Chapter 1

What was happening on Carnglass, that “Heap of Gray Stones” beyond the
Outer Islands of the Hebrides? Old Lady MacAskival, the proprietress,
had brought in a queer lot of people from England, and the hostility
toward outsiders seemed to emanate from the frowning cliffs of
Carnglass. Anyone who tried to land, it was rumored, might be fired
upon. On a black night at sea, five MacAskivals from the neighboring
island of Daldour had seen a pillar of flame rise near Askival Harbor,
and had heard something like gunfire. And away in Michigan, old
Duncan MacAskival, the retiring head of the MacAskival Iron Works,
had encountered but stony silence in his many attempts to communicate
with Lady MacAskival concerning his desire to purchase the home of his
ancestors.

When Duncan, for all his pains, receives an odd water-stained note in
an unsigned, hastily-scrawled female hand, requesting “confidential
agents” and “immediate action,” he sends young Hugh Logan, his legal
counsel, to investigate. The adventure that unfolds is calculated to
transform the most comfortable armchair into a veritable bucket seat of
suspense.

In his efforts to reach Carnglass and the Old House, where Lady
MacAskival resides, Logan is confronted by the sinister agents of a
puzzling conspiracy--a baleful Glasgow “commission agent,” a cashiered
British officer, an Irish terrorist on the run, and, behind the stone
mass known as the Old House, the chilling man with the Third Eye.

old house of fear

OLD
HOUSE
OF
FEAR

BY RUSSELL KIRK

FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
230 PARK AVENUE
NEW YORK 17, N.Y.

COPYRIGHT © 1961
BY FLEET PUBLISHING CORPORATION
230 Park Avenue, New York 17, New York

Protected under International Copyright Convention
and the Pan American Copyright Convention

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-7627

This Gothick tale, in unblushing line
of direct descent from _The Castle of
Otranto_, I do inscribe to Abigail Fay.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 _11_

Chapter 2 _26_

Chapter 3 _42_

Chapter 4 _58_

Chapter 5 _78_

Chapter 6 _95_

Chapter 7 _111_

Chapter 8 _136_

Chapter 9 _153_

Chapter 10 _173_

Chapter 11 _187_

Chapter 12 _201_

Chapter 13 _218_

Chapter 14 _230_

Chapter 15 _248_

old house of fear

1

On this shrouded night, five men tossed in a boat off the island of
Carnglass, where the sea never is smooth. So thick about them hung the
fog that they could not see the great cliffs. Knowing, though, every
rock and reef, they sensed where the island lay.

Of a sudden, a tall flame shot up from Carnglass, fierce and unnatural.
Across the swell there came to the men in the boat the crash of some
explosion. Clinging to their oars, they stared silent toward the land;
the oldest man crossed himself. The flame, surging and waving for some
minutes, soon sank lower. In a little while they heard faint distant
sounds, several of them, like gunshots. The younger men looked to the
old helmsman, who pulled hesitantly at his white beard.

Then he signed to them to put the boat about. Glancing fearfully at the
distant flame as they heaved, two men hauled at the sail. In a minute
they had changed course, and the fire in the night glowed at their
backs as they pulled away from the uneasy neighborhood of silent and
invisible Carnglass.

* * * * *

Three thousand miles away, two men sat in a handsome office. “That’s
our island,” Duncan MacAskival said: “Carnglass.”

Across the Ordnance Survey map his thick forefinger moved to a ragged
and twisted little outline, away at the verge of the Hebrides, which
even upon the linen of the map seemed to recoil from the Atlantic
combers. “The tattered top of a drowned mountain. And that’s the
castle, by the bay to the West, Hugh: Old House of Fear. I like
the names. You’re to buy Carnglass for me, cliffs and clachans and
deer-forest and Old House and all; and price is no object.”

Hugh Logan smiled at the heavy old man in the swivel chair. “Why send
me to the Western Isles to haggle for a speck of rock I know nothing
about, Mr. MacAskival? Why do you need Carnglass? And why not have a
Glasgow solicitor do the business for you? I’d enjoy the trip, right
enough, but I don’t need to tell you that my time costs you bona-fide
money. Any junior clerk could buy an island for you.”

