d in
payment cash, debentures and preference shares, and his lawyers and his
own acumen had acclaimed the bargain. But all the week-end he had been
a little sad. It was the end of so old a song, and he knew no other
tune to sing. He was comfortably off, healthy, free from any
particular cares in life, but free too from any particular duties.
"Will I be going to turn into a useless old man?" he asked himself.

But he had woke up this Monday to the sound of the blackbird, and the
world, which had seemed rather empty twelve hours before, was now brisk
and alluring. His prowess in quick shaving assured him of his youth.
"I'm no' that dead old," he observed, as he sat on the edge of he bed,
to his reflection in the big looking-glass.

It was not an old face. The sandy hair was a little thin on the top
and a little grey at the temples, the figure was perhaps a little too
full for youthful elegance, and an athlete would have censured the neck
as too fleshy for perfect health. But the cheeks were rosy, the skin
clear, and the pale eyes singularly childlike. They were a little weak,
those eyes, and had some difficulty in looking for long at the same
object, so that Mr. McCunn did not stare people in the face, and had,
in consequence, at one time in his career acquired a perfectly
undeserved reputation for cunning. He shaved clean, and looked
uncommonly like a wise, plump schoolboy. As he gazed at his simulacrum
he stopped whistling "Roy's Wife" and let his countenance harden into a
noble sternness. Then he laughed, and observed in the language of his
youth that there was "life in the auld dowg yet." In that moment the
soul of Mr. McCunn conceived the Great Plan.

The first sign of it was that he swept all his business garments
unceremoniously on to the floor. The next that he rootled at the
bottom of a deep drawer and extracted a most disreputable tweed suit.
It had once been what I believe is called a Lovat mixture, but was now
a nondescript sub-fusc, with bright patches of colour like moss on
whinstone. He regarded it lovingly, for it had been for twenty years
his holiday wear, emerging annually for a hallowed month to be stained
with salt and bleached with sun. He put it on, and stood shrouded in
an odour of camphor. A pair of thick nailed boots and a flannel shirt
and collar completed the equipment of the sportsman. He had another
long look at himself in the glass, and then descended whistling to
breakfast. T