“Can I direct you, or give you any assistance?” she asked, after a second’s pause.
“Oh, thank you, you are very kind. I have come over from Ballochcoil to explore the country. I have been trying to find out the history of the old houses of the district. Could you tell me, by the way, anything about that house with the square tower at the end; I have been loitering round it half the afternoon. And I would have given anything to know its history, and what it is like inside.”
“Well, I can help you there, for that old house is my home. If you have time to come with me now, I will show you all over it,” said Hadria, impulsively.
“That is too tempting an offer. And yet I really don’t like to intrude in this way. I am a perfect stranger to you and—your parents I suppose?”
“They will be delighted,” Hadria assured her new acquaintance, somewhat imprudently.
“Well, I can’t resist the temptation,” said the latter, and they walked on together.
Hadria related what she knew about the history of the house. Very scanty records had survived. It had obviously been one of the old Scottish strongholds, built in the lawless days when the country was plunged in feuds and chieftains lived on plunder. A few traditions lingered about it: among them that of a chief who had carried off, by force, the daughter of his bitterest enemy, in revenge for some deed of treachery. He had tortured her with insolent courtship, and then starved her to death in a garret in the tower, while her father and his followers assaulted its thick walls in vain.
“The tradition is, that on stormy nights one can still hear the sound of the attack, the shouts of the men and the father’s imprecations.”
“A horrible story!”
“When people say the world has not progressed, I always think of that story, and remember that such crimes were common in those days,” Hadria remarked.