he story that's
going about."

"What story?"

"You've no heard it, sir?"

Ned shook his head.

"I hardly like to repeat it, sir; it's that cruel and untrue. They're
saying Sir Malcolm and Miss Farmond had got engaged to be married."

"Well?" said Ned sharply, and he seemed to control his feelings with an
effort.

"A secret engagement, like, that Sir Reginald would never have allowed.
But there I think they're right, sir. Sir Reginald was unco' taken up
with Miss Farmond, but he'd have looked higher for his heir. And so as
they couldn't get married while he was alive--neither of them having any
money, well, sir, this story says--"

He broke off and neither spoke for an instant.

"Good God!" murmured Cromarty. "They actually accuse Malcolm Cromarty
and Miss Cicely of--?"

He paused too, and Bisset nodded.

"Who is saying this?"

"It seems to be the clash of the haill country by this time, sir."

He seemed a little frightened at the effect of his own words; and it was
small wonder. Ned Cromarty was a nasty looking customer at that moment.

"Who started the lie?"

"It's just ignorance and want of education of the people, I'm thinking,
Mr. Cromarty. They're no able to grasp the proper principles--"

"Lady Cromarty must be told! She could put a stop to it--"

Something in Bisset's look pulled him up sharply.

"I'm afraid her ladyship believes it herself, sir. Maybe you have heard
she has keepit Miss Farmond to stay on with her."

"I have."

"Well, sir," said Bisset very slowly and deliberately, "I'm
thinking--it's just to watch her."

Ned Cromarty had been smoking a pipe. There was a crack now as his teeth
went through the mouthpiece. He flung the pipe into the fire, jumped up,
and began pacing the room without a word or a glance at the other. At
last he stopped as abruptly as he had started.

"This slander has got to be stopped!"

And then he paced on.

"Just what I was saying to myself, sir. It was likely a wee thing of
over anxiety to stop it that made me think o' the possibility of a wild
man from America, which was perhaps a bit beyond the limits of what ye
might call, as it were, scientific deduction."

"When did Lady Cromarty begin to take up this attitude?"

"Well, the plain truth is, sir, that her ladyship has been keeping sae
much to herself that it's not rightly possible to tell what's been in
her mind. But it was the afternoon when Mr. Rattar had been at the house
that she sent fo