It was, I think, ten days after Agnes Anne had left us for the old house of the Maitlands when she came to me at the school-house. My father had Fred Esquillant in with him, and the two were busy with Sophocles. I was sitting dreaming with a book of old plays in my hand when Agnes Anne came in.

“Duncan,” she said, “I am feared to bide this night at Marnhoul. And I think so is Miss Irma. Now I would rather not tell grandmother—so you must come!”

“Feared?” said I; “surely you never mean ghosts—and such nonsense, Agnes Anne—and you the daughter of a school-master!”

“It’s the solid ghosts I am feared of,” said Agnes Anne; “haste you, and ask leave of father. He is so busy, he will never notice. He has Freddy in with him, I hear.”

So Agnes Anne and I went in together. We could see the man’s head and the boy’s bent close together, and turned from us so that the westering light could fall upon their books. Fred Esquillant was to be a great scholar and to do my father infinite credit when he went to the university. For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average classic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to my father.

“Duncan is coming with me to bide the night at Marnhoul,” said Agnes Anne, “and he is going to take ‘King George’ with him to—scare the foxes!”

“From the hen-coops?” said my father, looking carelessly up. “Let him take care not to shoot himself then. He has no nicety of handling!”

I am sure that really he meant in the classics, for his thoughts were running that way and I could see that he was itching to be at it again with Freddy.

“Tell your mother,” he said, adjusting his spectacles on his nose, “and please shut the door after you!”

Having thus obtained leave from the power-that-was, the matter was broken to my mother. She only asked if we had told John, and being assured of that, felt that her entire responsibility was cleared, and so subsided into the fifth volume of Sir Charles Grandison, where thrilling things were going on in the cedar parlour. It was my mother’s favourite book, but was carefully laid aside when my grandmother came—nay, even concealed as conscientiously as I under my coat conveyed away the bell-mouthed, silver-mounted blunderbuss which hung over the hat-rack in the lobby. Buckshot, wads, and a powderhorn I also secreted about my person.

On our way I catechized Agnes Anne tightly as to the nature of the danger which had put her so suddenly in fear. But she eluded me. Indeed, I am not sure she knew herself. All I could gather was that a letter which had reached Miss Irma that morning, had given warning of trouble of some particular deadly sort impending upon the dwellers in the house of Marnhoul. When Agnes Anne opened the door of the hall to let the sunshine and air into the gloomy recesses where the shadows still lurked in spite of the light from the high windows, she had found a folded letter nailed to the door of Marnhoul. The blade of a foreign-looking knife had been thrust through it deep into the wood, and the stag’s-horn handle turned down in the shape of a reversed capital V—the spring holding the paper firm. It was addressed to Miss Irma Maitland, and evidently had reference to something disastrous, for all day Miss Irma had gone about with a pale face, and a pitiful wringing action of her fingers. No words, however, had escaped her except only “What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do? My Louis—my poor little Louis!”

The danger, then, whatever it might be, was one which particularly touched the boy baronet. I could not help hoping that it might not be any plot of the lawyers in Dumfries to get him away. For if I were obliged to fire off “King George,” and perhaps kill somebody, I preferred that it should not be against those who had the law on their side. For in that case my father might lose his places, both as chief teacher and as postmaster.

I got Agnes Anne to look after “King George,” my blunderbuss, while I went round to the village to see if anything was stirring about the dwelling of Constable Jacky. She would only permit me to do this on condition that I proved the gun unloaded, and permitted her to lock it carefully in one cupboard, while the powder and shot reposed each on a separate shelf outside in the kitchen, lest being left to themselves the elements of destruction might run together and blow up the house.

I scudded through the village, passing from one end of the long street to the other. Constable Jacky in his shirt sleeves, was peaceably peeling potatoes on his doorstep, while with a pipe in his mouth Boyd Connoway was looking on and telling him how. The village of Eden Valley was never quieter. Several young men of the highest consideration were waiting within call of the millinery establishment of the elder Miss Huntingdon, on the chance of being able to lend her “young ladies” stray volumes of Rollin’s Ancient History, Defoe’s Religious Courtship, or such other volumes as were likely to fan the flame of love’s young dream in their hearts. I saw Miss Huntingdon herself taking stock of them through the window, and as it were, separating the sheep from the goats. For she was a particular woman, Miss Huntingdon, and never allowed the lightest attentions to “her young ladies” without keeping the parents of her charges fully posted on the subject.

All, therefore, was peace in the village of Eden Valley. Yet I nearly chanced upon war. My grandmother called aloud to some one as I passed along the street. For a moment I thought she had caught me, in spite of the cap which I had pulled down over my eyes and the coat collar I had pulled up above my ears.

If she got me, I made sure that she would instantly come to the great house of Marnhoul with all the King’s horses and all the King’s men—and so, as it were, spoil the night from which I expected so much.

But it was the slouching figure of Boyd Connoway which had attracted her attention. As I sped on I heard her asking details as to the amount of work he had done that day, how he expected to keep his wife and family through the winter, whether he had split enough kindling wood and brought in the morning’s supply of water—also (most unkindly of all) who had paid for the tobacco he was smoking.