“Look out there, Hugh.” MacAskival swung round his chair to the big
window at the back of his teak-panelled office. Far below, stretching
eastward for a quarter of a mile along the river, the stacks and
coke-ovens and corrugated-iron roofs of MacAskival Iron Works sent up
to heaven their smoke and flame and thunder. “Look at it all. I made
it. And what has it given me? Two coronary fits. I’m told to rest.
But where could a man like me fade decently? I’m not made for quiet
desperation. There’s just one place, Hugh, where I might lie quiet; and
that’s Carnglass.”

MacAskival peered at his map. “I haven’t seen Carnglass,” he went on,
“except in pictures, and no more did my father, or his father. But the
MacAskivals came out of Carnglass to Nova Scotia in 1780, and they
didn’t forget the little croft below Cailleach--that’s the sharp hill
north of the Old House, Hugh. Their Nova Scotia farm was sand and
stumps, and yet not so barren as that Carnglass croft. Still, they’d
have traded ten farms in Nova Scotia for that wet little plot in
Carnglass. And after two strokes, I think I’d give the mills and all
for that croft--with the island thrown in.”

Logan had walked to the window, and now stood looking toward the glare
of the coke-ovens; the flames went hotly up into the Michigan twilight,
that April evening, and the incandescent masses of coal fell roaring.
“Why, I think we might make a better bargain than that, Mr. MacAskival.
Peat bogs and tumbledown castles go cheap nowadays. But why do you mean
to send a man like me to buy you a few square miles of dripping misery?”

“Cigar, Hugh?” MacAskival pushed a box toward him. “The doctor says I
can have just one of these a day. Well, I’m not so crazy as I seem,
and you know it. Under your veneer, you’re like me--sentimental as a
sick old ironmaster. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of having an
island all to yourself. So I’d like to see you hunt this dream of mine;
you work too hard for your age. ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste
our powers.’ I don’t plan to bare my bosom to the moon in Carnglass,
but it should do you good to play at being a pagan suckled in a creed
outworn--for a few days, anyhow.”

Old Duncan MacAskival was a trifle vain of his quotations and
allusions, Logan thought. But Logan liked MacAskival, a self-made
man, a good deal better than the average product of the big
business-administration schools. It came to Logan that he, Hugh Logan,
rapidly was growing into an old man’s young man. It had been more than
a dozen years since he had led a battalion in Okinawa. He knew much
of Scotland, born in Edinburgh as he had been, though his parents had
taken him to America when he was nine; and he had gone back to take
a degree at Edinburgh University. A slackening of pace, for a week
or two, might do no mischief. All his life he had hurried: schools,
the university, the war, and the firm: in too much of a hurry, either
side of the water, to laugh, to marry, or even to dream. “No, Mr.
MacAskival,” Logan said, “I’m not the man to laugh at you. But you’re
a canny Scot, though five generations removed. Do you need to pay my
price just to draw up a deed to an island?”

“You’re more of a Scot than I am, Hugh, though you look American enough
nowadays.” MacAskival leant back in his heavy chair. “Well, yes, you’ll
be worth your price in this business. You know something of Scots law
and tenures. And you can wheedle odd customers; Lady MacAskival is one
of that breed, they tell me. Here, look at yourself in that mirror.”
MacAskival nodded toward the baroque glass against the teak panelling.

Logan saw reflected a mild-seeming, amiable face--or so most people
would call it, probably--almost unlined; still a young man’s face.
Sometimes, when he had been a major of infantry, that face had tended
to mislead people, and then Logan had to rectify impressions. He had a
spare body. “Do I look like a fool?” he asked MacAskival.

“Not exactly a fool, boy, but close enough. You’re innocent: that’s the
word, Hugh. What a face to set before a jury--or a crazy old creature
like Lady MacAskival! Anyone signing a contract with you assumes
that he’s had the better of the bargain. Now I’ve tried before this
to buy Carnglass; I’ve been at it more than three years. I’ve tried
those Glasgow solicitors. They’re too sharp: what we need with Lady
MacAskival is babyish innocence.”

“All right: I’ll take my innocence to Carnglass.” Smiling, Logan turned
back to the map on the big desk. “There still are MacAskivals in the
island, then? And what sort of cousin of yours is this Lady MacAskival?”

