midnight
It was a man with strange melancholies he found there , with a ludicrous decorum for a person of his condition , rising regularly on the hour , it seemed , and retiring early to his chamber like a peasant , keeping no company with the neighbouring lairds because he could not even pretend to emulate their state , passing his days among a score of books in English , some -LRB- as the Sieur de Guille -RRB- in French , and a Bedel Bible in the Irish letter , and as often walking aimlessly about the shore looking ardently at the hills , and rehearsing to himself native rhymes that ever account native women the dearest and the same hills the most beautiful in God 's creation . He was the last man to look to for aid in an enterprise like Montaiglon 's : if he had an interest in the exploit it seemed it was only to discourage the same , and an hour or two of his company taught the Count he must hunt his spy unaided . But the hunting of the spy , in the odd irrelevance or inconsistency of nature , was that day at least an enterprise altogether absent from his thoughts . He had been diverted from the object of his journey to Scotland by just such a hint at romance as never failed to fascinate a Montaiglon , and he must be puzzling himself about the dulcet singer and her share in the clandestine midnight meeting . When he had finished his game with his host , and the latter had pleaded business in the burgh as an excuse for his absence in the afternoon , Count Victor went round Doom on every side trying to read its mystery . While it was a house whose very mortar must be drenched with tradition , whose every window had looked upon histories innumerable worth retelling , nothing was revealed of the matter in hand . Many rooms of it were obviously unoccupied , for in the domestic routine of the Baron and of Mungo and the lady of song there were two storeys utterly unoccupied , and even in the flats habited there were seemingly chambers vacant , at least ever unopened and forlorn .