deafness when the occasion suited
her.

"Eih, sir! Were you saying you wad see it was recovered? And my silver set
wi' twenty solid teaspoons, forby the linen?" she asked anxiously, her
hand to her ear.

Wolfe smiled.

"I fear the Duke----"

"Ou ay, I ken fine you fear him. He's gurly enough, Guid kens."

"I was about to say, madam, that I fear the Duke will regard them as
spoils from the enemy not to be given up."

The Major was right. Miss MacBean might as well have saved her breath to
cool her porridge, for the Duke carried her possessions to London despite
her remonstrances. Five years later as I was passing by a pawnbroker's
shop on a mean street in London Miss MacBean's teapot with its curious
device of a winged dragon for a spout caught my eye in the window. The
shopkeeper told me that it had been sold him by a woman of the demi-monde
who had formerly been a mistress of the Duke of Cumberland. She said that
it was a present from his Royal Highness, who had taken the silver service
from the house of a fiery rebel lady in the north.

Our stay in the Scottish capital was of the shortest. In the early morning
we went knocking at the door of Miss MacBean's house. All day I kept under
cover and in the darkness of night we slipped out of the city southwest
bound. Of that journey, its sweet comradeship, its shy confidences, its
perpetual surprises for each of us in discovering the other, I have no
time nor mind to tell. The very danger which was never absent from our
travel drew us into a closer friendliness. Was there an option between two
roads, or the question of the desirability of putting up at a certain inn,
our heads came together to discuss it. Her pretty confidence in me was
touching in the extreme. To have her hold me a Captain Greatheart made my
soul glad, even though I knew my measure did not fit the specifications by
a mile. Her trust in me was less an incense to my vanity than a spur to my
manhood.

The mere joy of living flooded my blood with happiness in those days. I
vow it made me a better man to breathe the same air as she, to hear the
lilt of her merry laugh and the low music of her sweet voice. Not a curve
in that dimpled cheek I did not love; not a ripple in the russet hair my
hungry eyes had not approved. When her shy glance fell on me I rode in the
sunshine of bluest sky. If by chance her hand touched mine, my veins
leaped with the wine of it. Of such does the happiness of youth consist.