"Yes," said Cleg, "there's a wife over the hedge yonder that has lost her man. And I maun hae either the afternoon or the forenicht to help her."
"Take any part of the day you like. Only change your clothes when you come back," said the General testily, "but mind, if you bring any woman inside the policies, I'll give you up to the police for obtaining railway tickets under false pretences."
ADVENTURE LI.
THE GENERAL'S ESTABLISHMENT.
They were now standing at the front door. Cleg had never seen such a house as this in his life. It was barred and defended like the Calton jail, but no glass was to be seen in any of the windows. Indeed, through some of the openings which served for lighting, one could see straight through to the barred windows on the further side.
Barnbogle House had in time past been an ancient fortalice. But both the former and the present lairds had spent large sums upon alterations and repairs. The latest of these, General Theophilus Ruff, had a vast and far-reaching local fame. Gamesome lasses skirled at his name, and refused to keep their trysts for the terror of meeting him, wrapped in his blue military cloak, stalking lonely by the light of the moon. The very poachers would not fish in his streams or shoot in his coverts. He had at once the repute of a wizard and the fame of a miser—rich beyond calculation, but seeing things unseen to mortals. "He wasna canny!" summed up the collective verdict of the countryside.
Theophilus Ruff had been an Indian officer at the time of the mutiny. And those terrible days of midsummer when the sun dried up the blood even as it was spilt, had changed the gay casual young officer into the man whom all the country knew as "the daft general."
His father had been first a spendthrift and then a "neegar"—that is, one who has become as great a screw as he had formerly been a mighty and lavish spender.
The popular report of the contents of Barnbogle House told of chests of gold and silver, cases of the most precious jewels, the spoil of captured Indian cities—all watched over by the General himself with an armoury of deadly weapons. For it was not the least of his terrors that he dwelt all alone in that huge hundred-barred castle.
Yet there had been a time when Theophilus Ruff drove coach and four, and when he saw only the gayest of gallant company. Among themselves the chin-shaking elders would tell, with many cross-shoulder glances, of the bold wanton eyes of ladies with once famous names, who had sat beside Theophilus Ruff when he drove that coach and four, of the golden candlesticks which had sparkled on the board, wide branching, holding aloft many lights. Then Barnbogle was a gay place indeed, alive with brilliant company, humming with mirth. For General Theophilus Ruff had "used the company of the singing woman," and, as the Writ sayeth, he had been taken in her attempts.