In a few minutes he stood in the wizard’s chamber, and glanced around it with a feeling of discomfort rather than sorrow—­of annoyance at the trouble of which it had been for him both fountain and storehouse, rather than regret for the agony and contempt which his selfishness had brought upon the woman he loved:  then spying the door in the farthest corner, he made for it, and in a moment more, his curiosity now thoroughly roused, was slowly gyrating down the steps of the old screw-stair.

But Malcolm had gone to his own room, and, hearing some one in the next, half suspected who it was, and went in.  Seeing the closet-door open, he hurried to the stair, and shouted, “My lord! my lord! or whaever ye are! tak care hoo ye gang or ye’ll get a terrible fa’.”

Down a single yard the stair was quite dark, and he dared not follow fast for fear of himself falling and occasioning the accident he feared.  As he descended he kept repeating his warnings, but either his master did not hear or heeded too little, for presently Malcolm heard a rush, a dull fall and a groan.  Hurrying as fast as he dared with the risk of falling upon him, he found the marquis lying amongst the stones in the ground entrance, apparently unable to move, and white with pain.  Presently, however, he got up, swore a good deal and limped swearing into the house.

The doctor, who was sent for instantly, pronounced the knee-cap injured, and applied leeches.  Inflammation set in, and another doctor and surgeon were sent for from Aberdeen.  They came, applied poultices, and again leeches, and enjoined the strictest repose.  The pain was severe, but to one of the marquis’s temperament the enforced quiet was worse.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

HANDS OF IRON.

The marquis was loved by his domestics, and his accident, with its consequences, although none more serious were anticipated, cast a gloom over Lossie House.  Far apart as was his chamber from all the centres of domestic life, the pulses of his suffering beat as it were through the house, and the servants moved with hushed voice and gentle footfall.

Outside, the course of events waited upon his recovery, for Miss Horn, was too generous not to delay proceedings while her adversary was ill.  Besides, what she most of all desired was the marquis’s free acknowledgment of his son; and after such a time of suffering and constrained reflection as he was now passing through he could hardly fail, she thought, to be more inclined to what was just and fair.

Malcolm had of course hastened to the schoolmaster with the joy of his deliverance from Mrs. Stewart, but Mr. Graham had not acquainted him with the discovery Miss Horn had made, or her belief concerning his large interest therein, to which Malcolm’s report of the wrath-born declaration of Mrs. Catanach had now supplied the only testimony wanting, for the right of disclosure was Miss Horn’s.  To her he had carried Malcolm’s narrative of late events, tenfold strengthening her position; but she was anxious in her turn that the revelation concerning his birth should come to him from his father.  Hence, Malcolm continued in ignorance of the strange dawn that had begun to break on the darkness of his origin.