CHAPTER LXVI. CELESTIAL MUSIC.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 301, 22 September 1888, Page 5

CHAPTER LXVI. CELESTIAL MUSIC.

Maggie threw herself across the grand bed with its faded silken coverlid, utterly ex hausted. Her temples throbbed, and her breath came in gasps. The exercise and e xcitement of the night had been almost too much tor her. If she could only sleep, her weariness would wear off. But ' tired Nature's* s.veet restorer ' refused i s soothing solace. She lay with distended eyes and clasped hands, her flickering taper burning in the alcove of the oaken casement, the grim portraits staring down upon her, and only one thought ringing again and again through her overwrought brain — Lord Strathspey's words : 'If the spiral stairway leads down, it must also run upward to the main towe-.' Should she, weak and weaiy as she was, start forth again, and test the truth of his assertion ? The storm had spent its fury, the winds bad lulled and the sea subsided into sullen silence. Through the bars of her window she could catch now and then a rift of silver moonlight. She arose at last, finding repose out, of the que&tion, and sat upon the edge of the couch, debating within herself what course to pursue, when all at once, sweet and soft as tne music of some heavenly dream, the notes of a flute came floating irom below. The air wa-j that well-known old Highland melody, ' The Campbells are Coming,' played with exquisite skill and sweetness. Maggie hid heard her old father sing it a hundred times, sitting by the fireside on winter evenings. It thrilled her through and through. She buried her face in the silken couch, and sobbed like a child. Still the witching notes came up, clear and liquid as the voice of a nightingale. They seemed to call her. diaw her by an ii resistible spell. She arose, moved by a vague impulse, and took up her taper, which still burned in the casement. Passing through the sliding panel, she began her researches again— upward this time. Yes, the earl was right. There was a kind of door, which after considerable difficulty Maggie succeeded in getting open ; and then she beheld the little spiral stairway winding upward into the shades of impenetrable gloom. She began the ascent without a moment's hesitation, impelled, as before, by something stronger than her own will. Up, and up, she toiled, as she had toiled downward, only a little while befoie. The darkness,and must,and mould were just the same ; the bats fluttered about her head, creeping things clung to the dank walls that shut her in. At last when her head began to grow dizzy, and her limbs to tremble under her, the little stairway terminated abruptly in a square, small room, from every side of which a window looked out. Maggie approached one of these, and a cry of terror broke from her lips. The earth seemed miles and miles below her — she was at the very pinnacle ot the main tower. The Lookout it was called, and it had been used during the border wars by the Highland chieftains when they desired to reconnoitre the position of an enemy. For the space of a minute her head reeled dizzily, and she grew sick and { faint ; but the sweet flute-notes came quivering up from below, and the old border war-song thrilled her like a sudden inspiration. Who was it? Some friend waiting to save her? She drew near the window, and looked out again, her nerves like steel, her gaze unfaltering. The storm was over, and far above the Scottish peaks the black clouds were roiling off in great rugged masses, and in the clear blue between soared a full moon. ' A greet owl hooted dismally amid the ' rank ivy that covered one entire side of the ruins ; and the lone heath, and staglake, and ruined portcullis gleamed lar below, in the white moonlight, with ghastly distinctness. Maggie leaned far over the stone windowsill, her large eyes searching for some Jiuman figure, for the stirring notes of ' The Campbells are Coming' still filled .the weird, midn/ght silence with the melodious echoes. Could it be some friend who knew of her imprisonment ? -The thrilling flute-strains seemed to draw nearer, to sound just below her lofty , window, and at last her eyes espied a tallfigure, a man's figure without doubt, stand ing jnst beyond the drawbridge, in the ful light of the soaring moon. How should she let him know that he was heard ? What signal should she make? The grim turret was far too high for speech, and her window, in the shadow of the rank ivy, was very dark. ' She turned, gazing round the square tower-room inquiringly, and her eyes fell on her candle, which she had put down in one corner. The blaze was flickering in the socket ; in another moment it would burn

out. She uttered a cry of horror, but at dhe same instant a happy. inspiration flashed across her mind. She tore the. little lace haudkerchief from her neck, and twisting it into a wick, she held one -corner to the dying blazeof her candle. It fluved .up on the instant, and turning, to the window she. throw it out; and it went blazing and fluttering downward, like a red meteor, falling and ex-, piring almost at the leet ot the solitary .tiguie standing in the m< on light. Immediately the music change 1. Instead of ( The Campbells are Coming,' the^ sweet, alluring numbers of ' Highland j Maiy ' filled the waiting silonce, and looking down with strained eyes, Maggie distinctly saw the figure remove his hut, and wave it aloft in the moonlight. And she knew that her signal had boen observed. She turned again to her candle, but the last fitful gleam was gone, nothing re mained but the black, smoking eocket. And that long black stairway before her. If she remained in the to*er till day-dawn, no ray of light would penetrate to that dread tul secret passage-way, and she would be risking the chance of discovery. Sh must try it in the dark. Lord Strathspey lay b'.'low in that awful dungeon. She musD not fail him. Heaven would help her. She took up her candlestick. The music had ceased, tin moon had gone under a scudding cloud, and an owl hooted dismally. With an unspoken prayer in her heart, she began the awful descent. Down and down, winding round and round till her biain grew dizzy, tceliug her vay from ttep to step ; the darkness so thick it made her gasp for breath : strange, phosphorescent lights Hushing before her dilated eyes, ghostly hands seeming to clutch at her m the gloom, unearthly voices to whisper and gibber in her ears Through the very shadow and darkness of death, groping, falling, trembling with nervous horror, yet brave and determined at heart. The time of her descent seemed like an etornity ; but it ended at last. Her groping hand struck the trap-door ; she made her way through, and caught a pallid glimmer from the moonlight that streamed through the barred casement of her own chamber. She got through the aperture, slid back the oaken panel, arranged the dusty taoestry, ani then tottering across the room, threw herself upon the old statebed in an agony of weakness and weariness.