The McTavish burst into laughter, and promised herself, not without some compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of the Great Tower in the sunlight. And when she heard the stranger's feet upon the gravel she composed her face; and when he appeared round the corner of a clipped yew she rattled the keys at her belt and bustled on her feet, as becomes a housekeeper, and bobbed a courtesy.
The stranger McTavish was no more than thirty. He had brown eyes, and wore upon his face a steady, enigmatic smile.
II
"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss
McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?"
"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name."
"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman.
"This way, sir," said The McTavish.
She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf.
"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes among them."
"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman.