cally engaged to me. After a
week's trip in my society it was to be expected that she would arrive in
Glasgow to ask her elder sister's blessing.

This, Aline thought, necessitated our getting off at once, lest Bennett
should contrive to meet the girl alone somehow, and question her. If he
did this, the "fat would be in the fire" for Mrs. Bal, and perhaps for
me too.

"The sooner the better," said I; for I was impatient to spirit the girl
away from Somerled, and turn her thoughts from him to me. If I prayed to
the heather moon for help, I felt that I ought to succeed; for the man
who can have a girl of eighteen to himself (not counting a few chaperons
lying about loose) in a motor-car for a week, passing through the
loveliest country in the world, and can't make her forget for his sake
some other fellow she's known only a few hours longer, must be a born
duffer. This I dinned into my consciousness.

It was to be my first real chance with Barrie; and though never in my
life before have I made serious love to any flesh-and-blood girl, I've
made so much with my pen to the most difficult and diverse heroines,
that I had a certain belief in my own powers, once they had free play.

The second thing that happened this morning of happenings, however, was
a slight setback, just enough of a setback to let me see that the
heather moon is a goddess who exacts more wooing from her votaries than
I had given. Or else, that she has her favourites, and is more ready to
look with a kindly eye on a man born to the heather than one who comes
from afar to write it up.

Barrie, it appeared, had had a "scene" with Barbara. She had insisted
with tears and (according to Mrs. Bal) stampings of foot, that she
_would_ go to the Waverley station with Mrs. James and see her off for
Carlisle.

Mrs. James was to be taken to the train by Somerled, in his car; and as
no one but Barrie had been invited, this meant that the girl would
return with him alone. To be sure, it would not take five minutes for
the Gray Dragon to slip from the Waverley end of Princes Street back to
the Caledonian. On the other hand, it was evident that Mrs. James must
have a special reason for choosing the Waverley station, when she could
just as well have gone from our own; and Aline and I could see only one.
Somerled wanted to snatch five minutes alone with Barrie; and he was not
the man to waste a single one of the five. The question was, what use
did he intend to make