Captain Dove, sucking at his black cutty-pipe in the library of Loquhariot, looked very contemptuously at Mr. Jobling. It was self-evident that Mr. Jobling was afraid of Slyne and feeling very sorry for himself.

But Captain Dove was in no such disconsolate mood. Glancing at the despondent lawyer out of his little red-rimmed eyes, he even grinned, still more contemptuously. He was not afraid of Slyne, he told himself, and it made no material difference to him that his recent attempt to brow-beat that grasping scoundrel had failed, even with the London lawyer for ally. For Captain Dove did not intend that either of the other two should eventually get the better of him. He was playing a waiting game, in which he meant to come out winner at any cost.

So far as Captain Dove was concerned there were only two persons really concerned in the question of the Jura succession. One was Sallie, the other himself—her adopted father!

He looked upon Mr. Jobling as a mere mechanical instrument, such as could be replaced at a moment's notice if that were needful, now that the legal details of the case had been carried so far toward final success. Slyne was absolutely superfluous there and had outlived his usefulness, in so far, at least, as Captain Dove was concerned. More than that, he was in Captain Dove's way. So, to some extent, was Justin Carthew, since it seemed that Sallie felt called upon to make a fool of herself for his benefit; but Captain Dove did not anticipate any great difficulty in dealing with him. And so was Herries, the factor, who had so many inconvenient questions to ask—although he need scarcely be taken into account at present while he was abed and likely to be there for some time to come.

With all of these, in any case, he felt quite capable of coping—except with Jasper Slyne, who had threatened, a few moments before and in the hearing of an attentive witness ... Slyne was undoubtedly dangerous now; and it must be his first care to free himself for all time from the risk of Slyne's telling....

"I have it," said Captain Dove, his furrowed forehead suddenly cleared and his face contorted into a smile at sight of which Mr. Jobling was seized with a sickly, sinking sensation. "I have it. We must keep quiet of course, until the Olive Branch turns up, but she shouldn't be very long now, and then—

"I'll send for Brasse. I warned that fool Slyne to play fair with me—but he won't. And so—since it's beggar-my-neighbour we're at, he won't be my neighbour for long."

Mr. Jobling rose, coughing irritably. The reek from Captain Dove's foul pipe was too much for him.

"I'll go and pack now," he announced. "I'd never have come here at all if I had thought—"

"You leave things here to me, old cock," Captain Dove encouraged him. "And go and jag your friend Spettigrew along till he gets judgment for us. That's the most important part of the game at present. Leave things here to me, and you'll find, when the time comes, that Slyne will have to take a back seat."

But the stout solicitor did not seem grateful at all for that crumb of comfort. He merely looked at Captain Dove with equal dislike and disbelief as he left the room.

He left the castle immediately after lunch, to catch the steamer south, a little less depressed, perhaps, after a few further words with Captain Dove, who thought it only politic to inspirit him in his efforts on Sallie's behalf. And he had not been gone very long before Captain Dove began to miss him—as a boon-companion, a part which Slyne refused to play any longer. So that the old man soon began to find the time hang very heavy on his hands, and his grudge against Slyne always grew.

Under any circumstances, he could not have been happy for long on land. Nor could he feel altogether safe there, even in the distasteful disguise he had adopted at Slyne's advice; and for discrediting which he had been so repeatedly called to account by Slyne. He could scarcely but repent having sacrificed his undisputed autocracy on the Olive Branch in order to figure as a mere puppet in Slyne's company, as he had undoubtedly become since he had left his ship. He grew very angry indeed with Slyne when he thought of that, as he often did during those endless days of waiting.

It was all Slyne's fault, he assured himself, that he was thus stranded there; that he had not fifty cents left to bless himself with, since one expensive evening in Paris; and that, even if he had had such a sum in his pockets, it might have worn a hole in them before he could spend it, in such a forsaken spot!

Of what use to him, he inquired of himself, going off at another tangent, could a huge, ghost-haunted pile like the Castle of Loquhariot be? Or a great empty barrack like Justicehall?—which reminded him unpleasantly of the Law Courts in London. How could he ever hope to spend such an excess of wealth as was soon to be Sallie's, and, therefore, at his disposal? A perfect nausea of money possessed Captain Dove at such moments. He would almost have preferred the prospect of poverty again, if only for the sake of the interest in life the struggle to live might restore to him.

