“She was, dear, when last I heard of her, and the father too is well. Heigh-ho! I wonder if he knows I am thinking about him to-night, and telling his strange story and my own?”
Whoo—oo—oo! roared the storm. The wind-wolves still shrieked around the house. But suddenly Laird Talisker lifts a finger as if to command silence.
All listen intensely.
“That is something over and above the ‘howthering’ of the gale,” he says. “Hark!”
Rising unmistakably above the din of the storm-wind could now be heard the barking of dogs, as if in anger.
“Someone is coming undoubtedly,” says Uncle Robert.
Then the door opens and old Mawsie the housekeeper enters, looking so scared that the borders of the very cap or white linen mutch she wore seem to stand straight out as if starched.
“What can be the matter, Mawsie?” asks the laird.
“O, sir!” gasps old Mawsie, “on this awfu’ nicht—through the snaw and the howtherin’ wind-storm—a carriage and pair drives up to the door, and a gentleman wi’ a bonnie wee lady alichts—”
What more Mawsie would have said may never be known, for at that moment straight into the room walk the arrivals themselves, and in his eagerness to get towards them Uncle Robert knocks over his chair, and the long stool on which the boys are sitting goes down with it, boys and all.