors," he announced: "the Duchess of Dawn—and that unlicked cub Ingoldsby."
"Lord Ingoldsby's her grace's nephew, of course," Mr. Jobling mentioned reverentially. "And one of the wealthiest peers in England—or anywhere else. But—how did they get here? Dawn's on the other side of the mountains, and—"
"They rode across," said Slyne, "to find out who was here. If Dove hadn't ordered the beacon to be lighted the night we arrived, they'd never have heard—But maybe, after all, it will help—
"They're going to dine and stay the night, anyhow. It's come on to snow again.
"There's a great hullabaloo below-stairs," he said in a somewhat querulous tone as he crossed toward the fireplace and helped himself to a cigarette from the silver box on the mantel. "One of the gamekeepers sent in word that he had seen the 'white lady' about in the woods this afternoon. And now an hysterical housemaid is having fits in the servants' hall, on the insufficient ground that she had met the same mysterious personage in one of the passages a little ago. The whole outfit, in fact, are in the very devil of a fluster."
"How unfortunate!" exclaimed Mr. Jobling, while Captain Dove was still regarding Slyne with an expression of mingled doubt and dismay. "Nothing could have been more ill-timed, too—since her grace is going to honour us with her company. Every one about the place believes implicitly in that old superstition—and they say, you know, that the head of the familyhasdied whenever the so-called 'white lady' has made her appearance."
Slyne laughed, and blew a cloud of smoke from his nostrils.
"Lady Josceline will outlast most of us," he declared with the utmost nonchalance. "And, in any case, I've dared anyone to breathe a word about it to her. We don't want our dinner spoiled with any nonsense of that sort."
Mr. Jobling got up to go, alleging that he was tired after his long journey and wanted a rest before dinner.
"Of course, it's all nonsense," he agreed, if with no great conviction. "But it won't be before to-morrow that you'll get the Highlanders here to believe that."
Slyne laughed again, contemptuously, as the lawyer left the room, and then turned toward Captain Dove.
"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Dove?" he demanded, quite well aware of the old man's weakness in that respect.
"I've seen one or two in my time," answered that superstitious seaman in a low growl.
"You're luckier than I've ever been, then," said Slyne mockingly. "And I only believe in what I can see for myself. But, all the same, I'm not going to take any losing chances. And, you must admit, it would be most damnably awkward for us if Sallie should, by any chance, fall under the fatal spell of the family spectre."
Captain Dove gave voice to another growl, unintelligible, and moved restlessly in his chair. It had not, as a matter of fact, occurred to him that any immediate mischance to Sallie must mean ruin to himself. And Slyne's sneering insensibility was difficult to endure when he recalled what he himself had also seen in the woods.