"I can't hurt her, in any case," he declared conclusively to the night. "I'm not much of a judge of girls, but—she's—
"I must just wait and see," he said to himself. "I'm helpless. And—I'm hers, anyhow, as I told her in Genoa. A promise is a promise, no matter what its keeping costs."
He looked up at the black bulk of the castle in the distance. Its numberless narrow windows were all aglow, and in a cresset on one tower a fire was burning brightly.
"She's taken possession all right," he cogitated. "But probably she doesn't even know that the beacon's been kindled."
As he limped through the village again, he could not but notice the unusual stir in its long single street. At every cottage door there was a whispering group staring up at the Warder's Tower. The sound of oars in haste reached his ears from across the loch. And he was aware of many inquisitive glances directed at him as he passed.
His simple supper was awaiting him in the best room of the little inn. The black dwarf had been sent for from the castle, the outwardly stolid and incurious maid-of-all-work informed him. He sat down by the fire, content for the moment as he recalled the glamour of the afterglow from the west and Sallie's grave glance.
He thought of nothing else throughout his meal, and afterwards, puffing at a cigar in the lamp-lit porch with a plaid about him to keep the cold out, could scarcely bring himself to consider his own precarious situation again. When he at last applied his mind to that he was somewhat dispirited.
He had only a few shillings left in his purse, and could not afford to stay where he was for more than a day or two. He was a stranger in a strange land, a land in which, as he had learned already, men in their prime had to compete keenly for work which might bring them in no more than four or five dollars a week: a very unpromising land in which to be left with empty pockets.
"Perhaps old Herries will give me a week or two's work at something or other about the estate," he communed with himself. "But, then,—that bloated lawyer would probably interfere; and, while I lie low, Herries will be under his thumb to a great extent. He's under the weather too, poor old chap!"
He was still shaking his head disconsolately when his cogitations were cut short by the sound of clattering hoofs and the hurried arrival of one on horseback, who galloped up to the Jura Arms and slipped like a sack from his saddle, and swayed and staggered while his blown steed looked inquiringly round at him, till Justin Carthew slipped an arm about him and would have led him indoors.