f the Forth than it has south
of the Thames; but the net result was that each combatant was pulled
off, picked up, shaken until his teeth rattled, and banged down on to
his seat with a brief admonition to mind his manners, until seven
bewildered, partially sobered, and thoroughly demoralised patrons of
sport sat round about in various attitudes of limp dejection, leaning
against one another like dissipated marionettes; while our rustic
Hector, bestriding the compartment like a Colossus, dared them to move a
finger under penalty of being "skelped."

He bundled them all out at the next stopping-place, without inquiring
whether they desired to alight there or no, and I am bound to say that
they all seemed as anxious to leave the carriage as he was to expel
them. He then shut the door, pulled up the window, and turned to my wife
with a reassuring smile.

"Yon was just a storrm in a teapot," he remarked affably.

He accepted my thanks with indifference, but blushed in a gratified
manner when Kitty addressed him. He was her bond-slave by the time that
we bade him farewell at Perth. I presented him with my card, which he
carefully placed inside the lining of his hat; but he forbore, either
from native caution or excessive shyness, to furnish us with any
information as to his own identity.

Well, here he was, sitting opposite to me in the Reading Room of the
British Museum, and seemingly none too prosperous. Six years ago he had
looked like a young and healthy farm lad. Now, fourth-rate journalism
was stamped all over him.

CHAPTER THREE.

"ANENT."

We conversed awhile in whispers to avoid disturbing the other
worshippers--I always feel like that in the British Museum--and finally
abandoned our respective tasks and issued forth together. With a little
persuasion I prevailed upon my companion to come and lunch with me, and
we repaired to a rather old-fashioned and thoroughly British
establishment close by, where the fare is solid and the "portions"
generous.

My guest, after a brief effort at self-repression, fell upon the food in
a fashion that told me a far more vivid tale of his present
circumstances than the most lengthy explanation could have done. When he
was full I gave him a cigar, and he leaned back in his padded arm-chair
and surveyed me with the nearest approach to emotion that I have ever
observed in the countenance of a Scot.

"I was wanting that," he remarked frankly, and he smiled largely upon