f or take to the road and pistol others," I told
him gloomily.

"There are worse things than to lose one's wealth----"

"I hear you say it, but begad! I do not know them," I answered with a
touch of anger at his calmness.

"----When the way is open to regain all one has lost and more," he
finished, unheeding my interruption.

"Well, this way you speak of," I cried impatiently. "Where is it?"

He looked at me searchingly, as one who would know the inmost secrets of
my soul. Under a guttering street light he stopped me and read my face
line by line. I dare swear he found there a recklessness to match his own
and perhaps some trace of the loyalty for which he looked. Presently he
said, as the paving stones echoed to our tread:--

"You have your father's face, Kenn. I mind him a lad just like you when we
went out together in the '15 for the King. Those were great days--great
days. I wonder----"

His unfinished sentence tailed out into a meditative silence. His voice
and eyes told of a mind reminiscent of the past and perhaps dreamful of
the future. Yet awhile, and he snatched himself back into the present.

"Six hours ago I should not have proposed this desperate remedy for your
ills. You had a stake in the country then, but now you are as poor in this
world's gear as Arthur Elphinstone himself. When one has naught but life
at stake he will take greater risks. I have a man's game to play. Are you
for it, lad?"

I hesitated, a prophetic divination in my mind that I stood in a mist at
the parting of life's ways.

"You have thrown all to-night--and lost. I offer you another cut at
Fortune's cards. You might even turn a king."

He said it with a quiet steadfastness in which I seemed to detect an
undercurrent of strenuous meaning. I stopped, and in my turn looked long
at him. What did he mean? Volney's words came to my mind. I began to piece
together rumours I had heard but never credited. I knew that even now men
dreamed of a Stuart restoration. If Arthur Elphinstone of Balmerino were
one of these I knew him to be of a reckless daring mad enough to attempt
it.

"My Lord, you say I might turn a king," I repeated slowly. "'Tis more like
that I would play the knave. You speak in riddles. I am no guesser of
them. You must be plain."

Still he hung back from a direct answer. "You are dull to-night, Kenn. I
have known you more gleg at the uptake, but if you will call on me
to-morrow night I shall make all plain to you