“Call me Duncan, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “if you’ll really take
up the business for me. No, there’s not a real MacAskival left in
Carnglass, so for as I can learn. Lady MacAskival was born Miss Ann
Robertson; her family owned distilleries, money-makers. It was a
queer match when she married Colonel Sir Alastair MacAskival, Indian
Army, who was old enough to be her father, or more. Sir Alastair had
scars and medals, but nothing besides. Though he was chief of the
MacAskivals--and there’s precious few of that little clan left--he
was born in a but-and-ben in North Uist. I get all this from an
Edinburgh genealogist. Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather ran through his
property so as to keep up a fine show in London. The Great Clearance
of Carnglass was in 1780--that’s when my people were booted out, you
remember--and it was the work of that old reprobate Donald MacAskival,
our Sir Alastair’s great-grandfather: he turned the whole island into
two big farms and a sheepwalk, on the chance of squeezing more money
from the rents, and told all the crofting MacAskivals to go to Hell or
Glasgow. A few had the money for steerage passage to Nova Scotia, which
eventually made me president of MacAskival Iron Works. My father was a
pushing Scot, and so am I--and you, too, Hugh.”

“So Ann Robertson brought money back to the MacAskivals more than a
hundred years after the Clearance?”

“Not simply money, Hugh, but Carnglass itself. What little extra
Donald MacAskival contrived to wring out of the rents after the Great
Clearance did him no good. He died bankrupt; and the creditors took
Carnglass. His son sank down to being the factor for a small laird
in North Uist, and there the family lived on, hand to mouth, until
young Alastair went out to India and got some reputation for himself
along the Northwest Frontier. When he was past forty, he sailed home
to Edinburgh on leave. There he met Ann Robertson, and married her,
and they bought back Carnglass with Robertson money, and restored Old
House of Fear.”

Logan bent over the map to find the tiny square that marked the Old
House. “That’s an uneasy name, Duncan, for an ironmaster who wants
peace and quiet.”

“But it’s a brave old house, Hugh. And the name is Gaelic, not English:
‘fear’ is spelled ‘fir’ or ‘fhir,’ sometimes, and it means ‘man.’ Old
House of Fear is Old House of Man. Old! Why, the foundations of the
oldest tower go back to Viking times. The Norsemen took Carnglass in
799 or thereabouts. But there was some sort of chiefs house--Picts or
whatever they were--before then. There’s a tale in the island that
Carnglass was Eden: man started there, and woman too, I suppose. But
Carnglass hasn’t many living souls today. Old Donald MacAskival swept
off five hundred people--MacAskivals and MacLeods and MacDonalds--in
the Great Clearance, which left only thirty or forty souls, all named
MacAskival, in the whole island. There still were twenty or thirty of
their descendants living in Carnglass when Alastair and Ann bought it
back. But Ann, Lady MacAskival, isn’t much of a hand for company, it
seems; because when Sir Alastair died, in 1914, she got rid of what
MacAskival crofters were left. Off they went to a smaller island,
Daldour, three miles south across the Sound of Carnglass, one soaking
peat-bog: if Carnglass was Eden, Daldour was Hell. And there they are
still, for all I know, if they haven’t starved. Our Lady MacAskival,
who’s over eighty now, lives alone at the Old House with only a handful
of Lowland and English servants, according to what I could learn from
Edinburgh. She never leaves Carnglass. And she doesn’t often answer
letters.”

“Then she’s not even a cousin of sorts to you?”

“Not she. The chiefs of MacAskival were of Norse stock--the name’s
Norse, at least. And she’s from the Lowlands. Sir Alastair and she
never had children--I gather, besides, there wasn’t much love lost
between them--and she has no heirs, so far as I can find. And anyway,
Hugh, the odds are that I’m a Pict or a Scot, not a Viking. The island
people generally took the chief’s name for a surname, though they might
have no blood connection. I don’t mean to set up for chief of Clan
MacAskival: my people were fishermen or crofters who got themselves
killed, now and then, in MacAskival’s feuds. Old Donald MacAskival’s
father was out for the Pretender in ’45, which is one reason why Donald
went so deep in debt and made the Clearance. No, all I want is to live
in the Old House and look across the Sound of Carnglass, Hugh. That’s
the dream that I want you to buy for me.”

“The Old House is liveable, then, Duncan?”

“Sound enough, they say, though hardly anyone but Lady MacAskival and
her servants has seen the inside of it since 1914. That Edinburgh man
couldn’t find any photographs for me later than 1914.” MacAskival
pulled open a drawer. “There they are: not very good pictures, taken
the year Sir Alastair died. It seems to have been foggy that day.”

