He would tell Mr Graham of course; but what could
Mr Graham say to it? The fact remained.
He must leave Portlossie.
His mind went on brooding, speculating, devising.
The evening sunk into the night, but he never knew
he was in the dark until the housekeeper brought him
a light. After a cup of tea, his thoughts found
pleasanter paths. One thing was certain:
he must lay himself out, as he had never done before,
to make Duncan MacPhail happy. With this one
thing clear to both heart and mind, he fell fast asleep.
He woke in the dark, with that strange feeling of
bewilderment which accompanies the consciousness of
having been waked: is it that the brain wakes
before the mind, and like a servant unexpectedly summoned,
does not know what to do with its master from home?
or is it that the master wakes first, and the servant
is too sleepy to answer his call? Quickly coming
to himself, however, he sought the cause of the perturbation
now slowly ebbing. But the dark into which he
stared could tell nothing; therefore he abandoned his
eyes, took his station in his ears, and thence sent
out his messengers. But neither, for some moments,
could the scouts of hearing come upon any sign.
At length, something seemed doubtfully to touch the
sense-the faintest suspicion of a noise in the next
room—the wizard’s chamber: it
was enough to set Malcolm on the floor.
Forgetting his wounded foot and lighting upon it,
the agony it caused him dropped him at once on his
hands and knees, and in this posture he crept into
the passage. As soon as his head was outside
his own door, he saw a faint gleam of light coming
from beneath that of the next room. Advancing
noiselessly, and softly feeling for the latch, his
hand encountered a bunch of keys depending from the
lock, but happily did not set them jingling. As
softly, he lifted the latch, when, almost of itself,
the door opened a couple of inches, and, with bated
breath, he saw the back of a figure he could not mistake—that
of Mrs Catanach. She was stooping by the side
of a tent bed much like his own, fumbling with the
bottom hem of one of the check curtains, which she
was holding towards the light of a lantern on a chair.
Suddenly she turned her face to the door, as if apprehending
a presence; as suddenly, he closed it, and turned
the key in the lock. To do so he had to use considerable
force, and concluded its grating sound had been what
waked him.
Having thus secured the prowler, he crept back to
his room, considering what he should do next.
The speedy result of his cogitations was, that he
indued his nether garments, though with difficulty
from the size of his foot, thrust his head and arms
through a jersey, and set out on hands and knees for
an awkward crawl to Lord Lossie’s bedroom.
It was a painful journey, especially down the two
spiral stone stairs, which led to the first floor
where he lay. As he went, Malcolm resolved, in
order to avoid rousing needless observers, to enter
the room, if possible, before waking the marquis.
