d shoulders. His light steady blue eyes and his dark ruddy hair
proclaimed him the Highlander. His face was not what would be called
handsome: the chin was over-square and a white scar zigzagged across his
cheek, but I liked the look of him none the less for that. His frank manly
countenance wore the self-reliance of one who has lived among the hills
and slept among the heather under countless stars. For dress he wore the
English costume with the extra splash of colour that betokened the vanity
of his race. "'Fore God, sir, you came none too soon," he cried in his
impetuous Gaelic way. "This riff-raff of your London town had knifed me in
another gliff. I will be thinking that it would have gone ill with me but
for your opportune arrival. I am much beholden to you, and if ever I can
pay the debt do not fail to call on Don--er--James Brown."

At the last words he fell to earth most precipitately, all the fervent
ring dropping out of his voice. Now James Brown is a common name enough,
but he happened to be the first of the name I had ever heard crying a
Highland slogan in the streets of London, and I looked at him with
something more than curiosity. I am a Scotchman myself on the mother's
side, so that I did not need to have a name put to his nationality.

There was the touch of a smile on my face when I asked him if he were
hurt. He gave me the benefit of his full seventy three inches and told me
no, that he would think shame of himself if he could not keep his head
with his hands from a streetful of such scum. And might he know the name
of the unknown friend who had come running out of the night to lend him an
arm?

"Kenneth Montagu," I told him, laughing at his enthusiasm.

"Well then, Mr. Kenneth Montagu, it's the good friend you've been to me
this night, and I'll not be forgetting it."

"When I find myself attacked by footpads I'll just look up Mr. James
Brown," I told him dryly with intent to plague.

He took the name sourly, no doubt in an itching to blurt out that he was a
Mac-something or other. To a Gaelic gentleman like him the Sassenach name
he used for a convenience was gall and wormwood.

We walked down the street together, and where our ways parted near
Arlington Street he gave me his hand.

"The lucky man am I at meeting you, Mr. Montagu, while we were having the
bit splore down the street. I was just weanying for a lad handy with his
blade, and the one I would be choosing out of all England came hot