He had hardly left the room when, from the wide arched doorway of his
bed-chamber beyond, there entered Mr. Johnson, his superior valet,
carrying some riding-boots and a silk shirt over his arm. You could see
through the open door that it was a very big and comfortable bedroom,
which had evidently been adapted to its present use from some much more
stately beginning. A large, vaulted chamber it was, with three narrow
windows looking on to the grim courtyard beneath.

Michael Arranstoun had selected this particular suite for himself when
his father died ten years before, and his mother was left to spoil him,
until she, too, departed from this world when he was sixteen.

What a splendid inheritance he had come into! This old border castle up
in the north--and not a mortgage on the entire property! While, from his
mother, a number of solid golden sovereigns flowed into his coffers
every year--obtained by trade! That was a little disgusting for the
Arranstouns--but extremely useful.

It might have been from this same strain that the fortunate young man
had also inherited that common sense which made him fairly level-headed,
and not given as a rule to any over-mad taste.

The Arranstouns had been at Arranstoun since the time of those tiresome
Picts and Scots--and for generations they had raided their neighbors'
castles and lands, and carried off their cattle and wives and daughters
and what not! They had seized anything they fancied, and were a strong,
ruthless, brutal race, not much vitiated by civilization. These
instincts of seizing what they wanted had gone on in them throughout
eleven hundred years and more, and were there until this day, when