cause, by the exercise of a
little ingenuity, such as is permissible, and a kinsmanship such as is
proper, there may emerge good seasoning for us all.

"Pray remember that if the Corgarff Forbeses were to fail in issue, and
there is only one life between them and that failure, the life of a
young unmarried lady, I, by descent on the distaff side, which I need
not outline in particularity, would be heir to the estates; only as a
Jacobite outlawed, a broken man, I can inherit nothing, not even
possess, little as it is now, my own in peace.

"But, if I am not ill-informed, and news travels among the hills as
swiftly as, we are told, it travels in the desert, King George's
advisers would gladly return the Corgarff estates to the Forbes family
if that family had a strong man at its head and so such an influence as
would keep the region, always a key to the Highlands, I will not
exactly say in order for the German king, because that would be a
tactless fashion of arranging, but wean it gradually from its sympathy
for Prince Charlie, and his house of misadventure and ill-luck.

"Now, if you will be good enough to assume in me qualities for this
mission and the willingness to undertake it; if you will accept the
circumstance that it would merely be a case of a remote legal heir
coming into his own by a round-about way; and if you will set those
facts in what I consider the national importance of the matter and help
it forward in a form so delicate and chivalrous that I must not even
hint it, why, you will be rendering a potent service to the cause which
enlists you and which might, who knows, enlist me also!"

That was the letter, considered in language, crafty in purpose, really,
an overture for the hand of Marget Forbes, and I sat far into the
night, while my peat fire died out in Corgarff Castle, wondering how I
was to answer it, and, even more, how I myself stood towards the acute
personal situation which it created. For I saw that the Black Colonel
meant to make love and do business at the same stroke, not for the
first time, perhaps, in his life of emprise; and certainly here was no
new thing in the world's queer story.

_V.--A Cairn of Remembrance_

It is a good way, when you are in doubt, to wait and let events shape a
decision, and this was how I came to regard the Black Colonel's letter.

He had set me a pretty puzzle in his written words, because, contrasted
with the light touch-and-go of spoken words,