The Wizard's Son, Vol. 1(of 3)

vy. From the water it looked like nothing but a roofless and deserted ruin. One tower in the centre stood up above t

y of his master, who occupied the other alone. Hoarse whispers breathed about the other end of the boat, and Symington was progged in the shoulders with an occasional oar. "Will ye no' be letting him see't?" the rowers said. Walter's faculties were eagerly acute in the strangeness of everything around him; the sense that he was going to an impossible house-to a ruin-on an impossible errand, seemed to keep him on the alert in every particular of his being. He could see through the dusk, he could hear through the whis

lordship is not one-to lose my presence o' mind. Yon's the phenomenon that they wanted me to call your lord

e which surrounded the old tower. It was difficult to distinguish what it was, or identify any lamp or beacon as the origin of it. It seemed to come from the terrace generally, a soft, extended light, with nothing fiery in it, no appearance of any blaze or burning, but a motionless, clear shining, which threw a strange glimmer upwards upon the s

his tone was like that of the bagman on the coach, and shivered at the thought. S

embered suddenly that the young lady on the coach had spoken

likely, I would say it was just intended to work on the imagination. Now and then, indeed, it's useful in the way

dark mass of the building rising out of it. It was not like the moon, it was more distinct than starlight, it was paler than a torch: nor was there any apparent central point from which it came. There was n

agination? and with

de of the castle, where there were traces of a path leading up across the rough grass to a partially visible door. All was so dark by this time that it was with difficulty that Walter found the landing; when he had got ashore, and his portmanteau had been put out on the bank, the men in the boat pushed off with an energy and readiness which prov

he said, in a voice which could n

high over his head to see who the new-comers were; and Walter, looking round, saw a bowed and aged figure-a pale old face, which might have been made out of ivory

dship, Macalister,"

sort of helplessness between the two old men who were fa

house, with a shrill voice that penetrated the stillne

up my lord's portman

other, with a sort of eldritc

ted Walter, and he seized the portma

on, and let us have n

masonry of the ruin, which was scarcely less unlike a ruin on this side than on the other. The door gave admittance into a narrow passage only, out of which a spiral staircase ascended close to the entrance, the passage itself apparently leading away into the darkness to a considerable distance. At the end of it stoo

e and mystery, the cold wind blowing as through an icy ravine. And the sensations of the young man, who had not even had those experiences of adventure which most young men have in these travelling days, whom poverty and idleness had kept at home i

. But we hope you'll find everything as comfortable as the circumstances will permit. We have had just twa three days to prepare,

rs mysterious, and showed the portraits dimly, like half-seen spectators, looking down from the wall; but the comfortable was much more present than the weird and uncanny which had so much predominated on his arrival. And when a dinner, which was very good and carefully cooked, and a bottle of wine, which, though he had not very much skill in that subject, Walter knew to be costly and fine, had been served with noiseless care by Symington, the young man began to recover his spirits, and to think of the tradition which required his presence here, as silly indeed, but without harm. After dinner he seated himself by the fire to think over the whole matter. It was not yet a fortnight since this momentous change had happened in his life. Before that he had been without importance, without use in the world, with little hope, with nothing he cared for sufficiently to induce him to exert himself one way or another. Now after he had passed this curious probation, whatever it was, what a life opened before him! He did not even know how important it was, how much worth living. It shone before him indistinctly as a sort of vague, general realisation of all dreams. Wealth-that was the least of it; power to do whatever he pleased; to affect other people's lives, to choose for himself almost whatever pleased him. He thought of Parliament, even of government, in his ignorance: he thought of travel, he thought of great houses full of gaiety and life. It was not as yet sufficiently realised to make him decide on one thing or another. He preferred it as it was, vague-an indefinite mass of good things and glor

n which they swept along, one effacing another, all of them so alien to the scene in which he found himself. He had to get up at last, shaking himself as free of the curious whirl of unwonted imagination as he could. No doubt his imagination was excited; but happily not, he said to himself, by anything connected with the present scene in which he found himself. Had it been roused by these strange surroundings, by the darkness and silence that were about him, by the loneliness to which he was so unused, he felt that there was no telling what he might see or think he saw; but fortunately it was not in this way that his imagination worked. His pulse was quick, however, his heart beating, a quite involuntary excitement in all his bodily faculties. He got up hastily and went to the bookshelves, where he found, to his surprise, a large collection of novels and light literature. It seemed to Walter that his predecessor, whom he had never seen-the former Lord Erradeen, who inhabited these rooms not very long ago-had been probably, like himself, anxious to quench the rising of his fancy in the less exciting course of a f

said. "Reading's a very fine thing when

and happily not impatient of it. "Tha

t's Dumas's you're reading? I've tried that French fellow myself, but I cannot say that I made head or tail of him. He would have it that all that has happened in

or the same reason that you have been suggesting to m

lighted the candles, and everything is in order. Will I wait upon your lordship till you're inclined for

th an instinct which he was half ashamed of, h

ll take the trouble, and ring the big bell. It would waken a' the seven sleepers if it was rung at their lug: and I'm not so ill to waken when there is noise enough. But ye have everything t

lter. "I shall not want

me anxiety, and stopped again at the door to say "Good night, my lord. It's not that I am ke

onger follow the fortunes of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Walter Methven thrust himself in front of these personages, and, though he was not half so amusing, claimed a superior importance by right of those pulses that clanged in his head like drums beating. He said to himself that he was very comfortable, that he had never expected to be so well off. But he could not regain his composure or sense of well-being. It was a little better when he went into his bed-room, the mere movement and passage from one room to another being of use to him. The sense of oppression and stagnation, however, soon became almost greater here than in the sitting-room. One side of the room was entirely draped in close-drawn curtains, so that it was impossible to make out even where the windows were. He drew them aside with some trouble, for the drape

ng window, the existence of which he had never suspected, facing him as he looked up from his pillows, after a comfortable night's

our lordship is likely to be ready, to put down the trout at the r