Beginning to doubt his eyes,
his next glance showed him Beauchamp standing over the sleeping girl.
He darted down the screw of the stair, but when he reached the bottom
Beauchamp had again disappeared.
The same moment Kate began to wake. Her first movement brought Alec to
his senses: why should he follow Beauchamp? He returned to her side,
and they left the place, locked the door behind them, took the key to
the lodge, and went home.
After tea, Alec, believing he had locked Beauchamp into the castle,
returned and searched the building from top to bottom, even got a
candle and a ladder, and went down into the dungeon, found no one, and
went home bewildered.
While Alec was searching the vacant ruin, Beauchamp was comfortably
seated on the box of the Spitfire, tooling it halfway home--namely, as
far as the house of its owner, the laird above mentioned, who was a
relative of his mother, and whom he was then visiting. He had seen Kate
and Alec take the way to the castle, and had followed them, and found
the door unlocked. Watching them about the place, he ascended the stair
from another approach. The moment Alec looked up at him, he ran down
again, and had just dropped into a sort of well-like place which the
stair had used to fill on its way to a lower level, when he heard
Alec's feet thundering up over his head.
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