“Sir,” the woman pleaded, “I pray you stay a few moments and listen to what I have to say. A gentleman is going to the revels to-night for whom I have a letter of the utmost importance. His name is Dunloe—Mr Robert Dunloe of Annan. He is due at the Towers at eight o’clock, and should surely be passing here almost at this very moment. But, sir, I durst not wait for him any longer, as I have an aged mother at home who has been taken suddenly and violently ill. For mercy’s sake I beg of you to wait and give him the letter in my stead.”
“Give him the letter in your stead!” Ronan ejaculated. “Why, I may never see him—indeed, the odds are a thousand to one I never shall. I’m in a hurry, too. I can’t stay hanging around here all night. Besides, how should I know him?”
“He’s dressed as a jester,” the woman answered, “and if the wind is not blowing too strong you’ll hear the sound of his bells. He’s sure to be coming by very soon. Oh, sir, do me this favour, I pray you.”
As she spoke the rain ceased and the moon, suddenly appearing from behind a bank of clouds, revealed her face. It was startlingly white, and in a strange, elfish kind of way, beautiful. Ronan gazed at it in astonishment, it was altogether so different from the face he had pictured from the voice, and as he stared down into the big, black eyes raised pleadingly to his, he felt curiously fascinated, and all idea of resistance at once departed.
“All right,” he said slowly, “I will do as you wish. A man in Court-jester’s costume, with jingling bells, answering to the name of Robert Dunloe. Hand me the letter, and I will wait in the road till he passes.”
She obeyed, and, taking from her bosom an envelope, handed it to him.
“Oh, sir,” she said softly, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. It is most kind of you—most chivalrous, and I am sure you will one day be rewarded. Hark! footsteps. A number of them. It must be some of the revellers. I must remain here till they pass, for I would not for the world have them see me; they are rude, boisterous fellows, and have little respect for a maiden when they meet her alone on the highway. There have been some dreadful doings of late around here.”
She laid one of her little white hands on Ronan’s arm as she spoke, and, with the forefinger of the other placed on her lips, enjoined silence. Then as the footsteps and voices, which had been drawing nearer and nearer, passed close to them and died gradually away in the distance, she hurriedly bade Ronan farewell, and darted nimbly away in the darkness.
Ronan stood for some minutes where she had left him, half expecting she would reappear, but at last, convinced that she had really taken her departure, he climbed the wall, back again into the road, and waited. Had it not been for the envelope, which certainly felt material enough, Ronan would have been inclined to attribute it all to some curious kind of hallucination—the girl was so different—albeit so subtly and inexplicably different—from anyone he had ever seen before. But that envelope with the name “Robert Dunloe, Esquire,” so clearly and beautifully superscribed on it, was a proof of her reality, and, as he stood fingering the missive and pondering the subject over in his mind, he once again heard the sound of footsteps. This time they were the footsteps of one person only, and, as he had been led to expect, they were accompanied by the faint jingle, jingle of bells.
The moon, now quite free from clouds, rendered every object so clearly visible that Ronan, looking in the direction from which the sounds came, soon detected a tall, oddly attired figure, whilst still a long way off, advancing towards him with big, swinging strides. Had he not been prepared for someone in fancy costume, Ronan might have felt somewhat alarmed, for a Scotch moor in the dead of winter is hardly the place where one would expect to encounter a masquerader in jester’s costume.