yes, laughing at my discomposure, in a
half impatience of my stolid English phlegm.

"Oh, you men! You go to your death for a friend, and if by a miracle you
escape: 'Pooh! 'Twas nothing whatever. Gin it rain to-morrow, I think
'twill be foul,' you say, and expect to turn it off so."

I took the opening like a fox.

"Faith, I hope it will not rain to-morrow," I said. "I have to keep watch
outside. Does the sun never shine in Raasay, Aileen?"

"Whiles," she answered, laughing. "And are all Englishmen so shy of their
virtues?"

Tony Creagh coming up at that moment, she referred the question to him.

"Sure, I can't say," he answered unsmilingly. "'Fraid I'm out of court.
Never knew an Englishman to have any."

"Can't you spare them one at the least?" Aileen implored, gaily.

He looked at her, then at me, a twinkle in his merry Irish eyes.

"Ecod then, I concede them one! They're good sportsmen. They follow the
game until they've bagged it."

We two flushed in concert, but the point of her wit touched Creagh on the
_riposte_.

"The men of the nation being disposed of in such cavalier fashion, what
shall we say of the ladies, sir?" she asked demurely.

"That they are second only to the incomparable maidens of the North," he
answered, kissing her hand in his extravagant Celtic way.

"But I will not be fubbed off with your Irish blarney. The English ladies,
Mr. Creagh?" she merrily demanded.

"Come, Tony, you renegade! Have I not heard you toast a score of times the
beauties of London?" said I, coming up with the heavy artillery.

"Never, I vow. Sure I always thought Edinburgh a finer city--not so dirty
and, pink me, a vast deal more interesting. Now London is built----"

"On the Thames. So it is," I interrupted dryly. "And--to get back to the
subject under discussion--the pink and white beauties of London are built
to take the eye and ensnare the heart of roving Irishmen. Confess!"

"Or be forever shamed as recreant knight," cried Aileen, her blue eyes
bubbling with laughter.

Tony unbuckled his sword and offered it her. "If I yield 'tis not to
numbers but to beauty. Is my confession to be in the general or the
particular, Miss Macleod?"

"Oh, in the particular! 'Twill be the mair interesting."

"Faith then, though it be high treason to say so of one lady before
another, Tony Creagh's scalp dangles at the belt of the most bewitching
little charmer in Christendom."

"Her name?"

"Mistress Antoinette