curlew and
the plover, waited and burned for his coming by the Covenanter's Stone.

Innes went off down-hill in a passion of resentment, easy to be
understood, but which yielded progressively to the needs of his
situation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude, rude
dog; and himself still more passionately for a fool in having come to
Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any other house in
Scotland. But the step, once taken, was practically irretrievable. He
had no more ready money to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow
from Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his host's
manners, he was sure of his practical generosity. Frank's resemblance to
Talleyrand strikes me as imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself
could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He met
Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality. You must
take your friends as you find them, he would have said. Archie couldn't
help being his father's son, or his grandfather's, the hypothetical
weaver's, grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart,
incapable of true generosity and consideration: but he had other
qualities with which Frank could divert himself in the meanwhile, and to
enjoy which it was necessary that Frank should keep his temper.

So excellently was it controlled that he awoke next morning with his
head full of a different, though a cognate subject. What was Archie's
little game? Why did he shun Frank's company? What was he keeping
secret? Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman? It would
be a good joke and a fair revenge to discover. To that task he set
himself with a great deal of patience, which might have surprised his
friends, for he had been always credited not with patience so much as
brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to another, he at last
succeeded in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although
Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home
again from some point between the south and west. From the study of a
map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland
running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his
finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs
and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for
a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be
seen