Mungo, with a blanched face, was trembling in the entrance, and a woman was shrieking upstairs. The hall, lit by a flambeau that Mungo held in one hand, while the other held a huge horse-pistol, looked like the entrance to a dungeon,—something altogether sinister and ugly to the foreigner, who had the uneasy notion that he fought for his life in a prison. And the shrieks aloft rang wildly through the night like something in a story he had once read, with a mad woman incarcerated, and only to manifest herself when danger and mystery threatened.
“In ye come! in ye come!” cried the servant, trembling excessively till the flambeau shook in his hand and his teeth rattled together. “In ye come, and I'll bar the door.”
It was time, indeed, to be in; for the enemy leaped at the oak as Count Victor threw it back upon its hinges, rather dubious of the bars that were to withstand the weight without.
The sight of them reassured, however: they were no light bars Mungo drew forth from their channels in the masonry, but huge black iron-bound blocks a foot thick that ran in no staples, but could themselves secure the ponderous portals against anything less than an assault with cannon.
It was obvious that the gentry outside knew the nature of this obstruction, for, finding the bars out, they made no attempt to force the door.
Within, the Count and servant looked at each other's faces—the latter with astonishment and fear, the former with dumb questioning, and his ear to the stair whence came the woman's alarms.
“The Baron tell't us there would be trouble,” stammered the retainer, fumbling with the pistol so awkwardly that he endangered the body of his fellow in distress. “Black Andy was never kent to forget an injury, and I aye feared that the low tides would bring him and his gang aboot the castle. Good God! do you hear them? It's a gey wanchancy thing this!” he cried in terror, as the shout “Loch Sloy!” arose again outside, and the sound of voices was all about the castle.
The woman within heard it too, for her cries became more hysterical than ever.
“D—n ye, ye skirlin' auld bitch!” said the retainer, turning in exasperation, “can ye no steeck your jaw, and let them dae the howlin' outside?” But it was in a tone of more respect he shouted up the stair some words of assurance.
Yet there was no abatement of the cries, and Montaiglon, less—to do him justice—to serve his curiosity as to Annapla than from a natural instinct to help a distressed woman, put a foot on the stair to mount.