“I presume it usually is foggy in your tight little island, Duncan,”
Logan said as he took up the half-dozen old prints. “There’s no
inhabited island further out into the Atlantic.” Foggy, yes; and yet
the great bulk of Old House of Fear loomed distinctly enough in the
middle ground of the photograph. Carnglass meant “gray stone,” and
the whole stern mass of masonry was of a gray that blended into the
outcrop of living rock upon which the Old House was built. But the
castle was not of a single period. The first photograph showed, on the
left, an enormous square tower of rubble, capped by a high-pitched
roof apparently sheathed with stone slabs. At one corner of this
tower, a little turret stood up, perhaps covering the top of a stair
in the thickness of the wall; Logan knew something about Scottish
medieval architecture. To this great tower was joined a range of
domestic buildings, three stories high, with dormers and crowstepped
gables, also built of gray rubble: early seventeenth-century work,
Logan thought. A smaller square tower closed the range. And then,
abruptly tacked upon the right side of the smaller tower, commenced
a mansion-house of ashlar, with small barred windows on the ground
floor but very large windows of plate glass above; this was in the
Scottish “baronial” style of Victorian times, yet carried out with
some taste and not altogether disharmonious with the medieval and
seventeenth-century buildings. A large door in the middle of this
latter-day façade seemed wide enough for a carriage to pass through;
perhaps it led to an interior courtyard. “All this on the right is Sir
Alastair’s addition?” Logan asked.

“Yes,” said MacAskival, “and the place is bigger even than it looks:
there’s a courtyard behind, with buildings all round. The Robertson
distilleries paid for it. When Sir Alastair and his wife bought back
the island, the original castle hadn’t been lived in for seventy years
or more, and the roof was collapsing; but they put everything in shape
and made the place twice as big. I suppose old Lady MacAskival rattles
about in it now. Even though she’s one of the richest old women in
Britain, income tax and surtax won’t let her keep much more than five
thousand pounds’ income; and that probably only pays the servants she
has left, and for her food. She has trouble finding help, by the way, I
hear. It’s not everyone who wants to scrub floors in Old House of Fear.”

“And you want a white mastodon?”

“Only to die in,” MacAskival told him, cheerfully. “Every man to his
own humor, Hugh. I have the money to keep the place as long as I live;
and if I stay there only from time to time, I can keep clear of British
income tax. I may as well spend a few million, because the Treasury
and that foundation you set up for me will take all that’s left when I
die, anyway. I might leave you the Old House, though: it shouldn’t take
you long to acquire a taste for that style of living.”

Hugh was turning over the other photographs. “One of the clachans:
one of the two villages in Carnglass. These are what they call black
houses, because the peat smoke just goes out of a hole in the roof,
after circulating round the room--but I suppose you know all this,
Hugh. Snug, anyway. And I don’t suppose any one of these is lived in
now, except possibly by a gamekeeper or two. Now have a look at this
other picture. What do you make of it?”

In the foreground, Hugh saw a desolate graveyard, a low drystone wall
enclosing it; some tall white monuments showed above the wall, and in
the center stood, at a perilous angle, an immense Celtic cross. Beyond
the monuments was what seemed to be an ancient chapel with a modern
roof. And away in the background there hulked, dimly, a tall circular
building, rather like a vast beehive.

“It all looks like something from before the Flood,” Logan murmured.

“Well, much of it is nearly as old as anything in Iona,” MacAskival
observed. “That’s the chapel of St. Merin. She was stoned to death, I
think, in the days of St. Columba. Sir Alastair restored the chapel
as the family burial-vault. And that’s the famous Cross of Carnglass,
tenth-century; or it would be famous, if Lady MacAskival ever let
archeologists ashore. I don’t know what the thing beyond can be. Do you
feel more like becoming Laird of Carnglass?”

“It’s a strange island,” Logan said, unsmiling.

“Yet it can’t be so strange as the rumors make it.” MacAskival was
pleased, clearly, at having shaken Logan out of his commonsensical
ways. “Except for a few friends from London, the old lady’s let nobody
poke about since her own little clearance of 1914. They say that boats
trying to put into the harbor have been shot at. And they say there
are more bogles stalking through the heather than there are live folk.
And servants who’ve left the Old House have told people in Oban and
Glasgow that some of the London visitors are worse than the bogles.”

“Scotland has no law of trespass--only acts of interdict after damage
has been done to property.”

“You can tell that to our old lady, Hugh. If we do get Carnglass, I’ll
let the archeologists and the naturalists browse. I’m told there are
rare plants and birds, and a few fallow deer still. Nearly the whole
island has become deer-forest. One of the farms--the one closer to the
old house--seems to be kept in fair order; they have Highland cattle. I
learned that from Lagg, the factor, a Galloway man.”

