," said Eben McClure, bowing humbly, without venturing to shake
hands, "I have need of a word with you. I shall not in any way detain
you, but it is a matter of His Majesty's Service, which I judge it will
be for your good to know."

The Laird of Supsorrow regarded his cousin with no very friendly eye,
and, pulling his gold snuff-box from his pocket, began to tap it in an
irritated, impatient manner.

"Ye are not thinking of coming here to borrow money as ye did the time
before?" he growled, "for if so, I tell you plainly that there is not
the half of a copper doit for you here. Besides, I hear that you are
doing very comfortably in the King's service, making yourself rich as
well as universally beloved, and a credit to your name!"

Eben McClure took the flout as he would have taken a kick from that
honoured double-soled shoe.

"Cousin Kennedy," he said, "I have no purpose but to do you service. As
you are good enough to remark, I have nothing to complain of in the
service of His Majesty, and it shall be my first duty and pleasure to
repay to you the little advance you were good enough to make me--with
interest."

Kennedy McClure looked his visitor over coolly.

"You have been robbing the stage?" he demanded.

The spy laughed, but it was a laugh from the teeth out-wards. As the
French say, he laughed "yellow." Nevertheless, he drew a pocket-book
from his breast, and suggested that if his kind cousin could spare the
time, perhaps it would be as well for them to speak together in a more
retired place.

"Come ben," said the Laird of Supsorrow, "there is no close time for the
receiving of siller."

They passed through a vast kitchen where everything was in the pink of
order. The tables were ranged in the middle. An array of pots brooded
over the fire, so close that they jostled each other. To the right the
eyes of the spy fell with respect upon the great oaken chair of the
master. For in this also the Laird had kept up the patriarchal style. He
still willingly, and with a certain gusto, took his seat in his own
kitchen, where he smoked and talked at ease with the men and maids as
they came or went. A little cupboard with a double door was fixed above
the chair within reach of his hand. It contained his pipes and his
library--a Bible, the poems of Burns, Boston's _Fourfold State_, _The
Cloud of Witnesses_, a Grey's _Tables_, a book on mensuration, Fowler's
_Horse Doctor_, and many almanacs tied in packets.

The