Cleek did look on it to his heart's fill, and drank so deep of its majestic beauty as to be well-nigh intoxicated with it. The artist's soul of the man was afire with the chill grandeur of the place. From turreted towers rising through the gray mists, like the towers and the turrets of the Holy City itself, Aygon Castle was like some enchanter's palace, like some figment of the mind's weaving in those hours of day-dreams which lie between the dark and the day.
To the left of it a huge watch-tower reared its monstrous head to the blue-flecked Highland sky, set atop of which stood the figure of a man, gigantic and wrought in bronze, with the plaid of the Duggans sweeping across his shoulder and eddying out into a marvellous real billow behind him, one huge forearm raised in the hand of which was a battle-axe, standing out black and menacing against the early morning sky.
Cleek swept a hand out to it, while Dollops, silent up to the present, gave forth the feeling of his Cockney soul in one long-drawn "S'welp me!" of utter enthusiasm.
"Who is the gentleman of the axe, Miss Duggan?" said Cleek, turning toward her, his face alight with interest. "What a magnificent thing it is! And how he stands out against this Highland sky of yours—menacing, victorious, utterly sublime! Some ancestor, no doubt?"
"The ancestor. The greatest of all that great line of Duggans, or Macduggans, as it was then," she responded in a hushed, exultant voice. "Chief of the greatest and most powerful clan of all Scotland, in those days when Scotland was a country apart, and the Scottish chiefs were little kings in their own dominion, ruling in absolute monarchy over their subjects. Rhea du Macduggan. That was his name, Mr. Deland. A great and powerful and just man. And when this Castle was built over the spot where his camp had been in those by-gone glorious days, the Macduggan who had it built caused that statue to be erected, and had it wrought in finest bronze, to endure throughout the centuries. You can see for yourself how well Rhea has withstood the bludgeoning of time. And, too, you may understand a little, at sight of him, what this place means to my brother and me, and how loath we are even to entertain the thought of letting it get out of the family."
"And is the estate not entailed?"
"Unfortunately not this portion of it. That part which follows the entail comprises a couple of the adjacent villages and a lot of farmsteads out there across the valley. But the Castle—no. In olden days each son of the family fought for it against the surviving holder of it, fought a personal battle of strength to prove himself worthy of it, and then, upon victory—or proved worthiness—the will was made. The line has never been broken, Mr. Deland. And to-day my brother and I are as willing to fight for it as were our ancestors of old."
"And I don't blame you, either," said Cleek with alacrity, sighing a little, as though some thought of all this magnificence awakened an echo in his heart that would not immediately be stilled. "I know a little of that feeling, too. When a man loves his ancestral home, and his country, he will fight for it and die for it rather than that an alien hand shall take possession of either. That is the gift of Race, the inherent something that Family breeds in us. The clanship which belongs to an old and unbroken line. I know—I know.... Heigho! But it is an inheritance indeed. I am more in sympathy with you than ever before, Miss Duggan, for I, too, would fight for this against the hand of an enemy, and die fighting rather than that it should slip out of my reach.... And you mean to tell me that your brother Ross has installed electric lighting here?"
She smiled a little, and nodded her head as one might smile at thought of some child's deliciously childish and foolish action. One could see that she worshipped her brother.
"Yes, Mr. Deland. A complete installation, which is both the envy and the desire of every other landowner for miles around."