To these inquiries, all put within the space of half-a-minute, I could not catch Connoway’s replies. Nor did I wait to hear. It was enough for me to find myself once more safe between the hedges and going as hard as my feet could carry me in the direction of the gate of Marnhoul.

No sooner was I in the kitchen with the stone floor and the freshly scoured tin and pewter vessels glinting down from the dresser, than I heard the voice of Miss Irma asking to be informed if I had come. To Agnes Anne she called me “your big brother,” and I hardly ever remember being so proud of anything as of that adjective.

Then after my sister had answered, Miss Irma came down the stairs with her quick light step, not like any I had ever heard. With a trip and a rustle she came bursting in upon us, so that all suddenly the quaint old kitchen, with its shining utensils catching the red sunshine through the low western window and the swaying ivy leaves dappling the floor of bluish-grey, was glorified by her presence.

She was younger in years than myself, but something of race, of refinement, of experience, some flavour of an adventurous past and of strange things seen and known, made her appear half-a-dozen years the senior of a country boy like me.

“Has he come?” she asked, before ever she came into the kitchen; “is he afraid?”

“Only of being in a house alone with two girls,” said Agnes Anne, “but I am most afraid of father’s blunderbuss which he has brought with him.”

“Nonsense,” said Miss Irma, determination marked in every line of her face. “We have a well-armed man on the premises. It is a house fit to stand a siege. Why, I turned away three score of them with a darning needle.”“Not but what it is far more serious this time!” she said, a little sadly. By this time I was reassembling the scattered pieces of “King George’s” armament, while Agnes Anne, in terror of her life, was searching on the floor and along the passages for things she had not lost.

As soon as I had got over my first awe of Miss Irma, I asked her point-blank what was the danger, so that I might know what dispositions to take.

I had seen the phrase in an old book, thin and tall, which my father possessed, called Monro’s Expedition. But Irma bade me help to make the ground floor of the mansion as strong as possible, and then come up-stairs to the parlour, where she would tell me “all that it was necessary for me to know.”

I wished she had said “everything”—for, though not curious by nature, I should have been happy to be confided in by Miss Irma. To my delight, on going round I found that all the lower windows had been fitted with iron shutters, and these, though rusty, were in perfectly good condition. In this task of examination Miss Irma assisted me, and though I would not let her put a finger to the sharp-edged flaky iron, it was a pleasure to feel the touch of her skirt, while once she laid a hand on my arm to guide me to a little dark closet the window of which was protected by a hingeless plate of iron, held in position by a horizontal bar fitting into the stonework on either side.

There was not so much to be done above stairs, where the shutters were of fine solid oak and easily fitted. But I sought out an oriel window of a tower which commanded the pillared doorway. For I did not forget what I had seen when the Great House of Marnhoul was besieged by the rabble of Eden Valley. It was there that the danger was if the house should be attempted.

But I so arranged it, that whoever attacked the house, I should at least get one fair chance at them with “King George,” our very wide-scattering blunderbuss.

In the little room in which this window was, we gathered. It made a kind of watch-tower, for from it one could see both ways—down the avenue to the main road, and across the policies towards the path that led up from the Killantringan shore.

I felt that it was high time for me to know against what I was to fight. Not that I was any way scared. I do not think I thought about that at all, so pleased was I at being where I was, and specially anxious that no one should come to help, so as to share with me any of the credit that was my due from Miss Irma.

Agnes Anne, indeed, was afraid of what she was going to hear. For as yet she had been told nothing definite. But then she was tenfold more afraid of “King George”—mostly, I believe, because it had been made a kind of fetish in our house, and the terrible things that would happen if we meddled with it continually represented to us by our mother. Finally, we arranged that “King George” should be set in the angle of the oriel window, the muzzle pointing to the sky, and that in the pauses of the tale, I should keep a look-out from the watch-tower.

“It is my brother Louis—Sir Louis Maitland—whom they are seeking!”

Miss Irma made this statement as if she had long faced it, and now found nothing strange about the matter. But I think both Agnes Anne and I were greatly astonished, though for different reasons. For my sister had never imagined that there was any danger worse than the presence of “King George” in the window corner, and as for me, the hope of helping to protect Miss Irma herself from unknown peril was enough. I asked for no better a chance than that.

“We have a cousin,” she continued, “Lalor Maitland is his name, who was in the rebellion, and was outlawed just like my father. He took up the trade of spying on the poor folk abroad and all who had dealings with them. He was made governor of the strong castle of Dinant on the Meuse, deep in the Low Countries. With him my father, who wrongly trusted him as he trusted everybody, left little Louis. I was with my aunt, the Abbess of the Ursulines, at the time, or the thing had not befallen. For from the first I hated Lalor Maitland, knowing that though he appeared to be kind to us, it was only a pretence.

