digestion, I never touch spirits before noon. What d'ye think o' the
general, Mr. West?"

"Why, I have hardly had an opportunity of judging," I answered.

Mr. McNeil tapped his forehead with his forefinger.

"That's what I think of him," he said in a confidential whisper, shaking
his head at me. "He's gone, sir, gone, in my estimation. Now what would
you take to be a proof of madness, Mr. West?"

"Why, offering a blank cheque to a Wigtown house-agent," said I.

"Ah, you're aye at your jokes. But between oorsel's now, if a man asked
ye how many miles it was frae a seaport, and whether ships come there
from the East, and whether there were tramps on the road, and whether
it was against the lease for him to build a high wall round the grounds,
what would ye make of it, eh?"

"I should certainly think him eccentric," said I.

"If every man had his due, our friend would find himsel' in a house with
a high wall round the grounds, and that without costing him a farthing,"
said the agent.

"Where then?" I asked, humouring his joke.

"Why, in the Wigtown County Lunatic Asylum," cried the little man, with
a bubble of laughter, in the midst of which I rode on my way, leaving
him still chuckling over his own facetiousness.

The arrival of the new family at Cloomber Hall had no perceptible effect
in relieving the monotony of our secluded district, for instead of
entering into such simple pleasures as the country had to offer, or
interesting themselves, as we had hoped, in our attempts to improve
the lot of our poor crofters and fisherfolk, they seemed to shun all
observation, and hardly ever to venture beyond the avenue gates.

We soon found, too, that the factor's words as to the inclosing of the
grounds were founded upon fact, for gangs of workmen were kept hard at
work from early in the morning until late at night in erecting a high,
wooden fence round the whole estate.

When this was finished and topped with spikes, Cloomber Park became
impregnable to any one but an exceptionally daring climber. It was as
if the old soldier had been so imbued with military ideas that, like my
Uncle Toby, he could not refrain even in times of peace from standing
upon the defensive.

Stranger still, he had victualled the house as if for a siege, for
Begbie, the chief grocer of Wigtown, told me himself in a rapture
of delight and amazement that the general had sent him an order for
hundreds of dozens of every imaginable potted meat