THE CASTLE O' DREAMS To say that Cragnorth--that little unknown village of the Highlands which lies like an eagle's aerie upon the crest of the hills, scattering its few dwelling-places like seed over the hillside and down into the valley below--stood half-an-hour's distance from the station was to underestimate the fact. For it took Cleek and Dollops and Miss Duggan two mortal hours of driving in the station hack before they came in sight of it. And it was just as they reached a bend in the hill-road and came out upon a deep ravine, moss-covered and still wreathed with the mists of the morning, that Cleek saw Aygon Castle for the first time, and felt the whole true meaning of what it meant to these lairds of the Highlands to live here, generation after generation, giving to their children the right of ownership in the ancestral homes; it was just then that Miss Duggan turned in her seat and pointed with one arm out-thrown toward it. "That's the Castle. Isn't it too magnificently beautiful for words, Mr. Deland?" she said, with a suggestion of a catch in her voice at sight of it. "With those mists wreathing it about, and all its dear, gaunt, worn turrets piercing the top of the world like that! Now you can imagine how I feel toward the--the woman who would wrest all this from Ross, take what is his rightful inheritance from him and give it to a boy who is only half a Scotsman, and with the blood of another country running in his veins! Now you can understand why I came all the way to London to see Mr. Narkom. Look on it, Mr. Deland, and drink in its beauty. The sight of it is like heaven itself to me." Cleek did look on it to his heart's fill, and drank so deep of its majestic beauty as to be well-nigh intoxicated with it. The artist's soul of the man was afire with the chill grandeur of the place. From turreted towers rising through the gray mists, like the towers and the turrets of the Holy City itself, Aygon Castle was like some enchanter's palace, like some figment of the mind's weaving in those hours of day-dreams which lie between the dark and the day. To the left of it a huge watch-tower reared its monstrous head to the blue-flecked Highland sky, set atop of which stood the figure of a man, gigantic and wrought in bronze, with the plaid of the Duggans sweeping across his shoulder and eddying out into a marvellous real billow behind him, one huge forearm raised in the hand of which was a battle-axe, standing out black and menacing against the early morning sky. Cleek swept a hand out to it, while Dollops, silent up to the present, gave forth the feeling of his Cockney soul in one long-drawn "S'welp me!" of utter enthusiasm. "Who is the gentleman of the axe, Miss Duggan?" said Cleek, turning toward her, his face alight with interest. "What a magnificent thing it is! And how he stands out against this Highland sky of yours--menacing, victorious, utterly sublime! Some ancestor, no doubt?"