He bent to close the valise, and with a start abruptly concluded his song at the sight of a miniature with the portrait of a woman looking at him from the bottom of the bag.
“Mort de ma vie! what a fool I am; what a forgetful vengeur, to be chanting Gringoire in the house of Doom and my quarry still to hunt!” His voice had of a sudden gained a sterner accent; the pleasantness of his aspect became clouded by a frown. Looking round the constricted room, and realising how like a prison-cell it was compared with what he had expected, he felt oppressed as with the want of air. He sought vainly about the window for latch or hinge to open it, and as he did so glanced along the castle wall painted yellow by the declining sun. He noticed idly that some one was putting out upon the sill of a window on a lower stage what might have been a green kerchief had not the richness of its fabric and design suggested more a pennon or banneret. It was carefully placed by a woman's hands—the woman herself unseen. The incident recalled an old exploit of his own in Marney, and a flood of humorous memories of amorous intrigue.
“Mademoiselle Annapla,” said he whimsically, “has a lover, and here's his signal. The Baron's daughter? The Baron's niece? The Baron's ward? Or merely the Baron's domestic? M. Bethune's document suffers infernally from the fault of being too curt. He might at least have indicated the fair recluse.”
CHAPTER IV — WANTED, A SPY
The wail of a mountain pipe, poorly played, as any one accustomed to its strains would have admitted, even if the instrument was one he loved, and altogether execrable in the ears of Montaiglon, called him to the salle, where Doom joined him in a meal whereof good Mungo's jugged hare formed no part. Mungo, who had upheld ancient ceremony by his crude performance on the piob mhor, was the attendant upon the table,—an office he undertook with his bonnet on his head, “in token,” as his master whisperingty explained to Count Victor, “of his sometimes ill-informed purpose of conducting every formal task in Doom upon the strict letter of military codes as pertained in camps, garrisons, and strongholds.” It was amusing to witness the poor fellow's pompous precision of movement as he stood behind his master's chair or helped the guest to his humble meal; the rigidity of his inactive moments, or the ridiculous jerkiness with which he passed a platter as 'twere to the time of a drill-sergeant's baton. More amusing still to one able, like Count Victor, to enter into the humour of the experience, was it to have his garrulity get the better of him in spite of the military punctilio.
“The Baron was telling me aboot your exploit wi' the Loch Sloy pairty. Man! did I no' think ye had come by boat,” he whispered over a tendered ale-glass. “It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad hae backed ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, and they're no' slack at a tulzie.”
“Ye may be grand in a fight, Mungo, but only a middling man at forage,” interrupted his master. “I think ye said jugged hare?”
“It wasna my faut,” explained the domestic, “that ye havena what was steepulated; the Baron wadna bide till the beast was cooked.”
Doom laughed. “Come, come, Mungo,” said he, “the Count could scarcely be expected to wait for the cooking of an animal running wild in the bracken twenty minutes ago.”