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"I think you would be best to have been coming to the town when the Macfarlanes attacked you, killed your horse, and chased you into my place. That's the most plausible story we can tell, and it has the virtue of being true in every particular, without betraying that Bethune or friendship for myself was in any part of it." "I can leave it all to your astuteness," said Montaiglon.
At once he recalled the Macfarlanes and the surmise of Baron Doom that in two nights they might be crying their slogan round the walls that harboured their enemy.
"My dear friends of Monday did me the honour to call in your absence," he said. "They have not gone more than twenty minutes." "What! the Macfarlanes," cried Doom, every trace of his softer emotion gone, but more disturbed than ever as he saw the sword for the first time. "Well well well?" he inquired eagerly. "Well, well, well?" and he gripped Count Victor by the arm and looked him in the eyes.
There is here a large hotel; but we passed it, and walked onward a mile or two to Arroquhar, a secluded glen among the hills, where is a new hotel, built in the old manor-house style, and occupying the site of what was once a castle of the chief of the MacFarlanes. Over the portal is a stone taken from the former house, bearing the date 1697.
A score of reasons for this eccentric affair came to Montaiglon, but all of them were disquieting, not the least so the notion that his host conspired perhaps with the Macfarlanes, who sought their revenge for their injured clansman. He armed himself with his sword, blew out his candles, and, throwing himself upon his bed, lay waiting for the signal he expected.
I have travelled since long before dawn, and burning the candle par les deux bouts is not, as Master Mungo hints, conducive to a vigorous reception of the Macfarlanes if they feel like retaliating to-morrow, and making your domicile the victim of my impetuosity and poor marksmanship." Doom sighed, took up a candle, and led the way into the passage.
"I have seen you lunge, sir," said Doom meaningly; "I ken the carriage of a fencer's head; your eye's fast, your step's light; with the sword I take it Drimdarroch is condemned, and your practice with the pistol, judging from the affair with the Macfarlanes, seems pretty enough. You propose, or I'm mistaken, to make yourself the executioner.
Man, ye're a dour birkie!" said he; "but a wilf u' man maun hae his way, and, if naething less'll dae ye, jist gang up to yer ain chaumer, and ye'll find her giein' the Macfarlanes het punch wi' nae sugar till't." The statement was largely an enigma to Count Victor, but he understood enough to send him up the stairs with an alacrity that drove Mungo, in his rear, into silent laughter.
There is here a large hotel; but we passed it, and walked onward a mile or two to Arroquhar, a secluded glen among the hills, where is a new hotel, built in the old manor-house style, and occupying the site of what was once a castle of the chief of the MacFarlanes. Over the portal is a stone taken from the former house, bearing the date 1697.
I am going, as you know, to India for the next few years, and it is quite possible that as the cottage at Craigie Muir will belong to the Vivian girls for poor Frances bought it and allowed those Scotch folk the Macfarlanes to live there it is, I say, quite possible that you may go to Craigie Muir for a summer holiday with your cousins.
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