"Enough is as good as a feast!" said he to himself every now and then while he gazed, with gloom in his soul, at the cut-crystal decanters on a salver of solid silver which was never far from his elbow; and, with that wise saw on his lips, he would continue to drown his contradictory sorrows as deeply as possible.

But there was luckily room and to spare in the castle for all its inmates. Slyne and he kept as much as possible out of each other's way, although they had resumed a spasmodic outward semblance of amity, a steadfast inward determination to get the better of one another, whether by fair means or foul. He could scarcely seek Sallie's company now that she knew his treacherous intentions toward her. The sick man, Herries, was still in bed, in a sufficiently precarious state. So that he lived very much alone with his various grievances, since his walks abroad, as far as the Jura Arms,—where he soon became almost popular among the occasional profligates of the village,—were not so frequent as they would probably have been in better weather.

A bitter east wind, bringing always more snow, had blown almost ceaselessly for the best part of a fortnight before any change came in the wildest weather that had befallen Loquhariot in long years.

The mountain roads for miles in all directions were quite impassable. The mail-cart, with its driver and horses, and also the hastily improvised snow-plough which had attempted their rescue, lay buried deep below the ever deepening drift into which it had plunged on its last outward journey. The single telegraph-line that served the locality had broken down at a dozen points which were quite unapproachable. Stress of weather had prevented the weekly steamer from making its usual call. Loquhariot was absolutely cut off from the outer world.

And then, with a wet westerly wind which soon grew into a gale, the snow on the mountains began to melt and floods made matters still worse, swelling every unconsidered stream into a destructive torrent, cutting wide chasms across the precipitous main-road over the Pass, under-mining its bridges and even washing some of them away bodily. In several of the more outlying districts sheer famine began to grow imminent. The flocks and herds of the countryside were in still worse case than the wild deer which had escaped from their forest sanctuaries before the first of the snow and had been huddling about the village while it endured.

No word had come through from Mr. Jobling in all that time. And Captain Dove was almost beyond the end of his outworn patience before, scowling blackly out of the library window one day when the westerly gale had all but blown itself out, he caught sight of a shabby, sea-going, cargo-tramp, flying the Norwegian flag, which seemed to be seeking an anchorage behind the Small Isles at the mouth of the loch.

It was the Olive Branch. He would have known her in the dark, disguise or no disguise.

"Uh-hum!" he exclaimed, in an ecstasy of relief. "Now I can make things move a little at last. Now we'll soon see who's who here."

He dashed off a peremptory note to his chief engineer, put that in his pocket, clapped his smoked spectacles on his nose and his soft felt hat on his head, and made for the village, where he hoped to find, in the Jura Arms, a local poacher who would undertake an errand out to the steamer.

He found his man at the inn, and his credit there enabled him to drive a speedy bargain. It also helped him to pass the time contentedly enough till the fishing-boat returned from its wet trip with word for the public that the strange steamer had put into the loch on account of an accident in her engine-room which would delay her there for a little, although she would need no help from the village; and with a hasty private note from the chief engineer for Captain Dove—to the effect that Mr. Brasse refused to come ashore.

"Curse him!" snarled Captain Dove as his messenger retired to the bar again. "I suppose he's afraid of the police—though there isn't a policeman within thirty miles, and, even if there were, it wouldn't matter very much." And he sat down to compose another and still more peremptory note, bidding Brasse obey his lawful commands or take the consequences of disobedience.

He would have put off to the steamer himself but for the obvious reasons against that course. And, to induce his messenger to make the trip again after dark, he had to promise the man twice as much as for the first run, still outstanding.

When he finally emerged from the inn, in no very pleasant temper, he caught sight, first, of the weekly steamer already half way up the loch, inward bound, and then of Sallie at a bend of the road in the distance, on her way back to the castle from the village. There was some one with her. It was Carthew.

Captain Dove became still more incensed, and, his mind a good deal inflamed by his recent potations, set off up the hill in pursuit of them, breathing noisily, not even pausing to scowl at the children who scurried indoors as he passed with the skirts of his long black coat streaming out behind him.

He had heard from Slyne that Herries, the factor, had formally appointed the young American his deputy until he should be able to undertake his own duties again. And, in spite of all Slyne and he could say to Sallie, she had obstinately refused to assist in getting rid of Carthew. He had heard from Slyne that Carthew was making far too many occasions for seeing her, and when he had cautioned Sallie on that score she had shown no disposition at all to take his advice.