“He entertained us hospitably enough in a suite of rooms very high up in the Castle of Dinant above the Meuse river, and came to see us every day. He was waiting till he should make his peace with the English. Then he would do away with my brother and——”

She paused, and a kind of shuddering whiteness came across the girl’s face. It was like the flashing of lightning from the east to the west that my grandmother reads about in her Bible—a sort of shining of hatred and determination like a footstep set on wet sand. “But no,” she added, “he would not have married me, even if he had kept me shut up for ever in his Castle of Dinant on the Meuse!”

Then all at once I began very mightily to hate this Lalor Maitland, Governor of the Castle of Dinant. I resolved to charge “King George” to the very muzzle, wait till he was within half-a-dozen paces, and—let him have it. For I made no doubt that it was he who was coming in person to carry off Miss Irma and Sir Louis back again to his dungeons. For though Irma had not called them that, I felt sure that she had been shamefully used. And though I did not proclaim the fact, I knew the name and address of a willing deliverer. I grew so anxious about the matter that Agnes Anne three times bade me put down “King George” or I should be sure to shoot some of them, or, most likely of all, little Louis in his cot-bed up-stairs.

“However, at last we escaped” (Miss Irma went on), “and I will tell you how—what I have not told to any here—not even to your good grandmother or the clergyman. It was through our nurse, a Kirkbean woman and her name Kate Maxwell, called Mickle Kate o’ the Shore. Her father and all her folk were smugglers, as, I understand, are the most of the farmers along the Solway side. Some of these she could doubtless have married, but Kate herself had always looked higher. The son of a farmer over the hill, from a place called the Boreland of Colvend, had wintered sheep on her father’s lands. Many a sore cold morning (so she said) had they gone out together to clear the snow from the feeding troughs. I suppose that was how it began, but in addition the lad had ambition. He learned well and readily, and after a while he went into a lawyer’s office in Dumfries, while Kate o’ the Shore went abroad with the family of a Leith merchant, to serve at Rotterdam. She wanted to save money for the house she was going to set up with the lawyer’s clerk. So, rather than come back at the year’s end, she took the place which the Governor of Dinant Castle offered her, and he was no other than our cousin Lalor.

“In a little while Kate of the Shore had grown to hate our cousin. Why, I cannot tell, for he always bowed to her as to a lady, and indeed showed her far more kindness than ever he used to us. When we wanted a little play on the terrace or a sweetcake from the town, we tried at first to get Kate to ask for us. But afterwards she would not. And she grew determined to leave the Castle of Dinant as soon as might be, making her escape and taking us with her. Her Boreland lad, Tam Hislop, had told her all about the estates and the great house standing empty. So nothing would do but that Kate o’ the Shore would come to this house with us, where we would take possession, and hold it against all comers.

“‘It is very difficult,’ said Kate’s friend, the Dumfries clerk, ‘to put any one out of his own house.’ Indeed he did not think that even the very Court of Session could do it.”

“So during the governor’s absence we brought little Louis from Dinant to Antwerp, where we hid him with some friends of Kate’s who are Free Traders, and ran cargoes to the Isle of Man and the Solway shore. Kind they were, stout bold men and appeared to hold their lives cheap enough—also, for that matter, the lives of those who withstood them.

“Many of them were Kirkbean men, near kinsfolk of Kate o’ the Shore, and others from Colvend—Hislops, Hendersons and McKerrows, long rooted in the place. But when we were in mid-passage, we were chased and almost taken by a schooner that fired cannon and bade us heave to, but the Kirkbean men, who had Kate o’ the Shore with them, bade our boat carry on, and engaged the pursuer. We could see the flash of their guns a long distance, and cries came to us mixed with the thunderclap of the schooner’s guns. The Colvend men would have turned back to help, but they had received strict orders to put us on shore, whatever might happen, the which they did at Killantringan.

“After that” (Miss Irma still went on) “I had so much ado to look after my brother, being fearful to let him out of my hands lest he should be taken from me, that I only heard the names of a place or two spoken among them—particularly the Brandy Knowe, a dark hole in a narrow ravine, under the roots of a great tree, with a burn across which we had to be carried. I remember the rushing sound of the water in the blackness of the night, and Louis’s voice calling out, as the men trampled the pebbles, ‘Are you there, sister Irma?’

“But long before it was day they had finished stowing their cargo. We were again on the march and the men took good care of us, leaving us here according to their orders with plenty of provisions for a week—also money, all good unclipped silver pieces and English gold. They bade us not to leave the house on any account, and in case of any sudden danger to light the fire on the tower head!

“‘For the present our duty is done,’ said one of them, a kind of chief or leader who had carried me before him on his own horse, ‘but there may be more and worse yet to do, wherein we of the Free Trade may help you more than all the power of King George—to whom, however, we are very good friends, in all that does not concern our business of the private Over-Seas Traffic’—for so they named their trade of smuggling.”

“I would like much to see this beacon,” I said; “perhaps we may have to light it. At any rate it is well to be sure that we have all the ingredients of the pudding at hand in case of need.”