as if he
enjoyed the game as much as any one.

"Here, Whitefoot," said Stair, and the dog came obediently to his side.
He wore on his neck a plain leather collar, which his master undid. In
one place the inside leather was doubled but held tight when worn by
Whitefoot, owing to the roughness of the dog's mane of hair. Stair
pushed back the understrap, and taking a piece of paper from his
waistcoat wrote upon it the figure "2" very large and clear. Then he
shook a forefinger before Whitefoot's moist nose, and said with emphasis
the single word "Jean."

The dog lifted his forepaws a little clear of the ground, and, as it
were, barked without noise, making an eager, half-strangled noise in his
throat to show he understood.

"Jean!" Stair repeated.

"A-owch!" whispered the dog, his tail wagging violently and his eyes
fairly blazing.

"Go!" said Stair, and the next moment the tall bracken had closed on
Whitefoot. Not the tremor of a leaf, not the swaying of a rag-weed told
Patsy which way he had gone. In these days the very dogs had been
trained to run invisibly and to bark under their breaths. The Traffic
and the "press," but especially the latter, had silenced much of the
immemorial mirth of the farm-towns. The shadow of the war cloud rested
on the ancient Free Province. The lads might 'list, but they would not
be "pressed." "A lad gaen to the wars" or "a lassie fa'en wrang" were
the utmost shame that could fall upon any Galloway household, and of the
two the lassie was more readily forgiven than the lad with the colours.

"I shall wait till Jean comes," said Stair, a little shame-facedly,
because he understood that the girls would naturally wish to talk of
their own affairs. "I must see how the spurred gentry are behaving
themselves up at the farm."

But to assure Patsy of his complete disinterestedness, he went to the
edge of alder-clump and stood there leaning on his gun. He watched
keenly the twisting links of the Mays Water, a silver chain flung
carelessly in the sun, cut with gun-metal coloured patches where it
sulked a while in shadowy pools. Whitefoot would do his duty. Of that
there was no doubt whatever. He would find Jean. He would attract her
attention. Jean would go out to the dairy, whither Whitefoot would
follow. There the collar would be opened, the paper taken out, and she
would soon be on her way for that one of Stair's trysting-places which
bore the number "2" on the list he had given her.

P