oved
beside him, and he turned in time to prevent the jade casket from
crashing to the floor. Two of the supports had slipped.

He replaced the thing on its proper table and stood silent for a moment.

"The priest and the soldier gone, and only the beast of burden left. If
I were inclined to be superstitious, I should call that a dashed bad
omen."

CHAPTER I

HOW A RETIRED PROVISION MERCHANT FELT THE IMPULSE OF SPRING

Mr. Dickson McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with
the towel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the
looking-glass, and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window.
In the little garden lilacs were budding, and there was a gold line of
daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a birch
flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the
steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. A blackbird whistled from a
thorn-bush, and Mr. McCunn was inspired to follow its example. He began
a tolerable version of "Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch."

He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his
safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of
enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had
taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in
three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.
Calculation revealed to him the fact that in his fifty-five years,
having begun to shave at eighteen, he had wasted three thousand three
hundred and seventy hours--or one hundred and forty days--or between
four and five months--by his neglect of this admirable invention. Now
he felt that he had stolen a march on Time. He had fallen heir, thus
late, to a fortune in unpurchasable leisure.

He began to dress himself in the sombre clothes in which he had been
accustomed for thirty-five years and more to go down to the shop in
Mearns Street. And then a thought came to him which made him discard
the grey-striped trousers, sit down on the edge of his bed, and muse.

Since Saturday the shop was a thing of the past. On Saturday at
half-past eleven, to the accompaniment of a glass of dubious sherry, he
had completed the arrangements by which the provision shop in Mearns
Street, which had borne so long the legend of D. McCunn, together with
the branches in Crossmyloof and the Shaws, became the property of a
company, yclept the United Supply Stores, Limited. He had receive