"It is rather small, isn't it?" said Isla with a smile. "It was used as a sentinel's or guard's room chiefly in the old days, I fancy. Now, will you come up and see the bedrooms?"
"I'll take a turn outside if I may," said Rosmead. "My sister will accompany you, Miss Mackinnon. I'm perfectly satisfied with what I have seen."
"Can you find your way? There are two staircases, but you can get out by either," said Isla, and they stood just a moment on the narrow landing till Rosmead had found his way out.
He passed out into the mellow sunshine of the afternoon with a sense of relief. The old house saddened him. It seemed to be peopled with dead hopes and with old memories and to have no kinship with the warm and happy life of men.
As he stepped on the gravel the sound of wheels broke the stillness, and a dogcart, in which was a beautiful, high-stepping chestnut horse, was rapidly driven up to the door. It contained two persons--a man and a woman, both young--who had evidently come to pay a call at Achree.
Raising his hat slightly, he turned aside to walk round by the gable-end of the house in order to see it from the back.
Just beyond the rolled gravel he came upon another pathetic sight--the old General in his Inverness cloak and with his bonnet on his thin white hair, leaning heavily on his stick and watching the antics of a little brown dog in front of a rabbit-hole. He was quite alone; and Rosmead, in whom reverence for the old was a passion as well as a virtue, involuntarily took off his hat.
"Come back, you little vixen!" the old man called with a little chuckle to the brown dog.
And, just at the moment, Janet, conscious of the approach of a stranger, gave a short, sharp bark and ran back.
The General looked round and, seeing the stranger, took his bonnet from his head. Rosmead had then no alternative but to introduce himself.