The Tapestried Room

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"Very well, then," said our host reluctantly. "Since even the ladies insist, you shall hear it. But I warn you again that it is not a pleasant story."

There was a drawing-in of chairs about the big fireplace in the long library. Outside, the wind clamoured piteously, and through the tall windows the scudding, eddying snow was just visible in the blue-grey twilight. It heightened our relish of the cosy gloom about those blazing yule-logs.

Sir James, with the firelight playing upon his ruddy, shaven face and silver hair, buried his square chin in his ample stock, and proceeded to respond to our insistence by dragging the family skeleton from its cupboard.

"Briefly, then," he began, "it happened in Christmas-week of 1745. My grandmother, Lady Evangeline Margatt, was living here alone at the time; her husband was dead, and her two boys were away from home.

"Three days before Christmas a man presented himself here at the hall and asked to see her. He was a fugitive Jacobite whom King George's men had been seeking for some three months―ever since Culloden, in fact―and who had wandered into England. He had known Lady Evangeline in happier days, and it is believed that at one time they had been betrothed. Knowing her circumstances here, and having got as far as Preston and being in most desperate straits at the time, he came to cast himself upon her mercy.

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