gifts were hoarded as if they
contained treasure, and only dipped into for very special reasons.

"It flatters me," I remarked airily, "to think I am a special reason,
because that must come near being a special friend."

"Oh," quoth Marget, "but you are an official enemy, so how could you be
a special friend? And still such things are possible, you know, but I
shall not tell you how they are possible. You would not understand a
bit"; and, as she spoke, her eyes and hands were arranging the
tea-table.

"I should, I assure you, try very hard," said I, "and it would be odd
if I did not succeed, with a dish of tea for stimulant. I don't
remember when I tasted tea last," I added laconically, as Marget poured
it out of a quaint old pot into dwarfy cups of French mould. Most of
the dainty things, the bric-a-brac of households in the Jacobite
Highlands were from France, just as we had come to say "ashets" and
"gigots" of mutton, and generally to graft French cookery into our
Scottish meals, for the "Auld Alliance" had various harvests.

As we talked over the tea-cups, Marget and I, I thought how quickly in
that Nature's cradle of Corgarff she had ripened to woman's estate.
She had, at times, been in touch with the artificialities of social
life, but they had not dulled her free, strong character. She had
drawn her instincts, as she had drawn her blood, from the long hills,
and she had no self-consciousness to dim her lights. But when I rose
to leave she said merrily, "We have spoken much foolish nonsense, have
we not, Captain Gordon?"

"Wise nonsense, Mistress Forbes," I answered.

"Thank you, but wise nonsense is most becoming when it is expressed as
a parable."

"Then let us have the parable."

"Oh! parables are not in fashion with so many hard realities about, and
there should not be three people in one. Three's never company, they
say, good company, even in a parable."

"Then, dear lady, why put in three?"

"This parable, dear Captain, would need three; first, a high-minded
young man who wears arms and dreams dreams, who is beloved by everybody
for his good nature and qualities, who is on the other side of where he
would be most welcome, and who will probably never summon courage to
get there; secondly, an older man of more picturesque, more risky
qualities, an adventurer in love and war, never afraid to strike, even
if the stroke might wound, a personality able, on occasion, to
commandeer what could no