Even as he spoke, there sounded somewhere as it were
the slam of a heavy iron door, the echoes of which
seemed to go searching into every cranny of the multitudinous
garrets. Florimel gave a shriek, and laying hold
of Malcolm, clung to him in terror. A sympathetic
tremor, set in motion by her cry, went vibrating through
the fisherman’s powerful frame, and, almost
involuntarily, he clasped her close. With wide
eyes they stood staring down the long passage, of
which, by the poor light they carried, they could not
see a quarter of the length. Presently they heard
a soft footfall along its floor, drawing slowly nearer
through the darkness; and slowly out of the darkness
grew the figure of a man, huge and dim, clad in a
long flowing garment, and coming straight on to where
they stood. They clung yet closer together.
The apparition came within three yards of them, and
then they recognized Lord Lossie in his dressing gown.
They started asunder. Florimel flew to her father,
and Malcolm stood, expecting the last stroke of his
evil fortune. The marquis looked pale, stern,
and agitated. Instead of kissing his daughter
on the forehead as was his custom, he put her from
him with one expanded palm, but the next moment drew
her to his side. Then approaching Malcolm, he
lighted at his the candle he carried, which a draught
had extinguished on the way.
“Go to your room, MacPhail,” he said,
and turned from him, his arm still round Lady Florimel.
They walked a way together down the long passage,
vaguely visible in flickering fits. All at once
their light vanished, and with it Malcolm’s
eyes seemed to have left him. But a merry laugh,
the silvery thread in which was certainly Florimel’s,
reached his ears, and brought him to himself.
CHAPTER LVI: SOMETHING FORGOTTEN
I will not trouble my reader with the thoughts that
kept rising, flickering, and fading, one after another,
for two or three dismal hours, as he lay with eyes
closed but sleepless. At length he opened them
wide, and looked out into the room. It was a bright
moonlit night; the wind had sunk to rest; all the
world slept in the exhaustion of the storm; he only
was awake; he could lie no longer; he would go out,
and discover, if possible, the mischief the tempest
had done.
He crept down the little spiral stair used only by
the servants, and knowing all the mysteries of lock
and bar, was presently in the open air. First
he sought a view of the building against the sky,
but could not see that any portion was missing.
He then proceeded to walk round the house, in order
to find what had fallen.
There was a certain neglected spot nearly under his
own window, where a wall across an interior angle
formed a little court or yard; he had once peeped
in at the door of it, which was always half open,
and seemed incapable of being moved in either direction,
but had seen nothing except a broken pail and a pile
of brushwood; the flat arch over this door was broken,
and the door itself half buried in a heap of blackened
stones and mortar. Here was the avalanche whose
fall had so terrified the household! The formless
mass had yesterday been a fair proportioned and ornate
stack of chimneys.
