of Danvers fell between Sandy and me quite naturally at this time,
and one night, when I was praising his boy to him with much enthusiasm,
he answered with a laugh:

"Of course you like him! Why shouldn't you? You're of a piece, the two
of you. You are both primeval creatures, not far removed in your
love-making from the time when men lived in caves, and if they wanted a
woman they knocked her down with a club and carried her home, and the
wooing was over."

"Barring the knocking down," I answered, "it's not so bad a way."

"That's well enough," he retorted, "where women are but gentle female
animals. But take a woman with a mind or gift--such as Nancy Stair
has--and ye'll find a complication in the affair not to be solved with
a club."

The two of us had no small sport with Danvers over his condition, for
he had fallen in love to such an extent that he would start sentences
which he forgot to finish, make the most irrelevant remarks, or drop
into a-dreaming in the midst of talk, so that his father fell to
recalling him by shouting:

"View Halloo!" in a very loud voice, as they do on the hunting field,
following it up by talk full of a jeering seriousness, as it were:

"Do you think, Danvers, in--er--your present state, you would be able
to get this letter to the post?"

Or,

"Would ye be like to fall into a sound slumber if ye started to ring
for a stable-boy, Dand?"

Or,

"Do you think you could charge your mind, without danger to it, with
passing me the brandy?" all of which the lad bore with an amused smile
and open shamelessness.

One night, after dinner, during this time, I recall that there was a
discussion over the cutting of a roadway between our houses, and after
Sandy had thrown in the fatherly suggestion that if Danvers remained at
Arran much longer the road would be worn by his footsteps with no
expense to us, Danvers, who was awaiting Nancy to walk on the porch
with him, began:

"I think----"

"Ye need go no further," Sandy broke in, with a laugh. "You flatter
yourself! You _think_," he continued; "you've been incapable of
thought for nearly two weeks. Neither of us would give a boddle for
your opinion on any subject save one. I'll wager," he said, coming over
to his son and putting a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could
not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And
to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered
about by a slip o