oosely hung shoulders started suddenly, and his pale blue
eyes set themselves steadily to look at Griggs. The red brows were
shaggy, and there was a bright red spot on each cheek bone. He did not
answer his companion's question, though his lips moved once or twice as
though he were about to speak. They seemed unable to form words, and no
sound came from them.

His anger was near, perhaps, and with another man it might have broken
out. But the pale and stony face opposite him, and the deep, still eyes,
exercised a quieting influence, and whatever words rose to his lips were
never spoken. Griggs understood that he had touched the dead body of a
great passion, sacred in its death as it must have been overwhelming in
its life. He struck another subject immediately, and pretended not to
have noticed Dalrymple's expression.

"I like your queer old Scotch ballads," he said, humouring the man's
previous tendency to quote poetry.

"There's a lot of life in them still," answered Dalrymple, absently
twisting his empty glass.

Griggs filled it for him, and they both drank. Little by little the
Italians had begun to go away. Giulio, the fat, white-jacketed drawer,
sat nodding in a corner, and the light from the high lamp gleamed on his
smooth black hair as his head fell forward.

"There is a sincere vitality in our Scotch poets," said Dalrymple, as
though not satisfied with the short answer he had given. "There is a
very notable power of active living exhibited in their somewhat
irregular versification, and in the concatenation of their
ratiocinations regarding the three principal actions of the early
Scottish life, which I take to have been birth, stealing, and a violent
death."

"'But of these three charity is the greatest,'" observed Griggs, with
something like a laugh, for he saw that Dalrymple was beginning to make
long sentences, which is a bad sign for a Scotchman's sobriety.

"No," answered Dalrymple, with much gravity. "There I venture--indeed, I
claim the right--to differ with you. For the Scotchman is hospitable,
but not charitable. The process of the Scotch mind is unitary, if you
will allow me to coin a word for which I will pay with my glass."

And he forthwith fulfilled the obligation in a deep draught. Setting
down the tumbler, he leaned back in his chair and looked slowly round
the room. His lips moved. Griggs could just distinguish the last lines
of another old ballad.

"'Night and day on me sh