“You’ve corresponded with him, Duncan?”

“In a unilateral way. First, three years ago, I wrote to Lady
MacAskival herself: no answer. Then I found out the names of her London
solicitors. I sent them an offer, and they wrote that they’d refer
it to Lady MacAskival. Then silence. I wrote again. The solicitors
answered that Lady MacAskival would give me a reply after reflection.
More silence. I wrote to the solicitors a third time, a year ago
yesterday, and got a letter back promptly: Lady MacAskival no longer
did business with them, they said, and I should write to her factor
in Carnglass, Thomas Lagg. I did. Ten months ago, Lagg replied that
Lady MacAskival was indisposed, but would communicate with me after
some interval. She never has said no--mind that, Hugh. Then still more
silence. I wrote to Lagg three times; no reply. But yesterday this
letter came.” From under his blotter MacAskival drew a sheet of cheap
notepaper, which curled up as he tried to lay it before Logan.

“I told you she was odd,” MacAskival said, as Logan smoothed the sheet.
“The envelope was curled, too, and only partly straightened by having
been in a mail-bag.” Also the paper seemed water-stained, and the
writing in one corner had run badly. Though it was in a clear feminine
hand, it appeared to have been written very hastily:

“3rd March
“Duncan MacAskival, Esq.

“Sir:

Lady MacAskival desires to discuss with you at once the proposal
which you have set forth. She requests that you come in person to
Carnglass without delay, or send confidential agents. Immediate
action is imperative.”

There was no signature. “Lady MacAskival’s own hand?” Logan inquired.

“Presumably,” MacAskival said. “The doctor tells me that I’m not
quite fit for ocean cruises just now. So Hugh Logan, Esquire, is my
confidential agent. Do you think you can act properly conspiratorial? I
saw you as Cassius in the Players’ Club performance of _Julius Caesar_
last month, you remember, Hugh; and you were the best man in the cast.
You’d have done as well as a professional actor as you have with the
law. Well, I’ve cabled both the old lady and Lagg. I’ve told them that
you’ll arrive this week.”

“This week, Duncan? Next month, at the soonest.”

MacAskival’s thick eyebrows lowered. “Hugh Logan, I’ve given you a
boost for your firm, now and then. I’m not a man who enjoys being
crossed--you know that. Now this business is something that matters to
me. Who knows how much longer the old lady will live? I don’t intend to
miss this chance, after three years of trying. If you think anything of
me, you’ll fly to Prestwick tomorrow; and it will do you good, Hugh:
an easy bit of work in a charming quiet place. We can’t delay. Notice
the date of that letter. It’s been stuck somewhere en route; and it
came by ordinary surface mail, which took a week or more. I don’t want
the old lady to change her mind. In my cables, I asked to have Lady
MacAskival’s yacht--I suppose she must own something of the sort--put
into Glasgow or Greenock for you. You’ve a room reserved at Todd’s
Hotel, Glasgow, and Lady MacAskival’s people should get in touch with
you there. Will you go, or do I have to send some fool? I want to use
your innocence-mask, Hugh.”

“Needs must when the devil drives,” Logan said in his easy way. “Give
me those plane tickets. I usually humor madmen. Besides, I mean to find
out what that beehive building is.”

“Then it’s my Carnglass.” Duncan MacAskival slapped his hand against
the desk. “Here”--he fetched out a manila envelope--“here’s my
correspondence with the old lady’s people. And here’s some estimate
of what the island ought to cost, kit and kaboodle, that I got from
solicitors in London and Glasgow. And this, too--this will interest
you, Hugh.”

It was a slim old pamphlet, the covers nearly ripped away. “It’s rare,
Hugh. Thin’s of Edinburgh found a copy for me. Take it along to read on
your plane.” MacAskival opened to the title page: “A Summary History of
the Islands of Carnglass and Daldour, in the Western Isles of Scotland;
with some Account of the Traditionary Tales of those Parts. By the
Reverend Samuel Balmullo, sometime minister of the Parish of Carnglass
and Daldour. 1818.” MacAskival was something of a book-collector. “I
know you’re wanting dinner, Hugh,” MacAskival said, “and I’ll take you
to the club in a minute or two, but let me read you a bit of this:

