A sobbing wind and a weeping rain beat round the walls of Arranstoun, and the great gray turrets and towers made a grim picture against the November sky, darkening toward late afternoon, as its master came through the postern gate and across the lawn to his private rooms.

He had been tramping the moorland beyond the park without Binko or a gun, his thoughts too tempestuous to bear with even them.

For the letter to Messrs.

McDonald and Malden had gone, and the first act of the tragedy of his freedom had been begun.
It was a colossal price to pay for honor and friendship, but while they had been brigands and robbers for hundreds of years, the Arranstouns had not been dishonorable men, and had once or twice in their history done a great and generous thing.
Michael was not of the character which lauded itself, indeed he was never introspective nor thought of himself at all.

He was just strong and living and breathing, his actions governed by an inherited sense of the fitness of things for a gentleman's code, which, unless it was swamped, as on one occasion it had been by violent passion, very seldom led him wrong.
Now he determined never to look ahead or picture the blankness of his days as they must become with no hope of ever seeing Sabine.