“No,” said she. “Who in the world is he?”
“Why, he is a person who goes about playing his drum whenever there is a death impending in our family. The last time he was heard was shortly before the death of the late countess, the earl’s first wife, and that is why Lady Airlie turned so pale when you mentioned it.”
The next night Miss Dalrymple heard the drumming again, and, falling into a panic when she learned that nobody else had heard it, hurriedly left Cortachy Castle. But the drumming was not for her. True to tradition, the drummer was concerned only with announcing the death of an Ogilvy, one of whom, the Lady Airlie who had been so disturbed by Miss Dalrymple’s question, died soon afterward while on a visit to Brighton.
Five years later the drumming was once more heard, this time by an Englishman who had been invited to spend a few days with the Earl of Airlie’s oldest son, Lord Ogilvy, at a shooting box near Cortachy. Crossing a gloomy moor, in company with an old Highlander, the Englishman suddenly stopped, and, with a look of amazement, exclaimed:
“What can a band be doing in this lonely place? Has Lord Ogilvy brought a band with him?”
The Highlander glanced at him strangely.
“I hear naething,” he said.
“Why, yes, can’t you hear it? A band playing in the distance—or at any rate, somebody playing a drum.”
“An’ is it a drum ye hear?” cried the Highlander. “Then ’tis something no canny.”