rs have right of way over small ones!
Under the circumstances, he might as well have appointed a plain in
the moon! The duel waits.... I tell you what I know of home affairs. I
shall be obliged for any information you may have that I have not."

Mr. Wotherspoon's sharp blue eyes seemed to consider it. He drummed on
the table. "I am a much older man than you, Captain Rullock, and an
old adviser of your family. Perhaps I may speak without offense? That
subject of quarrel, now, between you and the laird of Glenfernie--"

The other made a movement, impatient and imperious. "It is not
likely, sir, that he divulged that!"

"He? No! But fate--fortune--the unrolling course of things--plain
Providence--whatever you choose to call it--seems at times quite below
or above that reticence which we others so naturally prize and
exhibit!"

"You'll oblige me, sir, by not speaking in riddles."

The irony dropped from Mr. Wotherspoon's tone. He faced the business
squarely. "Do you mean to say that you do not know of the suicide of
Elspeth Barrow?"

The chair opposite made a grating sound, pushed violently back upon
the bare, polished floor. Down the street, through the window, came
the sound of Cluny Macpherson's pipers, playing down from the
Lawnmarket. Rullock seemed to have thrust his chair back into the
shadow. Out of it came presently his voice, low and hoarse:

"No."

"They found her on Christmas Day--drowned in the Kelpie's Pool.
Self-murder--murder also of a child that would have been."

Again silence. The lawyer found that he must go through with it,
having come so far. "It seems that there is a cripple fellow of the
neighborhood who had stumbled, unseen, upon your trysts. He told--spoke
it all out to the crowd gathered. There was a letter, too, upon her
which gave a clue. But she never named you and evidently meant not to
name you.... Poor child! She may have thought herself strong, and then
things have come over her wave on wave. Her grandfather--that dark
upbringing on tenets harsh and wrathful--certainty of disgrace.
Pitiful!"

There came a sound from the chair pushed back from the light. Mr.
Wotherspoon measured the table with his fingers.

"It seems that the countryside was searching for her. It was the laird
of Glenfernie who, alone and coming upon some trace, entered the
Kelpie's Pool and found her there. They say that he carried her, dead,
in his arms through the glen to White Farm."

Some proclamation or