Doom Castle Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  DOOM CASTLE

  By NEIL MUNRO

  Copyright, 1900, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co.

  CONTENTS:

  CHAPTER I -- COUNT VICTOR COMES TO A STRANGE COUNTRY

  CHAPTER II -- THE PURSUIT

  CHAPTER III -- BARON OF DOOM

  CHAPTER IV -- WANTED, A SPY

  CHAPTER V -- THE FLAGEOLET

  CHAPTER VI -- MUNGO BOYD

  CHAPTER VII -- THE BAY OF THE BOAR'S HEAD

  CHAPTER VIII -- AN APPARITION

  CHAPTER IX -- TRAPPED

  CHAPTER X -- SIM MACTAGGART, CHAMBERLAIN

  CHAPTER XI -- THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW

  CHAPTER XII -- OMENS AND ALARMS

  CHAPTER XIII -- A LAWYER'S GOOD LADY

  CHAPTER XIV -- CLAMOUR

  CHAPTER XV -- A RAY OF LIGHT

  CHAPTER XVI -- OLIVIA

  CHAPTER XVII -- A SENTIMENTAL SECRET

  CHAPTER XVIII -- "Loch Sloy!"

  CHAPTER XIX -- REVELATION

  CHAPTER XX -- AN EVENING'S MELODY IN THE BOAR'S HEAD INN

  CHAPTER XXI -- COUNT VICTOR CHANGES HIS QUARTERS

  CHAPTER XXII -- THE LONELY LADY

  CHAPTER XXIII -- A MAN OF NOBLE SENTIMENT

  CHAPTER XXIV -- A BROKEN TRYST

  CHAPTER XXV -- RECONCILIATION

  CHAPTER XXVI -- THE DUKE'S BALL

  CHAPTER XXVII -- THE DUEL ON THE SANDS

  CHAPTER XXVIII -- THE DUEL ON THE SANDS--Continued.

  CHAPTER XXIX -- THE CELL IN THE FOSSE

  CHAPTER XXX -- A DUCAL DISPUTATION

  CHAPTER XXXI -- FLIGHT

  CHAPTER XXXII -- THE INDISCRETION OF THE DUCHESS

  CHAPTER XXXIII -- BACK IN DOOM

  CHAPTER XXXIV -- IN DAYS OF STORM

  CHAPTER XXXV -- A DAMNATORY DOCUMENT

  CHAPTER XXXVI -- LOVE

  CHAPTER XXXVII -- THE FUTILE FLAGEOLET

  CHAPTER XXXVIII -- A WARNING

  CHAPTER XXXIX -- BETRAYED BY A BALLAD

  CHAPTER XL -- THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

  CHAPTER XLI -- CONCLUSION

  DOOM CASTLE

  CHAPTER I -- COUNT VICTOR COMES TO A STRANGE COUNTRY

  It was an afternoon in autumn, with a sound of wintry breakers on theshore, the tall woods copper-colour, the thickets dishevelled, and thenuts, in the corries of Ardkinglas, the braes of Ardno, dropping uponbracken burned to gold. Until he was out of the glen and into the openland, the traveller could scarcely conceive that what by his chart wasno more than an arm of the ocean could make so much ado; but when hefound the incoming tide fretted here and there by black rocks, andelsewhere, in little bays, the beaches strewn with massive boulders,the high rumour of the sea-breakers in that breezy weather seemed moreexplicable. And still, for him, it was above all a country of appallingsilence in spite of the tide thundering. Fresh from the pleasantrabble of Paris, the tumult of the streets, the unending gossip of thefaubourgs that were at once his vexation and his joy, and from the eagerride that had brought him through Normandy when its orchards were busyfrom morning till night with cheerful peasants plucking fruit, his earhad not grown accustomed to the still of the valleys, the terrific hushof the mountains, in whose mist or sunshine he had ridden for two days.The woods, with leaves that fell continually about him, seemed in someswoon of nature, with no birds carolling on the boughs; the cloisterswere monastic in their silence. A season of most dolorous influences, aland of sombre shadows and ravines, a day of sinister solitude; the sunslid through scudding clouds, high over a world blown upon by salt airsbrisk and tonic, but man was wanting in those weary valleys, and theheart of Victor Jean, Comte de Montaiglon, was almost sick for veryloneliness.

  Thus it came as a relief to his ear, the removal of an oppression littlelonger to be endured, when he heard behind him what were apparently thevoices of the odd-looking uncouth natives he had seen a quarter of anhour ago lurking, silent but alert and peering, phantoms of old storyrather than humans, in the fir-wood near a defile made by a brawlingcataract. They had wakened no suspicions in his mind. It was true theywere savage-looking rogues in a ragged plaid-cloth of a dull device, andthey carried arms he had thought forbidden there by law. To a foreignerfresh from gentle lands there might well be a menace in their ambuscade,but he had known men of their race, if not of so savage an aspect, inthe retinues of the Scots exiles who hung about the side-doors of SaintGermains, passed mysterious days between that domicile of tragic comedyand Avignon or Rome, or ruffled it on empty pockets at the gamingtables,so he had no apprehension. Besides, he was in the country of the Argyll,at least on the verge of it, a territory accounted law-abiding even todul-ness by every Scot he had known since he was a child at Cammercy,and snuff-strewn conspirators, come to meet his uncles, took him ontheir knees when a lull in the cards or wine permitted, and recountedtheir adventures for his entertainment in a villainous French: he couldnot guess that the gentry in the wood behind him had taken a fancy tohis horse, that they were broken men (as the phrase of the countryput it), and that when he had passed them at the cataract--a haughty,well-setup _duine uasail_ all alone with a fortune of silk and silverlace on his apparel and the fob of a watch dangling at his groin mosttemptingly--they had promptly put a valuation upon himself and hispossessions, and decided that the same were sent by Providence for theirenrichment.

  Ten of them ran after him clamouring loudly to give the impression oflarger numbers; he heard them with relief when oppressed by the inhumansolemnity of the scenery that was too deep in its swoon to give backeven an echo to the breaker on the shore, and he drew up his horse,turned his head a little and listened, flushing with annoyance when therude calls of his pursuers became, even in their unknown jargon, tooplainly peremptory and meant for him.

  "Dogs!" said he, "I wish I had a chance to open school here and teachmanners," and without more deliberation he set his horse to an amble,designed to betray neither complacency nor a poltroon's terrors.

  "_Stad! stad!_" cried a voice closer than any of the rest behind him;he knew what was ordered by its accent, but no Montaiglon stopped to aninsolent summons. He put the short rowels to the flanks of the sturdylowland pony he bestrode, and conceded not so little as a look behind.

  There was the explosion of a bell-mouthed musket, and something smotethe horse spatteringly behind the rider's left boot. The beast swerved,gave a scream of pain, fell lumberingly on its side. With an effort,Count Victor saved himself from the falling body and clutched hispistols. For a moment he stood bewildered at the head of the sufferinganimal. The pursuing shouts had ceased. Behind him, short hazel-treesclustering thick with nuts, reddening bramble, and rusty bracken,tangled together in a coarse rank curtain of vegetation, quite still andmotionless (but for the breeze among the upper leaves), and the sombredistance, dark with pine, had the mystery of a vault. It was difficultto believe his pursuers harboured there, perhaps reloading the weaponthat had put so doleful a conclusion to his travels with the gallantlittle horse he had bought on the coast of Fife. That silence, thatprevailing mystery, seemed to be the essence and the mood of this land,so different from his own, where laughter was ringing in the orchardsand a myriad towns and clamant cities brimmed with life.