Cleek swung into step behind him and mounted the wide shallow oak stairs of the place to the tune of Mr. Fairnish's deep-pitched voice calling for "Mary! Mary!" In the fullness of time "Mary" appeared, and resolved herself into a buxom, high-bosomed, rosy-cheeked Highland lass, whom Mr. Fairnish had taken to wife (the second for him) last January. She appeared almost as garrulous as her husband, and while she showed Cleek his room--a long, low-ceiled bedroom overlooking the Castle and with windows across one end of it--she regaled him with tid-bits of gossip of neighbouring parts, and incidentally added to his already plentifully filled store of knowledge of the "Castle-folk" the fact that Miss Duggan herself was secretly engaged to a Captain Macdonald--one of the poorest land-owners of those parts--who, because of his poverty, was forbidden the house by Sir Andrew, and promptly sent about his business. "A harrd mon," she said, as her husband had done, standing in the frame of the open doorway with arms akimbo, and looking the true Scots lassie she undoubtedly was. "And sich a nice gentleman, tu--that Captain Macdonald. Reel gentry, Mr. Deland, sair. I've often thocht what a peety it was tu see 'em pulled apart like thaat. Ye'll be wanting some hot water, sair, I ken." "Thanks. I'd like some, certainly. And my man----" "He's made himself at home already," she responded, beaming at him. "And he's in my keetchen th' noo, eatin' an airly lunch. He towld me ye'd come fer the fishin', sair. We've a-mony come fer that to these parrts. That'll be all, I tak' it?" "That'll be all." At which the good woman withdrew her tongue and herself, and left Cleek a trifle dazed by the positive fount of garrulity at which he had been drinking this past half-hour, and a good deal interested in the Castle-folk to boot. He walked to the window and stood looking out of it at the magnificence of Aygon Castle that rose like some dream-palace before his admiring eyes. And as he looked he counted the windows across that part of the building which faced upon the village. The fourth from the left. Well, she'd possibly never need to signal, and yet--one never knew. And there was a ghost, too, and a horny-fisted and hard-hearted landlord, just as the penny novelettes would have had it. Quite interesting; quite. But the arrival of hot water set every other thought but that of cleanliness out of his head, and he gave himself up to his ablutions like a schoolboy on holiday. CHAPTER IV THE MORNING CALL No red light showed itself at Miss Duggan's window that night--though Cleek sat up until the soft fingers of the dawn were wreathing the sky with lavender veils and the face of the morning peeped through, like some goddess stepped down from Olympus to smile upon her lesser fellows. And it was then, and then only, that he sought his bed and the comfort of cool sheets at last.