mpany.

'We change at Muirtown, don't we?' I asked. 'When does the train for
the south leave?'

He consulted a pocket timetable. 'Ten-thirty-three. There's generally
four hours to wait, for we're due in at six-fifteen. But this auld
hearse will be lucky if it's in by nine.'

His forecast was correct. We rumbled out of the hills into haughlands
and caught a glimpse of the North Sea. Then we were hung up while a
long goods train passed down the line. It was almost dark when at last
we crawled into Muirtown station and disgorged our load of hot and
weary soldiery.

I bade an ostentatious farewell to Linklater. 'Very pleased to have met
you. I'll see you later on the Edinburgh train. I'm for a walk to
stretch my legs, and a bite o' supper.' I was very determined that the
ten-thirty for the south should leave without me.

My notion was to get a bed and a meal in some secluded inn, and walk
out next morning and pick up a slow train down the line. Linklater had
disappeared towards the guard's van to find his luggage, and the
soldiers were sitting on their packs with that air of being utterly and
finally lost and neglected which characterizes the British fighting-man
on a journey. I gave up my ticket and, since I had come off a northern
train, walked unhindered into the town.

It was market night, and the streets were crowded. Blue-jackets from
the Fleet, country-folk in to shop, and every kind of military detail
thronged the pavements. Fish-hawkers were crying their wares, and there
was a tatterdemalion piper making the night hideous at a corner. I took
a tortuous route and finally fixed on a modest-looking public-house in
a back street. When I inquired for a room I could find no one in
authority, but a slatternly girl informed me that there was one vacant
bed, and that I could have ham and eggs in the bar. So, after hitting
my head violently against a cross-beam, I stumbled down some steps and
entered a frowsty little place smelling of spilt beer and stale tobacco.

The promised ham and eggs proved impossible--there were no eggs to be
had in Muirtown that night--but I was given cold mutton and a pint of
indifferent ale. There was nobody in the place but two farmers drinking
hot whisky and water and discussing with sombre interest the rise in
the price of feeding-stuffs. I ate my supper, and was just preparing to
find the whereabouts of my bedroom when through the street door there
entered a dozen soldiers.

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