was, if not doing the same
thing, at least working up to the utmost extent of his ability.

Before midnight all was over. The fire was what the cook termed black
out. The furniture, more than half destroyed, was re-housed. The
danger of a revival of the flames was past, and the warriors in the
great battle felt themselves free to put off their armour and seek
refreshment.

This they did--the males at least--in the gun-room, which, being
farthest from the fire, and, therefore, left untouched, had not been
damaged either by fire or water. Here the thoughtful laird had given
orders to have a cold collation spread, and here, with his guests,
men-servants, boys, and neighbouring farmers around him, he sat down to
supper.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CONCLUSION.

"We are a queer lot, what-e-ver!" remarked one of the farmers, with a
deep sigh and a candid smile, as he looked round the company.

The observation was incontrovertible, if charcoaled faces, lank hair,
torn and dripping garments, and a general appearance of drowned-ratiness
may be regarded as "queer."

"My friends," said the laird, digging the carving fork into a cold
turkey, "we are also a hungry lot, if I may judge of others by myself,
so let me advise you to fall to. We can't afford to sit long over our
supper in present circumstances. Help yourselves, and make the most of
your opportunities."

"Thank God," said Giles Jackman, "that we have the opportunity to sit
down to sup under a roof at all."

"Amen to that," returned the laird; "and thanks to you all, my friends,
for the help you have rendered. But for you, this house and all in it
would have been burnt to ashes. I never before felt so strongly how
true it is that we `know not what a day may bring forth.'"

"What you say, sir, is fery true," remarked a neighbouring small farmer,
who had a sycophantish tendency to echo or approve whatever fell from
the laird's lips.

"It is indeed true," returned his host, wiping the charcoal from his
face with a moist handkerchief; "but it is the Word that says it, not I.
And is it not strange," he added, turning with a humorous look to
Barret, "that after all these years the influence of Joan of Arc should
be still so powerful in the Western Isles? To think that she should set
my house on fire in this nineteenth century!"

"I am very glad she did!" suddenly exclaimed Junkie, who, having been
pretty well ignored or forgotten by everybody, was plying his