"I've warned her often enough," he muttered with steadily rising wrath, "to quit monkeying with that fellow. And she'll get right out of hand now, unless I let her see, once and for all, who's going to be master here. Where would I come in if he managed to get married to her! He's got to go. That's all there is to it. I can't afford to have him hanging about here any longer."

The couple in front seemed to be in no hurry, however. He had almost overtaken them before he paused at a hazel-clump to cut himself a stout cudgel. By the time he had got that trimmed to his taste, they had almost reached the castle.

"I'll wait till she's gone in," said Captain Dove to himself. He had noticed that Carthew was carrying what looked like a woodman's axe. But that did not daunt him at all in his purpose. He lingered along the edge of an alder-thicket until at length Sallie shook hands in very friendly fashion with the young American and went her own way, while Carthew took to a trail through the woods and made off at a round pace, notwithstanding his limp, axe on shoulder, whistling blithely.

The path he was following wound in and out among plantations of pine and great groves of grey, leafless birches, until, at a distance of half a mile, it found the clear edge of the cliffs overlooking the circular inlet which forms the head of the loch, and finally faded away at the marge of a smooth plateau of bare rock enclosed on three sides by a thick tangle of woodland and rank undergrowth.

Captain Dove stalked him with all precaution, stepping from stone to stone among the wet snow which was rapidly melting, so that he might leave no traceable footprints on the soft, spongy soil or damp, dead leaves. And once, when Carthew halted to light a pipe, the old man, with murder in his mind, dropped into cover behind a moss-grown boulder at one side of the path—because that would have been a most unadvisable spot at which to attack a man armed with an axe. Then, as Carthew moved on, he once more took up the pursuit, through the clumps of bramble and bracken between the dark trunks of the firs about him.

Carthew stepped unconcernedly out of the dusk of the woods into the open space at the end of the path, and stopped there, axe on shoulder, to look about him. But Captain Dove did not immediately spring upon him as he had been minded to do, for he had just observed, at a corner of the convenient plateau, a round hut, stone-built and roofed with heather, which might or might not be inhabited. Captain Dove wormed his way round toward it, within the thicket.

The windows of the hut were shuttered and its door pad-locked on the outside. Captain Dove was delighted. He turned to squint across at Carthew from behind a bush and judge his distance, but still delayed his attack.

Carthew seemed to have seen something of interest in the dark wood behind Captain Dove, and Captain Dove looked round in instant alarm. It would have been most unpleasant to find that he himself was being spied upon. There was some one or some thing, a tall white shadow, very dimly discernible, moving among the gloom.

A sudden and most unusual sensation of panic seized Captain Dove. The inexplicable shape was flitting soundlessly toward him. He felt thankful that Carthew was there behind him, alive and well, for company. But when he rose upright and glanced swiftly over one shoulder the plateau was empty. Carthew had gone.

The evening was drawing in, and even the pathway by which they had come there was growing dim as the light slowly failed. Captain Dove made a blind dash for it across the open space, and so fled headlong, in fear.

He only once looked back, and then he saw the shadow again. It was following him. And he did not stop running till he reached the drawbridge of the castle. But there he halted, panting, to swear at himself for a superstitious old fool, and stare back into the woods with eyes in which terror was mingled with rage.

"Some stray cow—or maybe a stag!" he declared to himself. "If I had had a shot-gun handy—or even my revolver—"

But, stare as he would, he could see nothing more of the creature. And he went in through the postern, still swearing under his breath.

He had never felt quite at his ease in the great main hall of the castle, which, with its empty suits of mail in all sorts of unexpected corners, the flags overhead flapping soundlessly in every draught, the pale faces peering down from their dark frames in the gallery, possessed an uncanny atmosphere of its own, especially in the dusk.

However, the two big fires blazing on their cavernous hearths at either side of its wide expanse made it a good deal more homelike, less eerie than it had seemed when he had first seen it. And he crossed it almost without concern on his way toward his own quarters in the North Keep.

But by the way some obscure movement among the shadows beyond the nearer fire brought his heart to his mouth again in an instant, and a hand slipped mechanically toward the empty hip-pocket beneath the skirt of his coat. He had halted. He moved on, into the dim recess whence some one was watching him, and presently emerged again, dragging after him into the firelight a shock-headed, pasty-faced lad, whose long neck was writhing in anguish as Captain Dove gave the long ear between his finger and thumb another fierce tweak.

