hours later with uncertain step, and face pricked out with bright
pin-points of red--the sure mark of the confirmed drinker of whisky
neat.

They were long days in the cottage at the back of Barbrax Long Wood.
The little "but an' ben" was whitewashed till it dazzled the eyes as you
came over the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths of
dark-green firwood. From early morn, when she saw her father off,
till the dusk of the day, when he would return for his supper, Janet
Balchrystie saw no human being. She heard the muffled roar of the trains
through the deep cutting at the back of the wood, but she herself was
entirely out of sight of the carriagefuls of travellers whisking past
within half a mile of her solitude and meditation.

Janet was what is called a "through-gaun lass," and her work for the day
was often over by eight o'clock in the morning. Janet grew to womanhood
without a sweetheart. She was plain, and she looked plainer than she
was in the dresses which she made for herself by the light of nature
and what she could remember of the current fashions at Merrick Kirk,
to which she went every alternate Sunday. Her father and she took day
about. Wet or shine, she tramped to Merrick Kirk, even when the rain
blattered and the wind raved and bleated alternately among the pines of
the Long Wood of Barbrax. Her father had a simpler way of spending his
day out. He went down to the Railway Inn and drank "ginger-beer" all day
with the landlord. Ginger-beer is an unsteadying beverage when taken the
day by the length. Also the man who drinks it steadily and quietly never
enters on any inheritance of length of days.

So it came to pass that one night Gavin Balchrystie did not come home at
all--at least, not till he was brought lying comfortably on the door
of a disused third-class carriage, which was now seeing out its career
anchored under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used it as a
shelter. The driver of the "six-fifty up" train had seen him walking
soberly along toward The Huts (and the Railway Inn), letting his long
surface-man's hammer fall against the rail-keys occasionally as he
walked. He saw him bend once, as though his keen ear detected a false
ring in a loose length between two plates. This was the last that was
seen of him till the driver of the "nine-thirty-seven down" express--the
"boat-train," as the employees of the P.P.R. call it, with a touch of
respect in their voices--passed Gav