lushed; a curious gleam came into his eyes. He turned to fumble
noisily with the glasses as he replaced them in the cupboard.

"I thought that was widely enough known," said he. "Put down by the law,
and perhaps a good business too. _Diaouil!_" He came back to the table
with this muttered objurgation, sat and stared into the grey film of
the peat-fire. "There was a story in every line," said he, "a history in
every check, and we are odd creatures in the glens, Count, that we could
never see the rags without minding what they told. Now the tartan's
in the dye-pot, and you'll see about here but _crotal_-colour--the old
stuff stained with lichen from the rock."

"Ah, what damage!" said Count Victor with sympathetic tone. "But there
are some who wear it yet?"

The Baron started slightly. "Sir?" he questioned, without taking his
eyes from the embers.

"The precipitancy of my demands upon your gate and your hospitality must
have something of an air of impertinence," said Count Victor briskly,
unbuckling his sword and laying it before him on the table; "but the
cause of it lay with several zealous gentlemen, who were apparently
not affected by any law against tartan, for tartan they wore, and _sans
culottes_ too, though the dirt of them made it difficult to be certain
of either fact. In the East it is customary, I believe, for the infidel
to take off his boots when he intrudes on sacred ground; nothing is said
about stockings, but I had to divest myself of both boots and stockings.
I waded into Doom a few minutes ago, for all the world like an
oyster-man with my bag on my back."

"Good God!" cried the Baron. "I forgot the tide. Could you not have
whistled?"

"Whole operas, my dear M. le Baron, but the audience behind me
would have made the performance so necessarily allegretto as to be
ineffective. It was wade at once or pipe and perish. _Mon Dieu!_ but
I believe you are right; as an honest man I cannot approve of my first
introduction to your tartan among its own mountains."

"It must have been one of the corps of watches; it must have been some
of the king's soldiers," suggested the Baron.

Count Victor shrugged his shoulders. "I think I know a red-coat when I
see one," said he. "These were quite unlicensed hawks, with the hawk's
call for signal too."

"Are you sure?" cried the Baron, standing up, and still with an
unbelieving tone.

"My dear M. le Baron, I killed one of the birds to look at the
feathers. That i