"What the devil are you doing here!" the old man demanded, peering into the features of Mr. Jobling's managing clerk.

"Nothing," answered Mullins with legal exactitude. But he quickly became more discursive under Captain Dove's threatening glance. "Mr. Jobling brought me here with him," he explained. "We arrived by the steamer an hour ago, after a most terrible passage. I never saw such—"

Captain Dove silenced him with a scowl. "Where's your master?" he demanded.

"In there," replied Mullins promptly, pointing to the door of the gun-room, which opened off the main hall; and Captain Dove, casting him loose without more words, marched in upon Mr. Jobling and Slyne in excited conference.

They looked round as the door opened, and the lawyer, seeing who the unceremonious intruder was, waved a fat hand in gleeful welcome. "We're safe now," he vociferated. "The Jura succession is settled at last. Where's Lady Josceline? She'll be Countess of Jura in her own right as soon as—"

"Not so much of your noise," Captain Dove commanded, and, suddenly, reopening the door, all but overset himself in accomplishing a hasty kick, which elicited a loud yelp from without.

"Was that Mullins!" Mr. Jobling exclaimed. "I don't know what I'm to do with him. He's really becoming a dangerous nuisance. I had to bring him away from London with me to prevent him—"

"He'll keep clear of keyholes for a while," Captain Dove put in confidently. "Now let's hear your news."

Mr. Jobling's clouded face cleared again. "You've heard it already," he said. "I've won our case. The Chancery Court has admitted my proofs. We are to attend again, all of us, the day after to-morrow if possible, when Mr. Justice Gaunt will give us decree. And Lady Josceline will be the Countess of Jura as soon as—"

"When will she get any money?" asked Captain Dove bluntly, and Mr. Jobling looked pained.

"By Friday, I should think," he stated, "I'll have everything in such shape that she can draw a cheque for a mill—"

"She'll draw no cheques," Slyne interrupted decisively. "You know very well that I have her formal authority to attend to all such matters for her. Whatever small sums she may require I'll procure for her, and any payments to be made on her behalf I'll make."

He met with perfect tranquillity the glances of his associates. "I'll go and tell her the news now," he remarked, and left the room.

As soon as the door had closed behind him, the lawyer turned toward Captain Dove, and, "Well?" he asked eagerly. "Was that your ship I saw at the mouth of the loch? How are you going to get rid of that domineering upstart? There isn't much time left to—"

Captain Dove held up a protesting hand, but Mr. Jobling would not be put down in that manner. He was evidently determined now to stand up for himself and those hard-earned rights out of which Slyne had undoubtedly jockeyed him in the most bare-faced, contemptuous manner.

"I really must insist on knowing what you mean to do," he declared irascibly. "I have far too much at stake to leave anything to chance at this late moment. Once Mr. Slyne reaches London, it will be too late to—"

"Hold your row!" ordered Captain Dove, so fiercely that Mr. Jobling jumped. "And—don't interfere in what doesn't concern you. All you need to know is that—Slyne will never see London again. Does that satisfy you?"

"It would—if I could believe it," observed Mr. Jobling, valiantly. "But—"

"And neither will you, if you worry me," added Captain Dove in a voice which seemed to affect his neighbour's nerve very adversely. "So help yourself to another peg and pass the bottle. I can scarcely hear myself think for your chatter, and I've got a good deal to think about."

Mr. Jobling did his very best to meet the old man's irate glance resolutely, but his own irresolute, blinking eyes soon fell before the cold menace in Captain Dove's. He replenished his glass, and having sulkily shoved the decanter across the table, lay back in his chair.

"You said that she could draw her money on Friday, didn't you?" asked Captain Dove, and he nodded, with very ill grace.

"And Slyne has her power of attorney to sign any cheques he likes to write," the old man went on musingly. "But—that doesn't matter. Brasse will be ashore to-night. And we'll be off to London to-morrow, me an' you, Jobling, d'ye hear?"

Mr. Jobling could not deny that he heard, and did not seem inclined to ask any more questions. But Captain Dove had a great many more to ask him, and when Slyne looked into the room, some time later, he found the two of them chatting quite amicably. They both fell silent, however, at sight of him.

