“It is that blessed creature snoring--breathing, I mean,” was his first thought. But no, it was in too rapid a measure for that. Then the sound waxed louder, and he recognised that it was of footsteps steadily ascending the stairs. “The watchman, coming to make sure of the lights,” he thought, with re-assurance. But this hypothesis fell to the ground also. The footsteps mounted to the landing close outside. The noise ceased, and then there came the unmistakable jingle of a key--nay, the very grating of it in the lock of the door opposite. David’s veins, for a confused moment, ran cold. Then, with an excited ejaculation, he ran to his door, and flung it open. “Stop that, you idiot!” he commanded, in muffled but ferocious tones. “Ah, Davie, Davie! Still at the bottle!” replied a well-known voice from out of the obscurity. CHAPTER VI. Mosscrop groaned at recognition of the voice in the dark. “Of all inopportune creatures in the animal kingdom!” he bewailed under his breath. “Sh! for Heaven’s sake, man, don’t talk so loud. Come inside here, and walk softly.” “What is it you’re stalking, Davie--snakes?” queried the newcomer, with obvious sarcasm. But he lowered his voice, and came forward into David’s room. The latter closed the door noiselessly, and drew a long sigh of consolation. The two men looked at each other for a minute in silence. “You don’t mean that there are burglars in the house?” asked the intruder. A gleam of hopeful light shone in his eyes as he spoke, then died down at David’s shake of the head. The Earl of Drumpipes, in the peerage of Scotland, was a year younger than his friend the Culdee Professor. The gaslight revealed him now to be a tall, burly, rubicund man, with a broad, strongly-marked face of a severe aspect. His yellowish hair was cut close over a head which seemed unduly large for even his powerful frame, and was thinning towards baldness on the top. The collar of a woollen shirt showed a good deal of his thick neck, burnt a bright red at the back by a fiercer sun than warms these British islands. His prominent blue eyes bulged forth more than ever, now, in mystified inspection of David’s countenance. While he still gazed, it occurred to him to hold out his hand, as mighty as a blacksmith’s, in perfunctory greeting, and David took it with an effusiveness which was novel to them both. “I’m really delighted to see you, Archie. I give you my word lam!” he protested, eagerly. “You have your own way of showing it,” growled the other. “Yet you seem sober enough. What ails you, man?” “Oh, the strangest story!” said David. “Sit down here, and I’ll get out the whisky.” He busied himself between the sideboard and table, talking as he did so, while the other sprawled his large bulk in one of the easy chairs and lit a pipe. “See here, Drumpipes, damn it all,” he began, “I’m a gentleman, am I not?” “You are a professional man, a person of education,” the Earl assented, cautiously.