stened by me Gray Dragon--should regard them with contempt.
By the horses' heads stood a gorgeous, grinning man, dressed in livery
such as postilions may have worn a hundred years ago. Talking to him was
a blacksmith of the same remote epoch, with knee-breeches showing under
a leather apron, a great hammer in his hand, and on his head a high,
broad-brimmed beaver hat balanced on a white wig. Not far off were two
men in modern clothes; and they were placing in position some kind of a
photographic camera.

When they saw that we meant to stop at the Blacksmith's Shop, they
brightened up, and seemed as much interested as if they had never before
seen an automobile.

"They're going to take photographs of a Gretna Green wedding of ancient
times, for a biograph show, evidently," said Sir Somerled MacDonald, and
quickly explained to the late prisoner of the glass retort the nature of
a biograph. "Rather a good idea that! Apparently they're waiting for
their chief characters, the bride and groom."

He was helping Mrs. James to get down from the car, and I had already
jumped out, for, of course, we wanted to visit the old house, and see
everything there was to see, in the place where Shelley (maybe!) and
hundreds of other famous people have been married. But before going in,
we lingered to stare at the chaise, which was rather like an immense
bathtub, the kind we used at Hillard House, where Grandma would have no
such new-fangled innovation as a bathroom. As we stood there, one of the
men with the camera came up, hovered undecidedly, and then said, with a
cough to draw attention to himself: "Excuse me, sir, but will you pardon
the liberty of my asking if you and the young lady will oblige us with a
great favour?"

Sir Somerled frowned slightly, with his millionaire manner, which is not
so nice as the other. "What is the favour?" he inquired.

"Why, sir," the man explained, "we're in a bit of a hole. You can see
we're here to reconstruct a runaway wedding for a cinema show. We
represent the North British Biograph Company, and we've been to a lot of
trouble and expense to get our props together. Pretty soon the father's
coach will be along, and we've got all we want except the two principal
figures. The bride and groom we engaged have failed to turn up. We can't
make out what's happened, but they ain't here, and we've searched the
neighbourhood without finding anything we can do with in their place.
The light's just right now,