he will,
say--aye!--say 'Panama,' my lad, and he'll understand in a jiffy!"

"Eleven o'clock--Panama," said I. "And--the message?"

"Aye!" he answered, "the message. Just this, then: 'James Gilverthwaite
is laid by for a day or two, and you'll bide quiet in the place you know
of till you hear from him.' That's all. And--how will you get out there,
now?--it's a goodish way."

"I have a bicycle," I answered, and at his question a thought struck me.
"How did you intend to get out there yourself, Mr. Gilverthwaite?" I
asked. "That far--and at that time of night?"

"Aye!" he said. "Just so--but I'd ha' done it easy enough, my lad--if I
hadn't been laid here. I'd ha' gone out by the last train to the nighest
station, and it being summer I'd ha' shifted for myself somehow during
the rest of the night--I'm used to night work. But--that's neither here
nor there. You'll go? And--private?"

"I'll go--and privately," I answered him. "Make yourself easy."

"And not a word to your mother?" he asked anxiously.

"Just so," I replied. "Leave it to me."

He looked vastly relieved at that, and after assuring him that I had the
message by heart I left his chamber and went downstairs. After all, it
was no great task that he had put on me. I had often stayed until very
late at the office, where I had the privilege of reading law-books at
nights, and it was an easy business to mention to my mother that I
wouldn't be in that night so very early. That part of my contract with
the sick man upstairs I could keep well enough, in letter and spirit--all
the same, I was not going out along Tweed-side at that hour of the night
without some safeguard, and though I would tell no one of what my
business for Mr. Gilverthwaite precisely amounted to, I would tell one
person where it would take me, in case anything untoward happened and I
had to be looked for. That person was the proper one for a lad to go to
under the circumstances--my sweetheart, Maisie Dunlop.

And here I'll take you into confidence and say that at that time Maisie
and I had been sweethearting a good two years, and were as certain of
each other as if the two had been twelve. I doubt if there was such
another old-fashioned couple as we were anywhere else in the British
Islands, for already we were as much bound up in each other as if we had
been married half a lifetime, and there was not an affair of mine that I
did not tell her of, nor had she a secret that she did not share with