f the elements--with no shelter for my head
but a Paisley shawl of violent pattern. It occurred to me that I had
travelled much in the interval, and run many risks, to exchange a suit
of mustard-yellow for a Paisley shawl and a ball dress that matched
neither it nor the climate of the Pentlands. The exhilaration of the
ball, the fighting spirit, the last communicated thrill of Flora's hand,
died out of me. In the thickening envelope of sea-fog I felt like a
squirrel in a rotatory cage. That was a lugubrious hour.

To speak precisely, those were seven lugubrious hours; since Flora would
not be due before eight o'clock, if, indeed, I might count on her
eluding her double cordon of spies. The question was, whither to turn in
the meantime? Certainly not back to the town. In the near neighbourhood
I knew of no roof but "The Hunters' Tryst," by Alexander Hendry.
Suppose that I found it (and the chances in that fog were perhaps
against me), would Alexander Hendry; aroused from his bed, be likely to
extend his hospitality to a traveller with no more luggage than a
Paisley shawl? He might think I had stolen it. I had borne it down the
staircase under the eyes of the runners, and the pattern was bitten upon
my brain. It was doubtless unique in the district and familiar: an
oriflamme of battle over the barter of dairy produce and malt liquors.
Alexander Hendry _must_ recognise it, and with an instinct of
antagonism. Patently it formed no part of my proper wardrobe: hardly
could it be explained as a _gage d'amour_. Eccentric hunters trysted
under Hendry's roof; the Six-Foot Club, for instance. But a hunter in a
frilled shirt and waistcoat sprigged with forget-me-nots! And the house
would be watched, perhaps. Every house around would be watched.

The end was that I wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the
sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of
that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon
my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and
insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the
lacerating fox of self-reproach, and hugged it again, and set my teeth
as it bit upon my vitals. Once, indeed, I lifted an accusing arm to
heaven. It was as if I had pulled the string of a douche-bath. Heaven
flooded the fool with gratuitous tears; and the fool sat in the puddle
of them and knew his folly. But heaven at the same time mercifully
v