and looked at the bolts; and finally he said to me: "I don't think we
can have our walk, my lord."

Well, I burst out laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under cover of
our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in. The bars made
the window no use. A skilled burglar might have beaten those bolts,
and a battering-ram would, no doubt, have smashed the door; we had
neither burglar nor ram.

"We are caught, my boy," said Denny. "Nicely caught. But what's the
game?"

I had asked myself that question already, but had found no answer. To
tell the truth, I was wondering whether Neopalia was going to turn out
as conservative a country as the Turkish ambassador had hinted. It was
Watkins who suggested an answer.

"I imagine, my lord," said he, "that the natives [Watkins always
called the Neopalians "natives"] have gone to speak to the gentleman
who sold the island to your lordship."

"Gad!" said Denny, "I hope it will be a pleasant interview."

Hogvardt's broad, good-humored face had assumed an anxious look. He
knew something about the people of these islands; so did I.

"Trouble, is it?" I asked him.

"I'm afraid so," he answered; and then we turned to the window
again, except Denny, who wasted some energy and made a useless din by
battering at the door, till we beseeched him to let it alone.

There we sat for nearly two hours. Darkness fell, the women had ceased
their gossiping, but still stood about the street, and in the doorways
of the house.

It was nine o'clock before matters showed any progress. Then came
shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of
men's feet in a quick, triumphant march. Then the stalwart figures of
the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the
darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing
in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening
night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper
was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude,
barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; and the women
and children crowded out to meet the men, catching up the refrain in
shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. And so martial
and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time
with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to
put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the
rough original. Here it is:

"O