a.'

"'Preserve 's!' I said, clean jumped oot o' mysel'. 'I was but thinkin'
you're fey, McRimmon.'

"Dod, the auld deevil laughed till he nigh sat down on Dandie. 'Send me
the bill,' says he. 'I'm long past champagne, but tell me how it tastes
the morn.'

"Bell and I bid young Bannister and Calder to dinner at Radley's.
They'll have no laughin' an' singin' there, but we took a private
room--like yacht-owners fra' Cowes."

McPhee grinned all over, and lay back to think.

"And then?" said I.

"We were no drunk in ony preceese sense o' the word, but Radley's showed
me the dead men. There were six magnums o' dry champagne an' maybe a
bottle o' whisky."

"Do you mean to tell me that you four got away with a magnum and a half
a piece, besides whisky?" I demanded.

McPhee looked down upon me from between his shoulders with toleration.

"Man, we were not settin' down to drink," he said. "They no more than
made us wutty. To be sure, young Bannister laid his head on the table
an' greeted like a bairn, an' Calder was all for callin' on Steiner at
two in the morn an' painting him galley-green; but they'd been drinkin'
the afternoon. Lord, how they twa cursed the Board, an' the Grotkau, an'
the tail-shaft, an' the engines, an' a'! They didna talk o' superfeecial
flaws that night. I mind young Bannister an' Calder shakin' hands on
a bond to be revenged on the Board at ony reasonable cost this side o'
losing their certificates. Now mark ye how false economy ruins business.
The Board fed them like swine (I have good reason to know it), an' I've
obsairved wi' my ain people that if ye touch his stomach ye wauken the
deil in a Scot. Men will tak' a dredger across the Atlantic if they 're
well fed, an' fetch her somewhere on the broadside o' the Americas; but
bad food's bad service the warld over.

"The bill went to McRimmon, an' he said no more to me till the week-end,
when I was at him for more paint, for we'd heard the Kite was chartered
Liverpool-side. 'Bide whaur ye're put,' said the Blind Deevil. 'Man, do
ye wash in champagne? The Kite's no leavin' here till I gie the order,
an'--how am I to waste paint onher, wi' the Lammergeyer docked for who
knows how long an' a'?'

"She was our big freighter--McIntyre was engineer--an' I knew she'd
come from overhaul not three months. That morn I met McRimmon's
head-clerk--ye'll not know him--fair bitin' his nails off wi'
mortification.

"'The auld man's gone gyte,' says he. 'He'