Doom; or upon the plan of the search for the spy and double traitor.

Montaiglon's plans were simple to crudeness. He had, though he did not say so, anticipated some assistance from Doom in identifying the object of his search; but now that this was out of the question, he meant, it appeared, to seek the earliest and most plausible excuse for removal into the immediate vicinity of Argyll's castle, and on some pretext to make the acquaintance of as many of the people there as he could, then to select his man from among them, and push his affair to a conclusion.

"A plausible scheme," said Doom when he heard it, "but contrived without any knowledge of the situation. It's not Doom, M. le Count-oh no, it's not Doom down by there; it's a far more kittle place to learn the outs and ins of. The army and the law are about it, the one about as numerous as the other, and if your Drimdarroch, as I take it, is a traitor on either hand-to Duke Archie as well as to the king across the water, taking the money of both as has happened before now, he'll be no Drimdarroch you may wager, and not kent as such down there. Indeed, how could he? for Petullo the writer body is the only Drimdarroch there is to the fore, and he has a grieve in the place. Do you think this by-named Drimdarroch will be going about cocking his bonnet over his French amours and his treasons? Have you any notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was bairn's play compared to it."

"If you sit down on the haystack you speedily find the needle, M. le Baron," said Montaiglon playfully. "In other words, trust my sensibility to feel the prick of his presence whenever I get into his society. The fact that he may suspect my object

here will make him prick all the quicker and all the harder."

"Even yet you don't comprehend Argyll's court. It's not Doom, mind you, but a place hotching with folk-half a hundred perhaps of whom have travelled as this Drimdarroch has travelled, and in Paris too, and just of his visage perhaps. Unless you challenged them all seriatim, as Petullo would say, I see no great prospect."

"I wish we could coax the fly here! That or something like it was what I half expected to be able to do when Bethune gave me your address as that of a landlord in the neighbourhood."

Doom reddened, perhaps with shame at the altered condition of his state in the house of his fathers.

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I've seen the day," said he—"I've seen the day they were throng enough buzzing about Doom, but that was only so long as honey was to rob with a fair face and a nice humming at the robbery. Now that I'm a rooked bird and Doom a herried nest, they never look the road I'm on."

Mungo, standing behind his master's chair, gave a little crackling laugh and checked it suddenly at the angry flare in his master's face.

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You're mighty joco!" said the Baron; " perhaps you'll take my friend and me into your confidence;" and he frowned with more than one meaning at the little-abashed retainer.

"Paurdon! paurdon!" said Mungo, every part of the chart-like face thrilled with some uncontrollable sense of drollery, and he exploded in laughter more violent than ever.

"Mungo!" cried his master in the accent of authority.

The domestic drew himself swiftly to attention. "Mungo!" said his master, "you're a damned fool! In the army ye would have got the triangle for a good deal less. Right about face."

Mungo saluted and made the required retreat with a great deal less than his usual formality.

"There's a bit crack in the creature after all," said the Baron, displaying embarrassment and annoyance, and he quickly changed the conversation, but with a wandering mind, as Count Victor could not fail to notice. The little man, to tell the truth, had somehow laughed at the wrong moment for Count Victor's peace of mind. For why should he be amused at the paucity of the visitors from Argyll's court to the residence of Doom? Across the table at a man unable to conceal his confusion, Montaiglon stole an occasional glance with suspicion growing on him. irresistibly.

An inscrutable face was there, as many Highland faces were to him, even among old friends in France, where Balhaldie, with the best possible hand at a game of cards, kept better than any gambler he had ever known before a mask of dull and hopeless resignation. The tongue was soft and fair-spoken; the hand seemed generous enough, but this by all accounts had been so even with Drimdarroch himself, and Drimdarroch was rotten to the core.

"Very curious," thought Montaiglon, making poor play with his braxy ham. "Could Bethune be mistaken in this extraordinary Baron?" And he patched together in his mind Mungo's laughter with the Baron's history as briefly known to him, and the inexplicable signal and alarm of the night.

"Your Mademoiselle Annapla seems to be an entrancing vocalist," said he airily, feeling his way to a revelation.

The Baron, in his abstraction, scarcely half comprehended.

"The maid," he said, "just the maid!" and never a word more, but into a new topic.

"I trust so," thought the Count; "but the fair songster who signals from her window and has clandestine meetings at midnight with masculine voices must expect some incredulity on that point. Can it be possible that here I have Blue Beard or Lothario? The laughter of the woman seems to

indicate that if here is not Lothario, here at all events is something more than seems upon the surface. Tonnerre de Dieu! I become suspicious of the whole breed of mountaineers. And not a word about last night's alarm-that surely, in common courtesy, demands some explanation to the guest whose sleep is marred."

They went out together upon the mainland in the forenoon to make inquiries as to the encounter with the Macfarlanes, of whose presence not a sign remained. They had gone as they had come, without the knowledge of the little community on the south of Doom, and the very place among the bracken where the Count had dropped his bird revealed no feather; the rain of the morning had obliterated every trace. He stood upon the very spot whence he had fired at the luckless robber, and restored, with the same thrill of apprehension, the sense of mystery and of dread that had hung round him as he stole the day before through voiceless woods to the sound of noisy breakers on a foreign. shore. He saw again the brake nod in a little air of wind as if a form was harboured, and the pagan rose in him—not the sceptic but the child of nature, early and remote, lost in lands of silence and of omen in dim-peopled and fantastic woods upon the verge of clamorous seas.

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Dieu!" said he with a shiver, turning to his host. "This is decidedly not Verray's in the Rue Conde. I would give a couple of louis d'or for a moment of the bustle of Paris."

"A sad place yon!" said Doom.

And back they went to the castle to play a solemn game of lansquenet.

1

CHAPTER VII.

THE BAY OF THE BOAR'S HEAD.

A SOLEMN game indeed, for the Baron was a man of a sobriety unaccountable to Montaiglon, who, from what he knew of Macdonnel of Barisdel, Macleod, Balhaldie, and the others of the Gaelic gang in Paris, had looked for a roysterer in Doom. It was a man with strange melancholies he found there, with a ludicrous decorum for a person of his condition, rising regularly on the hour, it seemed, and retiring early to his chamber like a peasant, keeping no company with the neighbouring lairds because he could not even pretend to emulate their state, passing his days among a score of books in English, some (as the Sieur de Guille) in French, and a Bedel Bible in the Irish letter, and as often walking aimlessly about the shore looking ardently at the hills, and rehearsing to himself native rhymes that ever account native women the dearest and the same hills the most beautiful in God's creation. He was the last man to look to for aid in an enterprise like Montaiglon's: if he had an interest in the exploit it seemed it was only to discourage the same, and an hour or two of his company taught the Count he must hunt his spy unaided.

But the hunting of the spy, in the odd irrelevance or inconsistency of nature, was that day at least an enterprise altogether absent from his thoughts. He had been diverted from the object of his journey to