They went accordingly; and to the great surprise of both master and man, they saw distinctly that the bed of the river was covered over with the new hammer-dressed stones; and yet, on examining the high banks above, and the trees and bushes that grew on them, not a trace appeared to indicate that human exertions had been employed to transport them downwards thither from the site of the new building. The laird and his attendant were filled with wonder. Yet still he was not satisfied that his conjectures had been altogether wrong.
“If it has been Tullochcarron’s people,” said he doubtingly, “they must have enlisted the devil himself as their ally. But let them have whom they may to aid them, I am resolved I shall unravel this mystery, cost what it will. I’ll watch this night in person.”
“I doubt it will be but a tempting of powers against which mortal man can do but little,” said Ian. “But come what come may, I’ll watch with thee, Ballindalloch.”
“Then haste thee, Ian, and set the workmen to their labour again with all their might,” said the laird, “and let the masons raise the building as high as they possibly can from the ground before night; and thou and I shall see whether we shall not keep the stones from flying off through the air like a flight of swallows.”
The anxious laird remained all day at the work himself; and as you know, gentlemen, that the master’s eye maketh the horse fat, so hath it also a strange power of giving double progress to all matters of labour that it looketh upon. The result was, that when the masons left off in the evening, the building was found to have risen higher than it had ever done before. When night came, the same watch was again set about the walls; for the laird wished for an opportunity of personally convicting the men of culpable carelessness and neglect of duty. To make all sure, he and his henchman took post on the embryo peel-tower itself.
The air was still, and the sky clear and beautiful, as upon the previous night, and, armed with their lances, Ballindalloch and his man Ian walked their rounds with alert steps, throwing their eyes sharply around them in all directions, anxiously bent on detecting anything that might appear like the semblance of treachery. The earlier hours, however, passed without disturbance; and the confidence of the laird and Ian increased, just as that of the men of the guard diminished when the hour began to approach at which the entertainments of the previous night had commenced. As this hour drew near, their stolen applications to their cordial flasks became more frequent; but sup after sup went down, and so far from their courage being thereby stirred up, they seemed to be just so much the more fear-stricken every drop they swallowed. They moved about like a parcel of timid hares, with their ears pricked up ready to drink in the first note of intimation of the expected danger. A bull feeding in the broad pastures stretching between them and the base of Ben Rinnes bellowed at a distance.
“Holy Mother, there it comes!” cried Charley. In an instant that hero and all the other heroes fled like roe-deer, utterly regardless of the volley of threats and imprecations which the enraged laird discharged after them like a hailstorm as they retreated, their ears being rendered deaf to them by the terror which bewildered their brains, and in the twinkling of an eye not a man of them was to be seen.
“Cowards!” exclaimed the laird, after they were all gone. “To run away at the roaring of a bull! The braying of an ass would have done as much. Of such stuff, I warrant me, was that whirlwind of last night composed, of which they made out so terrible a story.”
“What could make the fellows so feared?” said Ian. “I have seen them stand firm in many a hard fought and bloody field. Strange that they should run at the routing of a bull.”
“And so the villains have left you and me alone, to meet whatever number of arms of flesh may be pleased to come against us! Well, be it so, Ian; I flinch not. I am resolved to find out this mystery, come what may of it. Ian, you have stood by me singly ere now, and I trust you will stand by me again; for I am determined that nothing mortal shall move me hence till morning dawns.”