re he spoke again. And
shading his eyes with one hand from the red glow of the fire, David
Helmsley watched them both.

"Well, it's rather cool of me to take up your time talking about my own
affairs,"--began Reay, at last--"But I've been pretty much by myself for
a good while, and it's pleasant to have a chat with friendly people--man
wasn't made to live alone, you know! In fact, neither man nor beast nor
bird can stand it. Even a sea cormorant croaks to the wind!"

Mary laughed.

"But not for company's sake,"--she said--"It croaks when it's hungry."

"Oh, I've often croaked for that reason!" and Reay pushed from his
forehead a wayward tuft of hair which threatened to drop over his eye in
a thick silvery brown curl--"But it's wonderful how little a fellow can
live upon in the way of what is called food. I know all sorts of dodges
wherewith to satisfy the greedy cravings of the vulgar part of me."

Helmsley took his hand from his eyes, and fixed a keenly observant look
upon the speaker. Mary said nothing, but her crochet needle moved more
slowly.

"You see," went on Reay, "I've always been rather fortunate in having
had very little to eat."

"You call it 'fortunate'?" queried Helmsley, abruptly.

"Why, of course! I've never had what the doctors call an 'overloaded
system'--therefore I've no lading bill to pay. The million or so of
cells of which I am composed are not at all anxious to throw any extra
nourishment off,--sometimes they intimate a strong desire to take some
extra nourishment in--but that is an uneducated tendency in them which I
sternly repress. I tell all those small grovelling cells that extra
nourishment would not be good for them. And they shrink back from my
moral reproof ashamed of themselves--and become wiry instead of fatty.
Which is as it should be."

"You're a queer chap!" said Helmsley, with a laugh.

"Think so? Well, I daresay I am--all Scotsmen are. There's always the
buzzing of the bee in our bonnets. I come of an ancient Highland stock
who were certainly 'queer' as modern ways go,--for they were famous for
their pride, and still more famous for their poverty all the way
through. As far back as I can go in the history of my family, and that's
a pretty long way, we were always at our wit's end to live. From the
days of the founder of our house, a glorious old chieftain who used to
pillage his neighbour chieftain in the usual style of those glorious old
times, we never had more than