“Nobody knows. It fell with a noise like thunder, and shook the whole house.” “It’s far ower dark to see onything frae the ootside,” rejoined Malcolm, “--at least afore the mune’s up. It’s as dark ’s pick. But I can sune saitisfee mysel’ whether the deil’s i’ the hoose or no.” He took a candle from the hall-table, and went up the square staircase, followed by Florimel. “What w’y is ’t, my leddy, ’at the hoose is no lockit up, an’ ilka body i’ their beds?” he asked. “My father is coming home to-night. Didn’t you know? But I should have thought a storm like this enough to account for people not being in bed!” “It’s a fearfu’ nicht for him to be sae far frae his! Whaur’s he comin’ frae? Ye never speyk to me noo, my leddy, an’ naebody tell’t me.” “He was to come from Fochabers to-night. Stoat took the bay mare to meet him yesterday.” “He wad never start in sic a win’! It’s fit to blaw the saiddle aff o’ the mear’s back.” “He may have started before it came on to blow like this,” said Lady Florimel. Malcolm liked the suggestion the less because of its probability, believing, in that case, he should have arrived long ago. But he took care not to increase Florimel’s alarm. By this time Malcolm knew the whole of the accessible inside of the roof well--better far than any one else about the house. From one part to another, over the whole of it, he now led Lady Florimel. In the big-shadowed glimmer of his one candle, all parts of the garret seemed to him frowning with knitted brows over resentful memories--as if the phantom forms of all the past joys and self-renewing sorrows, all the sins and wrongs, all the disappointments and failures of the house, had floated up, generation after generation, into that abode of helpless brooding, and there hung hovering above the fast fleeting life below, which now, in its turn, was ever sending up like fumes from heart and brain, to crowd the dim, dreary, larva-haunted, dream-wallowing chaos of half-obliterated thought and feeling. To Florimel it looked a dread waste, a region deserted and forgotten, mysterious with far-reaching nooks of darkness, and now awful with the wind raving and howling over slates and leads so close to them on all sides,--as if a flying army of demons were tearing at the roof to get in and find covert from pursuit. At length they approached Malcolm’s own quarters, where they would have to pass the very door of the wizard’s chamber to reach a short ladder-like stair that led up into the midst of naked rafters, when, coming upon a small storm window near the end of a long passage, Lady Florimel stopped and peeped out. “The moon is rising,” she said, and stood looking. Malcolm glanced over her shoulder. Eastward a dim light shone up from behind the crest of a low hill. Great part of the sky was clear, but huge masses of broken cloud went sweeping across the heavens. The wind had moderated.