ppose you really have nothing to do now
that the Black Colonel is gone, and his disturbance--for you--with him."

"Oh," answered I, "there are still things to do, things, some of them,
which I don't like, as my military superiors down there in Aberdeen
town may be suspecting, for only last week, you know, they sent up a
troop of horse to make a special search of Corgarff for any hidden
Jacobite powder and shot. What happened you also know. Our friends of
your Stuart faith heard of this expedition long before it arrived,
filled their knapsacks with bannocks, and went to the hills. The
troopers came, found, by persistent search in deserted homes, a few
barrels of Spanish powder, some hundreds of bullets and a broken
cannon, and threw them all into the Water of Don. It was not very
exciting, especially to me, because it was a kind of censure; but
nothing worse happened than the breaking of a drunken trooper's neck,
by a fall from his horse. Here was one more way of death, not a pretty
way, for the man's commanding officer said jocosely, 'The idiot, he
must have come upon bad drink in his searches, and a bad woman is less
dangerous.'"

"Your statement," said Marget, "is, I see, a confidential apology to me
for the ongoings of those set over us and you! I hope you don't spend
too many hours in reflections as unprofitable as the subject of these,"
and she made, with this advice, to be a very serious young woman.

"What," I asked, "would you have me do with my spare time?"

"I'm afraid I don't know."

"Well, if you don't, who does?"

"I think I see a compliment in what you say, but I'm not quite sure."

"It's against rules, isn't it, to repeat a compliment? It would be no
compliment then."

"The more need to make it clear at first."

"I thought I had."

"Men think such a lot of things which are too unsubtle, too clumsy, for
a woman to comprehend. Yes, it is so."

"Men--myself--the Black Colonel?"

"He is far away; why bring him back?"

"Only because it may concern you, and anything which concerns you . . .
is not to be spoken."

"It is more interesting to speculate on what might have happened if he
had stayed, instead of running from his guns--no, I mean to his guns,
for he was no coward. Discount a good deal from him and he remains a
taking man. It flatters any woman to be coveted by a man of parts,
good or bad. She likes the homage thus implied, and if she did not she
would be no woman. She says