"Lady Josceline is entertaining visitors," he announced: "the Duchess of Dawn—and that unlicked cub Ingoldsby."

"Lord Ingoldsby's her grace's nephew, of course," Mr. Jobling mentioned reverentially. "And one of the wealthiest peers in England—or anywhere else. But—how did they get here? Dawn's on the other side of the mountains, and—"

"They rode across," said Slyne, "to find out who was here. If Dove hadn't ordered the beacon to be lighted the night we arrived, they'd never have heard—But maybe, after all, it will help—

"They're going to dine and stay the night, anyhow. It's come on to snow again.

"There's a great hullabaloo below-stairs," he said in a somewhat querulous tone as he crossed toward the fireplace and helped himself to a cigarette from the silver box on the mantel. "One of the gamekeepers sent in word that he had seen the 'white lady' about in the woods this afternoon. And now an hysterical housemaid is having fits in the servants' hall, on the insufficient ground that she had met the same mysterious personage in one of the passages a little ago. The whole outfit, in fact, are in the very devil of a fluster."

"How unfortunate!" exclaimed Mr. Jobling, while Captain Dove was still regarding Slyne with an expression of mingled doubt and dismay. "Nothing could have been more ill-timed, too—since her grace is going to honour us with her company. Every one about the place believes implicitly in that old superstition—and they say, you know, that the head of the family has died whenever the so-called 'white lady' has made her appearance."

Slyne laughed, and blew a cloud of smoke from his nostrils.

"Lady Josceline will outlast most of us," he declared with the utmost nonchalance. "And, in any case, I've dared anyone to breathe a word about it to her. We don't want our dinner spoiled with any nonsense of that sort."

Mr. Jobling got up to go, alleging that he was tired after his long journey and wanted a rest before dinner.

"Of course, it's all nonsense," he agreed, if with no great conviction. "But it won't be before to-morrow that you'll get the Highlanders here to believe that."

Slyne laughed again, contemptuously, as the lawyer left the room, and then turned toward Captain Dove.

"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Dove?" he demanded, quite well aware of the old man's weakness in that respect.

"I've seen one or two in my time," answered that superstitious seaman in a low growl.

"You're luckier than I've ever been, then," said Slyne mockingly. "And I only believe in what I can see for myself. But, all the same, I'm not going to take any losing chances. And, you must admit, it would be most damnably awkward for us if Sallie should, by any chance, fall under the fatal spell of the family spectre."

Captain Dove gave voice to another growl, unintelligible, and moved restlessly in his chair. It had not, as a matter of fact, occurred to him that any immediate mischance to Sallie must mean ruin to himself. And Slyne's sneering insensibility was difficult to endure when he recalled what he himself had also seen in the woods.

"I think it would be as well in any case to make sure that we won't be left lamenting her and absolutely penniless," Slyne went on, his features suddenly set and serious. "And I'm going to make things safe for us all to-night," he affirmed. "Are you listening, Dove?

"It might be dangerous now to delay even until to-morrow. You and I have too much at stake to run any avoidable risk. And remember that, if you fail me again, it isn't only a matter of the money you'll lose by your folly. I know very well that Jobling and you have been plotting together against me, but—I don't believe you've forgotten what I told you both the day before he left for London. It would scarcely be worth your while to go back on me now and spend the rest of your life in prison, or, much more probably,—hang."

Captain Dove nodded perfectly civil assent to that self-evident proposition. He was inwardly wondering at what hour Brasse would be ashore.

"Very well," Slyne concluded. "You've got to stand by me, for your own sake. I'm going to clinch matters with Sallie now. I'll announce our engagement at dinner. And immediately after dinner, she and I will go through the simple formality of a Scotch marriage—the worthy Mrs. M'Kissock has told me exactly how that can be done. The duchess will serve as one witness and I'll find another trust-worthy one. So that, all going well, the future Countess of Jura will be my lawful wife before any harm can come to her even from the 'white lady.' How does that strike you, eh?"

Captain Dove once more nodded polite agreement, and then looked very slowly round over one shoulder behind him. Slyne darted an involuntary glance in the same direction, and the fag-end of his cigarette fell from between nerveless fingers. A sudden pallor had overspread his tanned features, and something very like fear looked out of his eyes at the dim white form standing motionless just beyond the range of the lamplight.

Something very like fear looked out of his eyes.