oking at. Alan wore as they met one of his
best appearances of courtesy and friendliness, yet with something
eminently warlike, so that James smelled danger off the man, as folk
smell fire in a house, and stood prepared for accidents.

Time pressed. Alan's situation in that solitary place, and his enemies
about him, might have daunted Caesar. It made no change in him; and it
was in his old spirit of mockery and daffing that he began the
interview.

"A braw good day to ye again, Mr. Drummond," said he. "What'll yon
business of yours be just about?"

"Why, the thing being private, and rather of a long story," says James,
"I think it will keep very well till we have eaten."

"I'm none so sure of that," said Alan. "It sticks in my mind it's either
now or never; for the fact is me and Mr. Balfour here have gotten a
line, and we're thinking of the road."

I saw a little surprise in James's eye; but he held himself stoutly.

"I have but the one word to say to cure you of that," said he, "and that
is the name of my business."

"Say it, then," says Alan. "Hout! wha minds for Davie?"

"It is a matter that would make us both rich men," said James.

"Do ye tell me that?" cries Alan.

"I do, sir," said James. "The plain fact is that it is Cluny's
Treasure."

"No!" cried Alan. "Have ye got word of it?"

"I ken the place, Mr. Stewart, and can take you there," said James.

"This crowns all!" says Alan. "Well, and I'm glad I came to Dunkirk. And
so this was your business, was it? Halvers, I'm thinking?"

"That is the business, sir," says James.

"Well, well," says Alan; and then in the same tone of childlike
interest, "it has naething to do with the _Seahorse_, then?" he asked.

"With what?" says James.

"Or the lad that I have just kicked the bottom of behind yon windmill?"
pursued Alan. "Hut, man! have done with your lees! I have Palliser's
letter here in my pouch.--You're by with it, James More. You can never
show your face again with dacent folk."

James was taken all aback with it. He stood a second, motionless and
white, then swelled with the living anger.

"Do you talk to me, you bastard?" he roared out.

"Ye glee'd swine!" cried Alan, and hit him a sounding buffet in the
mouth, and the next wink of time their blades clashed together.

At the first sound of the bare steel I instinctively leaped back from
the collision. The next I saw, James parried a thrust so nearly that I
thought him killed; and it low