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CHAPTER XXIX.

THE CELL IN THE FOSSE.

By this time the morning was well gone; the town had wakened to the day's affairs-a pleasant light grey reek with the acrid odour of burning wood soaring from chimneys into a sky intensely blue; and the roads that lay interlaced and spacious around the castle of Argyll were not thronged, but busy at least with labouring folk setting out upon their duties. To them, meeting the wounded form of the Chamberlain, the hour was tragic, and figured long at fireside stories after, acutely memorable for years. They passed astounded or turned to follow him, making their own affairs secondary to their interest in the state of one who, it was obvious even to Montaiglon, was deep in their affections. He realised that a few leagues farther away from the seat of a Justiciary-General it might have gone ill with the man who had brought Simon MacTaggart to this condition, for menacing looks were thrown at him, and more than once there was a significant gesture that made plain the animosity with which he was regarded. An attempt to escape-if such had occurred to him-would doubtless have been attended by the most serious consequences.

Argyll met his Chamberlain with the signs of genuine distress: it was touching, indeed, to see his surrender to the most fraternal feeling, and though for a while the Duke's interest in his Chamberlain

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left him indifferent to him who was the cause of it, Count Victor could not but perceive that he was himself in a position of exceeding peril. He remembered the sinister comments of the Baron of Doom upon the hazards of an outsider's entrance to the boar's cave, and realised for the first time what that might mean in this country, where the unhappy wretch from Appin, whose case had some resemblance to his own, had been remorselessly made the victim (as the tale went) to world-old tribal jealousies whose existence was incredible to all outside the Highland line. In the chill morning air he stood, coatless and shivering, the high embrasured walls lifting above him, the jabbering menials of the castle grouped a little apart, much of the language heard savage and incomprehensible in his ears, himself, as it were, of no significance to any one except the law that was to manifest itself at any moment. Last night it had been very gay in this castle, the Duke was the most gracious of hosts; here, faith! was a vast difference.

"May I have a coat?" he asked a bystander, taking advantage of a bustle in the midst of which the wounded man was taken into the castle. He got the answer of a scullion.

"A

"A coat!" exclaimed the man he addressed. rope's more like it.” And so, Count Victor, shrugging his shoulders at this impertinence, was left to suffer the air that bit him to the marrow.

The Chamberlain disposed of, and in the leech's hands, Argyll had the Frenchman brought to his rooms, still in his shirt-sleeves. The weapon of his offence was yet in his hand for evidence, had that been wanting, of an act he was prepared to admit with frankness.

"Well, M. le Comte," said his Grace, pacing nervously up and down the room before him, "this is a pretty matter. You have returned to see my pictures somewhat sooner than I had looked for, and in no very ceremonious circumstances."

"Truly," said the Count, with a difficult essay at meeting the man in his own humour-"Truly, but your Grace's invitation was so pressing-ah! c'est grand dommage! mais-mais-I am not, with every consideration, in the key for badinage. M. le Duc, you behold me exceedingly distressed at the discommoding of your household. At your age this

He pulled himself up confused a little, aware that his customary politeness had somehow for once shamefully deserted him with no intention on his part.

"That is to put the case with exceeding delicacy," said the Duke. "At my age, as you have said, my personal inconvenience is of little importance in face of the fact that a dear friend of mine may be at death's door. At all events there is a man, if signs mislead me not, monstrously near death under this roof, a man well liked by all that know him, a strong man and a brave man, and a man, in his way, of genius. He goes out, as I say, hale and hearty, and comes back bloody in your company. You came to this part of the world, monsieur, with the deliberate intention of killing my Chamberlain ! "

"That's as Heaven, which arranges these things without consulting us, may have decided, my lord; on my honour, I had much preferred never to have set eyes on your Chamberlain.”

"Come, come!" said the Duke with a high head and slapping with open hand the table beside him"Come, come! I am not a fool, Montaiglon-even at my age. You deliberately sought this unfortunate

man.

"Monsieur the Duke of Argyll has my word that it was not so," said the Count softly.

"I fancy in that case, then, you had found him easy to avoid," said the Duke, who was in an irrestrainable heat. "From the first-oh come! sir, let us not be beating about the bush, and let us sink all these evasions-from the first you have designed a meeting with MacTaggart, and your every act since

you came to this country has led up to this damned business that is likely to rob me of the bravest of servants. It was not the winds of heaven that blew you against your will into this part of Scotland, and brought you in contact with my friend on the very first night of your coming here."

"And still, M. le Duc, with infinite deference, and a coolness that is partly due to the unpleasant fact (as you may perceive) that I have no coat on, 'twas quite the other way, and your bravest of servants thrust himself upon my attention that had otherwise been directed to the real object of my being in Scotland at all."

The Duke gave a gesture of impatience. "I am not at the heart of these mysteries," said he, "buteven at my age-I know a great deal more about this than you give me credit for. If it is your whim to affect that this wretched business was no more than a passage between gentlemen, the result of a quarrel over cards or the like in my house

"Ah!" cried the Count, "there I am all to blame. Our affair ought more properly to have opened elsewhere. In that detail your Grace has every ground

for complaint."

"That is a mere side affair," said the Duke, "and something else more closely affects me. I am expected to accept it, then, that the Comte de Montaiglon, travelling incognito in the unassuming rôle of a wine merchant, came here at this season simply from a passion for our Highland scenery. I had not thought the taste for dreary mountains and black glens had extended to the Continent."

"At least 'twas not to quarrel with a servant I came here," retorted Count Victor.

"My

"That is ill said, sir," said his Grace. kinsman has ten generations of ancestry of the best blood of Scotland and the Isles underground."

"To that, M. le Duc, there is an obvious and ancient retort-that therein he is like a potato plant; the best of him is buried."

Argyll stood before the Frenchman dubious and embarrassed; vexed at the tone of the encounter, and convinced, for reasons of his own, that in one particular at least the foreigner prevaricated, yet impressed by the manly front of the gentleman whose affair had brought a morning's tragedy so close upon the heels of an evening's mirth. Here was the sort of quandary in which he would naturally have consulted with his Duchess, but it was no matter to wake a woman to, and she was still in her bedchamber.

"I assume you look for this unhappy business to be treated as an affair of honour?" he asked at last. "So to call it," replied Count Victor, "though in truth, the honour, on my word, was all on one side." "You are in doubtful taste to put it quite in these terms,” said the Duke more sternly, "particularly as you are the one to come out of it so far scathless." "Would M. le Duc know how his servant compelled my-my attentions?"

Compelled your attentions!

I do not like the tone of your speeches, monsieur. Dignity-" "Pardieu! M. le Duc, would you expect a surfeit of dignity from a man without a jacket?" said the Count, looking pathetically at his arms.

Dignity-I mean the sense of it-would dictate a more sober carriage in face of the terrible act you have committed. I am doing my best to find the slightest excuse for you, because you are a stranger here, a man of good family though engaged upon a stupendous folly, and I have before now been in the reverence of your people. You ask me if I know what compelled your attention (as you say) to my Chamberlain, and I will answer you frankly that I know all that is necessary."

At that the Count was visibly amazed. This was, indeed, to put a new face on matters and make more regrettable his complacent surrender after his affair on the sands.

"In that case, M. le Duc," said he, "there is no