Doom drew back under the frowning eyebrow of what had been his home, tugged the weapon from his scabbard, and threw himself on guard.
“This is kind, indeed,” he said in a pause of his assailant's confusion at finding this was not the man he sought. “You have come to say 'Goodbye.' On guard, black dog, on guard!”
“So dhuit maat!—here then is for you,” cried Sim, and waving back his followers, engaged with a rasp of steel. It lasted but a moment: Doom crouched a little upon bending knees, with a straight arm, parrying the assault of a point that flew in wild disorder. He broke ground for a few yards with feints in quarte. He followed on a riposte with a lunge—short, sharp, conclusive, for it took his victim in the chest and passed through at the other side with a thud of the hilt against his body. Sim fell with a groan, his company clustering round him, not wholly forgetful of retaliation, but influenced by his hand that forbade their interference with his enemy.
“Clean up your filth!” said Doom in the Gaelic, sheathing his sword and turning to join his daughter. “He took Drimdarroch from me, and now, by God! he's welcome to Doom.”
“Not our old friends, surely?” said Count Victor, looking backward at the cluster of men.
“The same,” said Doom, and kept his counsel further.
Count Victor put his arm round Olivia's waist. The boat's prow fell off; the sail filled; she ran with a pleasant ripple through the waves, and there followed her a cry that only Doom of all the company knew was a coronach, followed by the music of Sim MacTaggart's flageolet.
It rose above the ripple of the waves, above the screaming of the birds, finally stilling the coronach, and the air it gave an utterance to was the same that had often charmed the midnight bower, failing at the last abruptly as it had always done before.
“By heavens! it is my Mary's favourite air, and that was all she knew of it,” said Doom, and his face grew white with memory and a speculation.
“Had he found the end of that air,” said Count Victor, “he had found, as he said himself, another man. But I, perhaps, had never found Olivia!”