“‘Among the surviving peasantry of Dalcruach village, on the eastern
strand of Carnglass, superstition exerts an influence as powerful
as it is debasing. In this clachan are said to reside four or five
Sgeulaiche, or narrators of traditionary tales of an extravagant
character, many of which antedate the arrival of Christian evangels
from Ireland in the sixth century. These relations often reflect, and
endeavor to excuse, the lingering of heathen and impious practices
among this ignorant folk. They speak, for example, of a “Third Eye,”
said to appear afresh, from generation to generation, among the
inhabitants of Carnglass, whether native-born or newcomers; and such
a spot upon the forehead is said to confer amatory powers, and is
regarded by these children of the twilight with a respect not far
removed from veneration. To labor among parishioners possessed by such
delusions is weary work; it has been said that to preach the Gospels
among the Pequots or Narragansetts is a facile undertaking by the side
of any endeavor to redeem from heathen error these denizens of the
furthermost Hebrides.’”

MacAskival turned the page. “The Reverend Samuel Balmullo--he was
from the Lowlands, Hugh--tends to be long-winded, but rewarding.
Balmullo seems to have been a sour old fellow. He was interested in the
MacAskivals, though--give me a moment more.” Duncan MacAskival leafed
through the pamphlet.

“‘Indubitably,’” he read, “‘a family of the first antiquity in the
Isles, the chiefs of MacAskival, though at present reduced to mean
estate, are said to be a sept of the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles,
early parted from their headship by internecine conflicts. These
MacAskival chiefs themselves maintain, however--and with some show of
reason--that they descend from a stock older still. As their ancestor
and the founder of their fortunes, they claim a certain Sigurd Askival,
a Viking adventurer, who espoused the Pictish heiress of Carnglass, one
Mary or Merin. This noble lady of Carnglass was a woman of remarkable
beauty, despite her flowing mane of red hair, which the refined taste
of modern days would disapprove. In passing, it is necessary to notice
a tale, germane to the genealogical claims of MacAskival, that one
Mary or Merin, saint and princess, at a remote period was redeemed
from captivity to a bestial creature, described as the Gabharfear,
Firgower, or man-goat; and that her rescuer was Sigurd Askival, a Norse
freebooter.

“‘One single substantial proof of the venerable lineage of MacAskival
is reputed to have survived well into the last century: a set of
chessmen carven from a blue stone, the “Table-Men of Askival,”
exhibiting the weird handiwork of a ferocious epoch, which objects
long continued the proudest possession of the chieftain of MacAskival.
These, however, no longer are to be found in the Old House of Fear,
their asserted repository; nor have they been transferred to the
elegant New House by the quay, although the present proprietor made
close search for the pieces. According to one fabrication of the aged
men of Carnglass, these “Table-Men” were immured in a tomb by the last
chieftain, to propitiate the Fiend. Once more the author apologizes
to his gentle readers for this trespass upon their hours of serious
reflection.’”

“Old Mr. Balmullo,” Logan broke in, “seems to have taken a fearful joy
in recording superstitions. He protests too much.”

“Yes, I think Carnglass bewitched Samuel Balmullo, Hugh. ‘Glamour’ is
an old Scots word, you know. Watch out, boy, that some Hebridean witch
doesn’t catch you: three days in Carnglass might turn the trick.”

“Never fear, Duncan,” Logan told him, with his slow smile. “The Harding
case comes up next month, and I’ll be back for it.”

“Fear? Why, there’s no danger of any sort in Carnglass, I suppose.”
MacAskival turned again to the window overlooking the plant. Now it was
dark, and the coke-ovens glowed against the night like the flaming City
of Dis. “Danger? Probably Carnglass is one of the few tolerably secure
places on earth. Sometimes I think we’ll turn the world into one final
hell of a coke-oven, Hugh. There may be some islands, though, left in
that fire. And Carnglass, where man began, ought to endure when man has
put an end to himself. I hope you can put this MacAskival back into his
island, Hugh.”

“You’re really going to give me dinner at your club, Duncan?”

Nodding, MacAskival reached for their coats. As they went out of the
office, he turned quizzically toward the younger man. “Speaking of
witches and bogles and man-goats, Hugh, why hasn’t any woman ever
captured you?”

“Probably because there’s no romance in me,” Logan murmured,
straightfaced.

“Why, there’s a good deal in you, Hugh. You’re canny, but have a
certain way with you.”

“Don’t forget this, though, Duncan--

“‘You can grave it on his tombstone, you can cut it on his card:
A young man married is a young man marred.’”

“Well!