It was anything but a pleased man who entered the room, his face puffed
and red and his eyes searching around for his boy. He pointed a shaking
finger at him.

"What, in God's name, do you mean by this?" he asked vaguely.

"Don't speak to the boy in that fashion," said the Cornal in a
surprising new paternal key. "If he has been in mischief he has got out
of it by a touch of the valiant--"

"Valiant!" cried the Paymaster with a sneer. "He made an ass of himself
at the Waterfoot, and his stupidity would have let three or four people
drown if Young Islay, a callant better than himself had not put out a
boat and rescued them. The town's ringing with it."

The scar on the Cornal's face turned almost black. "Is that true that my
brother says?" said he.

Gilian searched in a reeling head for some answer he could not find; his
parched lips could not have uttered it, even if he had found it, so he
nodded.

"Put me to my bed, somebody," said the General, breaking in suddenly
on the shock of the moment, and staggering to one side a little as he
spoke. "Put me to my bed, somebody. I am getting too old to understand!"

CHAPTER XIX--LIGHTS OUT!

AS he spoke he staggered to the side, and would have fallen but for his
sister's readiness. About that tall rush of a brother she quickly
placed an arm and kept him on his feet with infinite exertion, the
while uttering endearments long out of fashion for her or him, but come
suddenly, at this crisis, from the grave of the past--the past where she
and Dugald had played as children, with free frank hearts loving each
other truly.

"Put me to my bed," said he again thickly, and his eyes blurred with the
utmost weariness. "Put me to my bed. O God! what is on me now? Put me to
my bed."

"Dugald! Dugald! Dugald!" she cried. "My darling brother, here is Mary
with you; it is just a turn." But as she said the flattering thing her
face was hopeless. The odour of the southernwood on the window-sill
changed at once to laurel, rain-drenched, dark, and waving over tombs
for the boy spellbound on the floor. All his shameful perturbation
vanished, a trifling thing before the great Perturber's presence.

The brothers went quickly beside their sister, and took him to
his bedroom, furnished sparsely always by his own wish that denied
indulgence in anything much beyond a soldier's campaign quarters.

Dr. Anderson came, and went, shaking hands with Miss Mary in the lobby
and his eyes most