The register was now brought forth, in which the happy couple and their
friends were to inscribe their names. The principal personages signed
first. It came to Archibald's turn. It had previously been ascertained
that he knew how to string together the requisite letters upon paper.
There he sat, with his head in his hands. Sir Henry touched him on the
shoulder.

"Now, then, lad--Archie! wake up! Come! you're wanted!" He spoke sharply
and imperatively, in the hope of rousing the young fellow out of his
stupor, and at least getting him decently out of the room.

Archibald raised his face, which was deadly pale and covered with sweat,
and looked at the persons around him with a kind of amazed defiance. He
started to his feet, oversetting his chair as he did so, which rolled down
the steps of the dais and fell with a crash on the stone floor below.

"I came in by the staircase door!" he said in an excited voice, which
startled every one who heard it, so different was it from his usual tones.
"If you thought it locked, you were wrong. How else could I have come?...
When did you bring me here? This is the great hall! What have you been
doing? How came _you_ here?"

There was a dead silence. Every one felt that some ugly thing was about to
happen. Several women began to laugh hysterically. It seems to have been
supposed, at first, that Archibald had exchanged his inoffensive idiocy
for a condition of raving madness. The old physician was probably the only
one present who had a glimmering of what might be the truth. The
Honorable Richard Pennroyal had none. He pushed between the venerable
knight and his "best man," and relying upon his oft-proved and established