The Tower was a gray, old, stately place, defiant alike of storm and siege, with deep embrasures on its walls meant for no child's play, and a court-yard that had rung to martial music centuries ago, in the days of the unhappy Stuarts. Deep woods stretched round it, tinted with autumn's fantastic wealth of coloring. The Oran ran so close to the strong, heavy, battlemented wall, that in the old warlike days, it had been the castle-moat, but the drawbridge was gone, and there was peaceful access now, by a light bridge of oak. A boat lay on the stream, moored to an over-hanging rock, by which Mrs. Catherine herself was wont to make the brief passage of the Oran. It was a favorite toy of Anne's also, in her happier moods, but she was too heavy of heart to heed it now. "Mrs. Catherine is in the library, Miss Anne," said Mrs. Euphan Morison, the portly, active housekeeper, whose medical propensities so frequently annoyed her mistress; and threading the dark passages familiarly, Anne passed on alone. "Mrs. Catherine is in the library, Miss Anne," repeated a dark, thin, elfin-like girl, who sat on the sill of a deep window, reading, and hiding her book beneath the stocking which she ought to have been knitting, as she threw furtive glances to the door of the housekeeper's especial sanctum: "but there's gentlemen with her. It's a business day." "I suppose you may admit me, Jacky," said Anne. "Mrs. Catherine expects me." "Mr. Walter Foreman's in, Miss Anne," said Jacky. "And what then?" said Anne, smiling. "And Mr. Ferguson, the factor from Strathoran," said the girl, gravely, taking up, with a look of abstraction, some dropt loops in her neglected stocking. "Then I will go to the drawing-room," said Anne. "Tell me, Jacky, when Mrs. Catherine is disengaged." "And Miss Anne," said Jacky, starting, as Anne was about to pass on, "the young lady's coming." "So I have heard," said Anne. "And she's to get the mid-chamber," said Jacky, "and the chairs have come out of the big room in the west tower. You never saw them, Miss Anne. Will you come?" And Jacky jerked her thin, angular frame off her seat, and threw down book and stocking. "What have you been reading, Jacky?" said Anne. The sharp, dark face owned an involuntary flush, and the furtive eyes glanced back to the housekeeper's closed door. "It was only the Faery Queen." "The Faery Queen! Jacky, these are strange studies for you." "There's no harm in it," muttered the girl, angrily. "I did not say there was," said Anne; "and you need not transfix me with those sharp eyes of yours, because I wondered. But, Jacky, your mother would not be pleased with this." "It's not the chief end of woman to work stockings," murmured the girl. "No, surely," said Anne; "nor yet to read poems. Come, Jacky, let me see the mid-chamber."