if still sleeping, and tried to see what the book was.
But my eyes, good as they are, could make out nothing of the text or
title, except that I had a very strong impression that that book was
not written in the English tongue.

I woke abruptly, and leaned over to him. Quick as lightning he slid his
pencil up his sleeve and turned on me with a fatuous smile.

'What d'ye make o' this, Mr McCaskie? It's a wee book I picked up at a
roup along with fifty others. I paid five shillings for the lot. It
looks like Gairman, but in my young days they didna teach us foreign
languages.'

I took the thing and turned over the pages, trying to keep any sign of
intelligence out of my face. It was German right enough, a little
manual of hydrography with no publisher's name on it. It had the look
of the kind of textbook a Government department might issue to its
officials.

I handed it back. 'It's either German or Dutch. I'm not much of a
scholar, barring a little French and the Latin I got at Heriot's
Hospital ... This is an awful slow train, Mr Linklater.'

The soldiers were playing nap, and the bagman proposed a game of cards.
I remembered in time that I was an elder in the Nethergate U.F. Church
and refused with some asperity. After that I shut my eyes again, for I
wanted to think out this new phenomenon.

The fellow knew German--that was clear. He had also been seen in
Gresson's company. I didn't believe he suspected me, though I suspected
him profoundly. It was my business to keep strictly to my part and give
him no cause to doubt me. He was clearly practising his own part on me,
and I must appear to take him literally on his professions. So,
presently, I woke up and engaged him in a disputatious conversation
about the morality of selling strong liquors. He responded readily, and
put the case for alcohol with much point and vehemence. The discussion
interested the soldiers, and one of them, to show he was on Linklater's
side, produced a flask and offered him a drink. I concluded by
observing morosely that the bagman had been a better man when he
peddled books for Alexander Matheson, and that put the closure on the
business.

That train was a record. It stopped at every station, and in the
afternoon it simply got tired and sat down in the middle of a moor and
reflected for an hour. I stuck my head out of the window now and then,
and smelt the rooty fragrance of bogs, and when we halted on a bridge I
watched the trout in th